TIGER FACE--as told by Joseph Campbell There is a fable an Indian and fable, an Indian fable that accents and brings out the oriental side of the story with which I was to conclude this portion. It sort of sums up the whole thinking of the old; I am that, I and the father are one; you and I are one, mystery. This is the story of a Tigress who’s pregnant and starving hungry. And she came upon a little flock of goat that were grazing and in her eagerness for a meal, she sprang very hard at the goat and brought on the birth of her little one and her own death. She over-did it. The goats scattered and when they came back to their little grazing place, they found the just born little tiger and its dead mother. Now these goats had very strong parental instincts and they adopted the little tiger who grew up imagining it was a goat. It learned to eat grass, which it could not digest very well, and it learned to bleat and in general was simply a clumsy goat [imitation]. Well when this miserable reached adolescence, a male tiger pounced at the little flock, it scattered. But this little fellow is a tiger and he didn’t run away and there he stood. The big one looked at him and he said, ‘What? You living here with these goats?’ ‘Maa’ said the [little] tiger. The big one is mortified. Swats him back and forth a couple of times. The little one’s just embarrassed, nibbles grass and bleats some more. The big one takes him by the [scruff of the] neck and brings him to a pond, where there is no wind blowing and the surface is like a mirror… So, this little tiger is looking over and he sees his own face for the first time. It’s not [like] the face[s] he’s been looking at [all this time]; it’s not a goat face! The big tiger puts his face over there and he says, ‘You see, you’ve got the…face of a tiger, you’re not a goat. You’re like me. Be like me.’ That’s this guru stuff. So, the little one now, he’s got that notion. He’s taken by the neck again and he’s taken to the den of the big tiger where the bloody remains of a recently slain gazelle [lies]. The big fella takes a chuck of the bloody stuff and he says, ‘Open your face.’ The little one backs away [and says], ‘I’m a vegetarian.’ The big one shoves it down his throat; he gags on it, the text says, ‘as all do on true doctrine.’ So gagging on the true doctrine, he never the less is assimilating his own proper food. It activates his own tiger nature. He gives a stretch, a tiger stretch and a little roar comes out of his mouth, a tiger roar 101. And the big one says, ‘Okay, now we go into the forest and eat tiger food.’ Now my dear friends, the moral, as I read it is, the social sciences cultivate our goat nature, [while] mythology religion—deep religion—mystical contemplation and the arts, introduce us by way of the Margi, the path to our tiger face. There comes another problem, when you’ve found your tiger face, how do you live as a goat? Campbell, Joseph (1999). “Western Quest: origins of occidental mythology.” San Anselmo, CA: Joseph Campbell Foundation.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 05:18:28 +0000
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