Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Once upon a time, Guru, there was a foolish ass who lived in the neighbourhood of a wise Yogi. One day a sudden flood burst the banks of a river nearby and flooded the countryside. The wise Yogi, being wise, ran up till he reached the safe top of a hill at the foot of which he used to meditate day and night in a cave. But the ass – being foolish, not to say unmeditative – was swept away by the 
rushing tides. “Alas!” he brayed, “the world is being drowned!” “Don’t be an ass,” reprimanded the Yogi in high scorn from up the hill-top. “It’s only you who are being drowned – not this big world.” “But Sir,” argued the idiot, “if I myself am drowned how can I be sure that the world will survive?” And the Yogi was struck dumb and wondered, for the first time, which was the deeper wisdom – the human or the asinine! And I too have started wondering on my own, Guru! So I appeal to you to adjudicate: tell me whose is the more pitiable plight: the Yogi’s or the ass’s? And incidentally, tell me also if my mind is going off the handle because I find the foolish ass’s argument nearly as rational as the wise Yogi’s?
Your wise but not overwise ass has put a question that cannot be answered in two lines and today is Monday when people take their revenge for Sunday’s forced abstinence. So I postpone the reply till tomorrow. Let me say however in defence of the much maligned ass that he is a very clever and practical animal and the malignant imputation of stupidity to him shows only human stupidity at its worst. It is because the ass does not do what man wants him to do even under blows that he is taxed with stupidity. But really the ass behaves like that first because he has a sense of humour and likes to provoke the two-legged beast into irrational antics and secondly, because he finds that what man wants of him is quite a ridiculous and bothersome nuisance which ought not to be demanded of any self-respecting donkey. Also the ass is a philosopher. When he hee-haws, it is out of a supreme contempt for the world in general and for the human imbecile in particular. I have no doubt that in the asinine language “man” has the same significance as ass in ours. These deep and original considerations are however by the way – merely meant to hint to you that your balancing between the wise man and the wise ass is not so alarming a symptom after all.