The Monkey With The Wooden Apples

By Steve Gillman

A Story About Letting Go

The little monkey was walking through the forest when he came upon a puzzle-box with something rattling inside in. He spent much of the morning playing with the latches and sliding panels, until he finally figured out how to open the box. He carefully poured out the contents onto the ground, wondering what he would see.

Two large, beautiful apples rolled out. He looked at them, and then tried to take a bite from one. It was hard, and not sweet at all. He tried the other apple and it was the same. He knocked the two apples together. They were made of wood. He couldn't eat them.

He kept the apples anyhow, because he had worked so hard to get them, and because they looked so perfect. Resuming his walk through the forest, he carried a wooden apple in each hand. Sometimes he would stop to play with them, or he would just stop to hold them up and admire them. Once or twice he tried to taste them again, but this was always disappointing. Still, he wouldn't let them go.

Eventually, the little monkey came upon a real apple laying on the path. He stopped and he could smell its sweetness. It aroused his hunger, and he became excited and danced around it. It looked so good. He could not pick it up, however, because his hands were full with the wooden apples, which he refused to drop. He finally left the apple on the path, and continued on his way.

As his hunger grew, he thought about the real apple, and again he tried to bite one of the wooden ones. It tasted awful, yet it was so beautiful. He was proud of his apples, but he found himself walking back towards the real one. He couldn't find it, and when he grew tired of searching, he sat down against a tree, looking at his wooden apples and clutching them tighter, until he fell asleep.

He dreamt of fruit he had eaten, and of running freely through the forest and climbing the trees. In his dream, he discovered an apple as large as an elephant, sitting in a clearing and gleaming in the sun. He looked up at it in awe - but it began to roll towards him. He ran for his life into the forest.

Waking from his dream, the monkey saw that he had dropped the apples. He desperately grabbed them, and stood up. Then he saw the fruit. It was all around him in the trees. It always had been, but he had forgotten about it.

He was so hungry, and he wanted to reach up and take the nearest piece of fruit to eat, but his hands were full. He gazed at the treasures in his hands, and hypnotized once more by them, he quickly looked away from the trees and their fruit. To reach the real fruit would mean dropping the beautiful apples in his hands, and he just couldn't do that.

Then he tasted the wood one more time. These apples looked so beautiful, but tasted so awful. He looked up again, and as he saw the fruit around him, he felt the wooden apples slipping through his fingers. He reached up and took a piece of fruit, bringing it to his hungry mouth, and he was happy again.

Steve Gillman has meditated and studied meditation for over twenty years. You can visit his website, and subscribe to The Meditation Newsletter at: http://www.TheMeditationSite.com/newsletter.html