A New York management consultant was feeling lost.
He didn’t understand life anymore. He could no longer speak with complete confidence when giving advice to clients. Someone told him of a wise old man who lived in a cave in the high Himalayas. The old man would tell him the meaning of life, but first he must gather three things: an apple from a tree that grows in the Vatican city, ripe olives from a special tree in Mecca, and a pomegranate from a tree in Kapilvastu, Nepal.
The consultant was not without connections. He made some calls. Then he flew to Rome and after an audience with the Pope retrieved the apple. He then flew to Mecca and after meeting with the Grand Imam was given a plate of olives from a special tree. Then he flew to Katmandu and traveled overland to Kapilvastu where the Dali Llama personally brought him a pomegranate grown from a seed spit from the Buddha’s mouth under the Boda tree. He then began the trek into the Himalayas.
Three days he climbed, and his last 1000 feet was on a path cut into the side of a near vertical rock face. Finally, he approached the cave. He found the old man dressed in a white home-loomed robe seated cross legged with a single candle burning in front of him.
“Master, he said, “I have travelled far and I have brought you what you asked. I wish to know the meaning of life.”
The old man gestured with his open hand. The consultant laid out the apple, the olives and the pomegranate before him. The old man ate, smacking his lips loudly. When he was finished he wiped his mouth with his robe sleeve.
“My son,” he intoned, “Life is a bubbling fountain.”
“WHAT?!” the consultant screamed. “You mean I have travelled all over the world, called in every favor I was ever owed, and damn near killed myself trekking all the way up here and this is what you tell me? LIFE IS A BUBBLING FOUNTAIN!?!”
The old man’s lower lip trembled. “Y-You m-mean l-life is n-not a bubbling fountain?”
This story was told to me by Dr. Andre Ruedi, a friend, work colleague, and teacher who passed away in 2019. Andre could have been regarded as a model for “the most interesting man in the world,” of the Dos Equis beer ad.
Andre was Swiss by birth, but came to the US in the late1930s with his mother fleeing the Nazis. In his life he was on the Swiss national ski team, studied drumming with a Haitian drum master and drummed in Greenwich Village Beat poetry clubs and on Fire Island with dancers that included Marlon Brando.
Andre didn’t have an undergraduate degree, but talked his way into the doctoral program at the Harvard Business School, ultimately earning his DBA. He studied with George Litwin and Bob Stringer, whose famous experiment proved organizational climate. He counted Tim Leary and Ram Das (Richard Alpert) among his friends. He was a partner in Intermedia with Gerd Stern, the multimedia artist, and went to Puna, India to study with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
He had a long consulting career, some of it working with me. I gave him an inordinate amount of grief about loving his “creature comforts” because he travelled with his own pillow and was always up for a late night snack. “Maybe just a little something?”
Andre was my staunch supporter and he taught me a great deal. He told me this story about the consultant and the wise man.
“Y-You m-mean l-life is n-not a bubbling fountain?”
I laughed. It is a joke, after all. But there is wisdom in it.
There is a limit to metaphor as an enlightenment tool.
Our insights and glimpses of the universe are fragile.
Perhaps wisdom is not to be learned from a guru in a cave. It is individual, personal. It is to be learned by living and loving in the real world, reflecting to achieve insight, and then living and loving in the real world again.
Thanks, Andre. Maybe life is a bubbling fountain after all.
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