The Sermon Has Been Delivered
bird boy
Originally uploaded by the bleam. MOYERS: Of course, we moderns are stripping the world of its natural revelations, of nature itself. I think of that pygmy legend of the little boy who finds the bird with the beautiful song in the forest and brings it home.
CAMPBELL: He asks his father to bring food for the bird, and the father doesn't want to feed a mere bird, so he kills it. And the legend sayts the man killed the bird, and with the bird he killed the song, and with the song himself. He dropped dead, completely dead, and was dead forever.
MOYERS: Isn't that the story about what happens when human beings destroy their environment? Destroy the world? Destroy nature and the revelations of nature?
CAMPBELL: They destroy their own nature, too. They kill the song.
MOYERS: And isn't mythology the story of a song?
CAMPBELL: Mythology is the song. It is the song of the imagination, inspired by the energies of the body. Once a Zen master stood up before his students and was about to deliver a sermon. And just as he was about to open his mouth, a bird sang. And he said, "The sermon has been delivered."
- From The Power Of Myth by Joseph Campbell