An ancient Jataka tale about a parrot, made popular in modern times by the Zen teacher and author Rafe Martin, has special resonance as a fable in the age of climate change. This is my adaptation of Rafe’s telling:
A brave little parrot lived happily in a forest until one day the forest burst into flames. Being a bird, she was able to fly away to safety on the other side of a river, but as she flew, she looked down and saw that many animals were trapped by the fire and would not be able to escape. What could she do, she wondered, not as a rhetorical question. What she did was dip herself in the river and fly back to shake a few drops of water from her feathers onto the now-leaping flames. Over and over again.
Some gods floating above in their cloud palaces noticed what the parrot was doing and pointed and laughed at the apparent futility of her effort. But one of the gods was moved by the parrot’s bravery, determination and – let’s face it – pathos, so moved that she began to weep. She wept down from her cloud and her god tears put out the fire.
