A Story About the Bats That Went to War
Source: Vladimir Konoplev
"Why do bats only come out at night?" asked Len.
In my best dutiful-parent manner, I explained that bats are "nocturnal creatures," but Aliman quickly launched into the first of many fables he knew by heart....
"Once the birds and the animals had a terrible war because a bird severely offended a wild pig, and the animals were unable to contain their anger," he said. "Bats, of course, are birds because they fly through the air." He made a slight flapping motion with his hands. "But they were afraid that the birds, mostly small, would have no real chance against the animals, who were much larger." At this point Aliman seemed first to shrink, then to grow, which got the boys and then the rest of us laughing.
"So the bats, who are tricky, went to the animals and said, 'Let us fight on your side. After all, we have hair, not feathers.' After some discussion, the animals agreed to have the bats on their side, thinking that they might be of some help.
The birds, when they saw what those sneaky bats had done, tried a little sneakiness of their own. Bees are also creatures who fly, even though they are not really birds, so the birds went to them and said, 'We are just small and the boars and the monkeys are much bigger than we are. Please help us so that we don't perish and we can set things straight.'
The bees thought for a while and, not wanting to hurt the birds' feelings, decided that they would help them. So in the first battle they zoomed in and stung all the animals so badly that they ran away. When the bats saw that, they went right to the birds and said, 'Actually, we were mistaken. We are really birds! As you well know, we fly through the air.
The birds said to the bats, 'What you really are is cowards! You should forever hide yourself with shame from both birds and animals.' The bats were horribly shamed, and from then on they have always come out only at night."
- A fable told by the Teduray people of the Philippines
In the 1960's, anthropologist and Professor at the University of California, Stuart Schlegel, spent two years living with the Teduray people in a remote rainforest on the Philippine island of Mindanao.
When asked about his time there, he stated, "Their gracious, life-affirming, compassionate ways transformed the foundations of my life: my thinking, my feelings, my relationships, and my career. I hope a wider world will hear the voices I heard in that remote forest and realize, as I came to, that the Teduray speak eloquently to us all of tolerance, cooperation, grace, and gentleness, that their understanding of the world contains lessons that all of us pursuing 'the good life' need to hear."
Stuart Schlegel wrote a book about the Teduray, and in it he described their remarkable legal system and their strong story-telling tradition, their elaborate cosmology, and their ritual celebrations. At the same time, he recounted his own transformation - realizing how culturally determined his own values were and how his worldview as a member of an advanced, civilized society was shaken to the core by a so-called primitive people.
The story shared today is an excerpt from his book, "Wisdom from a Rainforest: The Spiritual Journey of an Anthropologist."
“One’s destination is never a place.....but a new way of seeing things”