The Monkey and The Box

Story by Jerry Kolber and image by Martha Di Giovanni

Once upon a time, a long time from now, there was a very old gray monkey who lived in a tree in the middle of his village.  This monkey was the keeper of a beautiful box, polished wood encrusted with inlaid diamonds and images of the sun and the ocean.  Only this old monkey knew what was in the box, and that was okay because it was a time of peace in the monkey villages.

Each day, this old monkey would teach any of the monkeys who wanted to learn. Little jumpy young monkeys, older monkeys, and even monkeys from neighboring villages would come and munch on berries and bananas in the shade of the old monkey's tree. They would listen to the old monkey tell his stories, as he cradled the box in his lap.

"Once upon a time, a long time from now, there was a great monkey revolution," the old monkey would tell them. "A time when there was no longer this monkey or that monkey, no me," and he would point to himself, "no you" and he would point and tickle a young monkey, "no nothing! Just everything!" And the tickled little monkey would giggle, and the other monkeys would shake their heads yes - even the ones who didn't yet understand - because the old monkey had the secret box.  And one would always say "What's in the box, old monkey?"

And the old monkey would laugh and show them that the box could not be opened, so how he could know?  He would look at them very seriously and say "This box was given to me by my teacher, and he got it from an old monkey who was his teacher, who received it from his teacher. No one knows how old it is or what is in it, but it brings us peace."

Then one or another monkey would start playing the guitar and another would bang a drum and they would dance.

Except for one monkey, a young not very special monkey who would go up to the old monkey after everyone else had gone off to dance.  He would sit with the older monkey sometimes for hours at a time, the old monkey with his eyes closed and the young monkey with his eyes downcast. Every so often the old monkey would gently place his hand on the young monkey's head, and smile. Always, always one hand stayed on the beautiful wooden box.

One day a few other tiny young monkeys they hadn't seen before came from a neighboring village to listen and sit, as was often the case.  But this day, a pack of tigers came by and attacked the sitting monkeys. Sadly several of the monkeys were quickly devoured, but one young monkey was hanging by the tail out of a tiger's mouth.  Our young monkey ran from the old monkey's side and jumped on the tiger and distracted it, making it open its mouth and drop the other little monkey, who ran off back to the safety of his own village.

"Why did you do that?" asked the old monkey when things had settled down. "Because if I were caught in a tiger's mouth, I would expect that another monkey would do the same for me. It is just what is right," said the young monkey. And the old monkey smiled and closed his eyes and they sat together, the old monkey's hand on the young monkey's head, as the sun went down and the moon came up and the night owls and hyenas began to serenade them in harmonies that only monkeys can hear.

The young monkey grew older, and the old monkey grew ever more ancient.  Soon the young monkey had a wife and child of his own, but every day he would come for the teachings, to sit with the old monkey, to be smiled upon.  Each passing day the crowd grew bigger and every day someone demanded to know what was in the box.  Never once did this young monkey ask what was in the box, though every other monkey had asked at least once if not many more times.

One day, the old monkey came to teach the many monkeys who had come from all around to hear what he would tell them. "My monkey friends," he said "Today is my last day with you in this form.  Tonight I will go on to another monkey place. And I must leave this box of secrets with one of you."

A great murmur went through the crowd.  Monkeys who moments ago had long since stopped really caring what was in the box suddenly felt a burning need to be chosen.  The old monkey pointed to his special young monkey friend. "He is to be the one."  Many monkeys hooted and hollered with joy, because they knew this young monkey and his dedication to the teacher. But many of the others, especially ones who had only just begun to come to the teachings from neighboring villages, looked at him with envy.

The young monkey looked at the old monkey, then he looked at all the dozens of monkeys gathered for the teachings, and then he looked far across the village to his wife and child who were staring down from a tree. The old monkey called the young monkey to his place at the base of the tree. "Come here, young friend, for the transmission of the box of secrets." The young monkey looked at him and said "Teacher, I do not want the box!" The old monkey smiled and said, "It is for this very reason that you must take it."

The young monkey understood and made his way to the tree.  The old monkey held the beautiful shining diamond wooden box out in his palm and said "Now it is yours to protect. You will know what to do with it when the time is right."

