rafts and hamster wheels

There is an ancient parable about two monks travelling through a forest who come to a raging river. They must cross it, so they construct a raft over several days. Upon a successful crossing, one monk begins to pull the raft out of the water and onto his shoulder (preparing to continue walking with it into the forest). The other monk looks at him, in disbelief, and says "Are you crazy? We could be carrying that raft for miles through this forest before we meet another river like this one! We'll make another when and if we need it."

Our beliefs are often treated as hardened cement; unchanging once layed, and rock-solid against the sways of life. We expect to lean on our prior notions and understandings when next needed, such as a time of crisis or when facing a tough decision. But, that presumes we will meet the same crises and decision-points that we met in the past. Each belief is only truly useful in a infinitely small band of scenarios, so why cling?

Would it not, in this light, make more sense to discard, trim, and decompose our beliefs continuously? The next moment is a dark, dense jungle of unpredictability; It's rather absurd to cherish the fossils you've long overcome, expecting them to turn up again. Of course, the belief-making and heuristic-forming process is natural, but to me the constant retaining of outdated tactics for long periods is a psychological bug, not a feature.

This line of thinking parallels another analogy on my mind concerning hamster wheels; more widely called the "rat race" or the "hedonistic treadmill": Chasing, often materialist, objectives in an endless, nauseating cycle. Often people try to break out of these loops, once they realize how they damage their psyche. But, this process is laden with a subtle trap: we just end up replacing one hamster wheel with another. For instance: replacing the pursuit of money with the pursuit of perfect health. The ladder seems favorable for a deeper, more enriched life; but it's another hamster wheel in disguise! Or, at least it easily can become another wheel without an equivalent shift of mindset/intuition/personality/ego.

Likewise, be wary of exchanging one set of beliefs for another (or one raft for another). They end up being the same dead weight you're now hauling through the forest for an potentially lifelong number of miles.

To summarize this very jagged and jumbled article I've written here today, let me say this: change is good, and everything is It; no matter how seemingly mighty, all is impermanent when you stretch time's wingspan wide enough. In that respect, guard against changing into the same thing with a different face. Else, you'll still be carrying the raft, or jogging on the hamster wheel, regardless of your best intentions.

What would happen if you simply dropped the raft, or stepped off the hamster wheel? If you released your grip, and let go of the pebbles clutched in your palm.