A Chinese village is besieged
by drought and unless there is rain quite quickly, the village
is going to starve to death. They have tried everything they
know. They have tried all their local people so they finally
decide to send, at a great distance, for the famous rainmaker.
(Have you ever noticed that all wise people come from very far
away... it seems to be one of the essentials of wisdom that it
be brought from a very great distance.) The great rainmaker is
summoned from a very great distance; he consents to come. He
comes to the village and he asks immediately: Please build me a
straw hut outside the village and give me enough food and water
for five days ... and don't disturb me! They do this quickly.
The little hut is built and he disappears into it and on the
fourth day it rains, just in time to save the village.
The villagers went to the hut, they drag the rainmaker out of
the hut blinking into the light, give him his fee and pour all
of the gifts that they can upon him. An enormous outpouring of
gratitude for he has indeed saved the village.
One man came to him and said: How do you do it? What is the
ceremony that you do that makes it rain? The rainmaker said: Oh!
You must understand ... you see when I came to your village, I
was so out of sorts inside myself that I had to put things right
inside myself and I never got to the rainmaking ceremony. And
the import of the story is; that if you put things right inside,
they will come right outside without any further ceremony. And
that is the power of the story!
Robert Johnson has written a nice article on the
Relationship of the Inner and Outer using this story on Inward
Light.
Click here.