The monkeys began hooting and drumming and singing, and a dance ensued as the young monkey and the old monkey climbed up to their place in the tree.  They sat as if nothing special had happened, because they both knew that was exactly what had happened.  They sat as the sun went down, eyes closed as the singing and dancing of the monkeys below them grew and grew as word spread of what had happened.

And when the young monkey opened his eyes after endless hours of contemplation, the old monkey was gone. It was just the young monkey and the box, and the heavy silence of a thousand monkeys staring up at him with happy eyes, wet eyes, jealous eyes, angry eyes.

The monkey's wife and child swung their way through the trees to him, and he embraced them with one arm, the box clutched in the other hand. He looked at the crowd below and asked "My friends, why do you no longer rejoice?"

The leader of the striped dancing monkeys from a neighboring village stepped to the front of the crowd, a spear clutched in his hand. "Open the box! We want to know what is in the box!" Many in the crowd yelled and shouted in support of the striped monkey.  "I cannot", said the young monkey, "The box cannot be opened."

The striped monkey and his tribe began doing their dance of tribulation to the god of their village, their spears bobbing up and down as their feet stamped out a dance of prayer. The striped monkey shouted up at the young monkey, "We WILL know what is in that box! Our god has decreed it is so!"

The elder of the white-haired laughing monkey tribe came forward, carrying a torch, as the striped monkeys angrily continued their dance. "We must also know what is in the box!" White-haired monkeys made their way from all over the crowd until there was a mob of white-haired monkeys who began doing their prayer, laughing up and down from earth to the heavens in worship of their village's god.  "OUR god demands that you open the box!"  "But I cannot, my friends," said the young monkey, holding out the box high above their heads. "It cannot open."  The white-haired monkey's laughter began to take on a rigid, barking tone as they continued to pay tribute to their village's god.

A great thundering sound began approaching the village, and the young monkey clutched his family closer.  He told his wife and child, "Do not be afraid. There is nothing in the box more important to me than the love I feel for you and for all my fellow monkeys."  As the thundering grew louder the young monkey could see that thousands of monkeys from neighboring villages were coming. Some carrying spears, some carrying bows and arrows, all of them looking hungry and ready to take what they had decided belonged to them.

A monkey bigger than any the young monkey had ever seen approached the tree, holding an unfamiliar object.  "I do not know you, young monkey, nor do I need to," said this huge monkey. "All I know is that the old monkey has gone away, and you have the box of secrets.  This box belongs to all of us now, so hand it over!"

"No I cannot do that," said the young monkey. "I would sooner destroy it than disobey my teacher."

"Your teacher is gone," said the huge monkey. "There is a new law of the land!" Ten thousand monkeys cheered, and the huge monkey pressed something on the object he was holding, and a great flash of fire and smoke shot out of it as a burst of energy from the object ripped through a nearby tree.  The big monkey laughed. "Have you never seen a gun before! Because I have this weapon, I am now in charge. Now hand over that box!"

Cheers went through the crowd as the monkeys started to realize that thanks to this new way of fighting they too might soon know the secrets of the box.  The white-haired laughing monkeys approached the tree and with their torches began setting fire to the wood and branches. The striped monkeys began throwing spears at the young monkey and his family. If only they could kill the young monkey, they too could learn the secret of the peaceful old monkey! Then what power they would have!

The young monkey grabbed his child and he and his wife climbed further up the tree, beyond the reach of the spears and fire and the guns.  The monkeys below were in a frenzy, each tribe praying in the way they believed that their god wanted them to, some laughing, some dancing, some singing in throaty monkey voices.  All of them banded together in a burning desire to take the box of secrets.

The young monkey looked down from his perch at the top of the tree, at the violence and anger, and fire boiling below.  He could feel the heat of their raging desire rolling up towards him. He looked at his family and at the box in his hand.  He knew that if he did not let the box go, his family would not make it through the night. His wife looked at him with pleading eyes. "Don't," she said. "Don't let it go. I will die for you."  "No," he said, "my teacher said I would know what to do when the time came."

The young monkey sat down and put the box in his lap, one hand on the head of his child, his wife next to him. He closed his eyes put one hand on the box, and sat. And sat. And sat.

Eventually, he opened his eyes to the great silence of thousands of monkeys staring up at him, even ten thousand more than before, each thinking they wanted the secret for their tribe, but each really wanted the secret for themselves. The young monkey smiled and held out his hand, and let the box tumble to the ground below.

