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THE ROAR OF AWAKENING
the pupil bowing at his feet are determined by the exigencies of this supreme task of transformation. Their problem is to effect a kind of alchemical transmutation of the soul. Through the means, not of a merely intellectual understanding, but of a change of heart (a transformation that shall touch the core of his existence), the pupil is to pass out of bondage, beyond the limits of human imperfection and ignorance, and transcend the earthly plane of being.
There is an amusing popular fable which illustrates this pedagogical idea. It is recorded among the teachings of the celebrated Hindu saint of the nineteenth century, Śrī Rāmakrishna." Anecdotes of this childlike kind occur continually in the discourses of the Oriental sages; they circulate in the common lore of the folk and are known to everyone from infancy. They carry the lessons of India's timeless wisdom to the homes and hearts of the people, coming down through the millenniums as everybody's property. Indeed India is one of the great homelands of the popular fable; during the Middle Ages many of her tales were carried into Europe. The vividness and simple aptness of the images drive home the points of the teaching; they are like pegs to which can be attached no end of abstract reasoning. The beast fable is but one of the many Oriental devices to make lessons catch hold and remain in the mind.
The present example is of a tiger cub that had been brought up among goats, but through the enlightening guidance of a spiritual teacher was made to realize its own unsuspected na
2Cf. The Gospel of Sri Rāmakrishna, translated with an introduction by Swāmi Nikhilānanda, New York, 1912, pp. 232-233, 259-360. Śrī Rāmakrishna (1836-86) was the perfect embodiment of the orthodox religious philosophy of India. His message first reached America through his pupil, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), who spoke for India at the World's Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, 1893. Today the monks of the Ramakrishna-Vivekānanda mission maintain spiritual centers and conduct courses of teaching in most of the principal cities of the United States.
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