2. The Long Littleness of Life

There is a nice story on awakening (or the lack of it), a story about the chicken and the eagle, made popular by Anthony de Mello. Once upon a time, there was an eagle’s egg that somehow got lost and got mixed up with the eggs of a hen. The eggs hatched, and the eaglet grew up with a brood of chicks. The eagle believed it was a chicken (although it did look rather awkward to other chickens), and it lived all its life doing what the other chickens did. It clucked and cackled, and scratched the earth for insects and worms. It could even fly up a few feet into the air, thrashing its wings about, like the other chickens.

Many years later, on a bright cloudless day, the eagle-chicken saw a magnificent bird high above in the sky. With its wide wings fully spread out, the great bird glided effortlessly and majestically. Awed by this sight, the eagle-chicken asked “Who’s that?” and a wise old hen replied, “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds. The great eagles live in the sky; but we chickens can live only on the earth”. And so, the eagle that believed it was a chicken, lived like one and eventually died like one, without ever realising its true identity and potential.