One day Buddha came with a rope in his hand while getting ready to preach the gathering. Everyone was surprised as it was very unusual to see Buddha with anything in his hands.
While addressing everyone, he started tying knots in the rope.
He tied three knots and asked them, “Is this the same rope which I had brought earlier or is there any difference?”
One of the disciples said, “Lord, rope is same but it’s condition has changed.”
Buddha said, “You are right, and asked – is it possible for me to bring the rope back into its original form?”
Another disciple replied, “Yes Lord, it is possible but you will have to untie all the knots.”
Buddha asked, “How would you untie the knots? And he started pulling the knots from the sides trying to untie them.
One of his disciple replied, “If we observe carefully and figure out how exactly the knots have been tied then it will be easier to untie the knots. But if we try pulling the rope from both sides then we might make the knots even tighter.”
Buddha said, “Yes you are right.
Then, as Buddha untied the knots, he explained, “If we analyse the reason behind the knots and try to remove root cause of knots then we can easily untie all the knots. Most people want to solve the issue without knowing the real cause of it. If we know the cause of the problem well, solutions will come automatically.”
We are often subjected to such situations in our daily life where we have to untie the knots. We have to look at the situation from an open mind and from all the aspects to find the solution.
Both figure and the ground have to be considered to solve the issue. Focus on the problem and its cause and not on the person or the baggage of ego, false pride, biasness or preconception.
If we look at things only from our perspective ,we will continue to keep tying the knots.