The monkey bigger than any he had ever seen before caught the box and held it in his hand.  "I am now the keeper of the secrets!" And his tribe roared with appreciation.  The other tribes shifted their feet, their eyes darting around, not sure whether to band together against this carrier of the new fighting device.

"Shall we see what this box contains?" asked the huge monkey. A huge roar went through the monkey crowd. But the young monkey merely smiled, knowing that there was nothing worth fighting for in the box.

The huge monkey tried to open the box but quickly realized there was no way to open it. "What is the secret to opening it?" he shouted up at the young monkey.  The young monkey smiled down at him. "Nothing. There is no secret other than to hold the box."

"Fine, then we will do it my way!" And as he picked up a large rock to smash the box, a cheer went up from many in the crowd.  And, too late, a gasp of sadness from many who suddenly remembered the peaceful times sitting under the tree with their teacher, the old monkey.

The huge monkey hurled a rock at the box, and it shattered open revealing the contents.  "What is this?" said the huge monkey. "There is nothing in here!" And he was right. The box of secrets that had been the source of teachings in the time of peace had shattered open revealing absolutely nothing. Shards of wood and glass lay glittering in the fire from the torches.

"As I said," the young monkey smiled down at him, "there is nothing in the box worth fighting for."

The huge monkey grunted in disgust and began making his way through the crowd. "Come, my tribe, let us go back to our village and pray to OUR God. I have always known THAT is where the truth lies."

The white-haired monkeys stopped laughing and their leader said "Come white-haired monkeys, we must return to our village and laugh our way to the divine, for THAT is where the real truth lies."

And the striped monkeys put their spears back in their satchels and their leader "Come striped monkeys, we must go back to our village and dance to show that we still believe in OUR god, the truth of all."

And the young monkey watched them all walking away and smiled and held up his hand and said quietly "Stop my friends, there is something I must tell you."

And the striped monkeys, white-haired monkeys, and very large monkeys all stopped and turned back to the young monkey, who, truth be told, wasn't so young anymore. "What each of you believes to be true, I respect. What each of you think of as god, is your business.  But the secret of the box, that kept the monkey villages at peace for so many years, is that at the end of the day, we are all just monkeys.  There's no big secret.  I am the same as you, and we can each believe whatever we want, but we can also all believe that there's nothing worth fighting over. But the true secret, the one that is worth time and effort, is to look deeply into yourself for the answers to ultimate power, not to seek it in some little box of wood and diamonds."

And he climbed down from the tree, and sat at the base of the tree where the old monkey used to teach, and the sun began to rise in the sky.  "Come and sit with me," said the young monkey, "whatever you believe. Let us sit and be one community made up of people who each believe whatever they believe. Do not let belief turn us against each other, or desire for power or greed for material things, or ill-will, or rigid beliefs about how the world works or what god is.   Let us grow together by looking out for each other."

As he spoke, the young monkey's child gathered the shards of the box and handed them to his father. The young monkey smiled, and placed the shards in one hand, and put his other hand on his child's head as his wife stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder.  The young monkey held up the shards. "No matter how precious these diamonds are, they are nothing but dirt next to the boundless love I have cultivated for all of you."

The unusually large monkey looked up at the young monkey and smiled.  "Friend, you speak the truth. When I was a tiny monkey I was nearly killed by a tiger, and another monkey who I will never know saved my life. Your words are true - I have been led astray by a desire for power and material things, rather than respect and love.  I will sit with you."

The young monkey smiled, knowing it did not matter that it was he who had saved the unusually large monkey many years ago.  The large monkey looked around at the other thousands of monkeys, and said, "Come, let us sit together and see what our friend can teach us."

Many monkeys came and joined them, and sat in the dawning light of the sun to learn together.  Many monkeys shrugged and headed back to their villages, not interested in joining the growing circle of monkeys contemplating their time together.

But those monkeys that sat together could feel in their midst a growing tree of connection that would bear fruit that they probably wouldn't live to see, as their young teacher became an old monkey, who would one day hand a new box of secrets to a young monkey who would become an old monkey passing on that box to a younger monkey, and on and on through ages of peace and strife and sunrises and different trees and villages, always another monkey and the box, passing on the secret that only nothing was worth fighting for.

But for today, all they knew and all that mattered was that sitting together was right.