This one’s a popular Zen Koan.
A man was walking across a field when a tiger spotted him. He ran, the tiger close behind, until the ground gave way to a cliff. He slipped, and caught hold of a vine growing over the edge.
Hanging there, he looked up: the tiger paced above, waiting. He looked down: a snake was climbing the cliff face toward him. He could not climb up - the tiger would kill him. He could not let go - the fall would kill him. He could not stay where he was - the snake would kill him.
Just then he noticed a beehive hanging from a branch above his head, and a drop of honey fell, landing on his cheek. He shifted his grip, turned his face up, and let the next drop fall on his tongue.
How sweet it tasted.
There are variations of this story.
- Instead of honey, it’s a strawberry.
- Instead of a steep cliff, it’s a survivable jump, but another tiger is waiting at the bottom.
- Instead of a snake approaching, two mice, one black and one white, are slowly gnawing at the vine.
I like this variation. It suits a tropical place like India where straberry is not a native fruit.
There are attempts to relate the animals in this story to real-life situations and to find the meaning behind it. But this is a Zen koan. There is no deeper hidden meaning. The purpose of a Zen koan is to jolt the mind into a direct, unmediated experience of the present moment, and this story delivers.
Having said that, my interpretation is this: life is hard, no one gets out of it alive, so enjoy those brief fleeting moments of joy and be present.