5. THE ANT CLIMBING A SANDHILL

Ants are amazing creatures with energy, strength and a natural determination. Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight and comparatively they can move relative to human size at the speed of a race horse. How do you measure up with those 400 thousand brain cells that you have? But there are natural limitations for every living creature.

With all its natural qualities, there is one thing that an ant cannot do. It is to climb a mountain of sand. Drugpa Kungley was correct when he declared, "The aspirant striving without specific instruction, like an ant climbing a sand hill, accomplishes nothing."

Now why is that? It is because the aspirant who only has one tool may believe he is climbing up while the sand slides down and either covers him or, at very best, permits no progress. But the clever mind is not clever enough, for the sliding sand around him makes him believe (due to his arrogant Identity) that he is actually advancing rapidly.

There is only one hope, and that is that the intelligent person, seeing the trap of his own intelligence, decides to be with a master that is tough enough to not enter into intellectual fencing, and wise enough to cut the legs from under a too ambitious intellect.