Two Roads and a Fork
We’re deep into the Major League Baseball post-season and I’ve seen some exciting games. It would be more exciting if my beloved Yankees were still playing. For a while I thought my guys might be able to go all the way, but it was not to be, not this year, again.
By the way, on this date in 1923 the NY Yankees beat the New York Giants 4 games to 2 and won their 1st World Series. They’ve won 27 since. In fact, again on this same day but in 1964, the Yanks beat the Cardinals to win 9 of the last 16 World Series. What a team . . .
A few weeks ago, we lost the great Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, who passed away at the age of 90. Besides a legendary ball player, he was also famous for his “Yogisms,” his little sayings that have become part of the American lexicon, like “Déjà vu all over again” and “You can observe a lot by watching.”
At first, they seem a bit fractured but sometimes they sound very Zen and Taoist. I think my favorite is “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
I don’t believe this is to be confused with the “fork in the road” near the Slauson Cutoff in L.A. (a minor spur of the 405 to Marina Del Rey) that Art Fern, host of the old Tea Time Movie, points out in the photo.
But it does remind me of this story found in the Chuang Tzu:
One day, Tzu-ch’i said to Tzu-yu, “You know, you can wear out your brain trying to make things into one without knowing that they are all the same. I call this ‘three in the morning.’”
“What do you mean by ‘three in the morning’?” Tzu-yu asked.
“When the monkey trainer was handing out nuts, he told the monkeys ‘You get three in the morning and four at night.’ This made all the monkeys angry. ‘Okay, then,’ he said, ‘you get four in the morning and three at night.’ Hearing this, monkeys were happy. Now, they still got the same amount of nuts each day, he just changed the order around, and yet one way made the monkeys upset, the other joyful. “
“I don’t get it.”
“Instead of arguing with the monkeys, the trainer used skill and wisdom to placate them. You see, a wise man will keep everything equal, and harmonize with both right and wrong. I call it walking two roads.”