Pointing at the Moon or Missing the Point

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Using analogies can be risky.  When you use one to prove a point, listeners may focus on that (The finger) and not the point (the moon).   The Chinese have a fable for this called, “Pointing at the Moon,” and it goes something like this:

“The pointing finger is what guides you to the moon. Without the finger, you might not notice the moon.  But the pointing finger isn’t what matters most. It only matters because it helps you see the moon for yourself.  Which is why the Buddha also warned us not to mistake the finger for the moon.”

This reminds me of the time while at a petting zoo, my youngest daughter began pointing with her cute little finger at a pony she wanted to ride.  I paid the fee and placed her on top of the saddle. She began crying again! “Where did the pony go mommy!”  Now that the pony was underneath her, and no longer visible, she thought it had vanished.  No longer at the end of her cute tiny finger!  It would only be when she fully matured that she would realize that her finger is not the focus, it only directs through distractions, beyond chaos to the thing, the point, the object or in this case, the pony!  Its only on my journey of discover that I realized that adults can be this way too otherwise Christ would have not said, “because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not,” Matthew 13:13.

I have learned that some people are stuck on life’s finger,  and that the analogies I sometimes use to get them to understand the moon, is lost on them.   Perhaps you too have responded in frustration, “No, no, no, you are missing the point!” Take heart, even Plato was attempting analogy to get people to focus on the bigger idea in his Allegory of the cave. If you remember the story goes something like this:

 Prisoners trapped in a cave where only shadows on the wall are seen as real, until one escapes up to the real world above, overcome with knowledge and joy, he attempts to tell the other prisoners about the sun and the moon he has seen. He points up and out to a larger world outside, a world that is real.  The poor guy gets beat up because people like the analogy (the idea of the shadows on the wall instead!)  Go figure!  The point of the story is sometimes an analogy does not get people to understand truth, sometimes you must forget the analogy and drag their butts out of the cave and point, just hope they don’t get too caught up on the cute little finger.