Soaring – The fable of the Pung Bird….

More Chinese Philosophy I’m afraid but I just love this,  Once more it’s from Chin-Ning Chu’s inspirational book Thick Face Black Heart.  It’s a wonderful, simple little tale about persistence in the light of  tedious little folk telling you that things aren’t possible.

 ”In the North Sea of China,” the legend says, “there is a fish called Kun which is thousands of metres long.  This great fish evolves into a bird called Pung.  Pung also measures thousands of metres long.  Swooping as he flies, his wings expand like the clouds covering the sky, Pung flies over the great sea southward to his destination: the Celestial Pool.

“The great Pung flies toward the South Sea, beating the water with his majestic wings for over three thousand kilometres, but first he spins the wind into a tornado that rises to a height of ninety thousand kilometres.  It takes six months to reach such a height; only then is the Pung bird ready.  Now with the Pung’s back against the pure blue sky and nothing blocking it, the Pung can set upon his course southward with no obstacles.  How can one compare such magnitude with the morning mists, the dust, or the insignificant creatures? 

“If the water is not deep, it cannot support a large ship; but empty a cup of water on the shallow floor, and a straw can float like a boat.  If you place a cup there, it will sink.  In the same way, if the wind is not sufficient, it cannot support huge wings.  Only at a height of ninety thousand kilometres is there enough space to support the Pung.  So the Pung can finally begin his great journey.

 ”When a cicada heard this story, he said to a dove, ‘When I fly, I rise quickly to the elm tree.  Sometimes I don’t reach it and I simply fall back to the ground, but I make forward progress.  Why does the Pung have to struggle upward ninety thousand kilometres, without making any visible progress before starting his journey south?’

“When a person takes a journey to the nearby woods, to return a few hours later he doesn’t have to prepare a supply of food.  If he has to travel one hundred kilometres, he would need to prepare food for overnight.  If he has to travel on thousand kilometre, he would need to prepare food for three months.  What do the cicadas and doves understand about such matters?  The mountain cicadas never know spring and summer because they are so short lived”

I just love this story.   Whatever we decide to do that tests the opinions of others, whether that be getting very good at golf, opening a business or even making a radical career change we will meet the equivalent of the cicadas a doves.  They are everywhere.  All around us.

I discovered enormous resistance from “experienced” golfers to my challenge when I started it and even delight when things went wrong during the year.

I have yet to open a business that hasn’t been met with lots of “that’ll never work” looks from colleagues.

Also to do anything great you sometimes have to fly very high with no forward progress before you start moving in the right direction.  This fundamentally goes against today’s “immediate-gratification” obsessed society but it is, almost without exception, the only way to achieve anything great.  You must develop similar powers of endurance and good old fashioned “stick-at-it-ness” (as my mother would say) in order to achieve your goals – either on the course or off.