The greedy squirrel has a walnut between his jaws

But the nut case is too hard to crack so the squirrel can’t get to the nut inside the shell

Nor can he let go of the walnut

He can’t even eat anything else.

This is the predicament that the spiritual seeker finds himself in. Searching for enlightenment, one is like the squirrel and enlightenment is the walnut inside the shell. The shell is too tough to crack and you are on the outside of the shell. What is worse, having picked up the shell, the nut, you cannot put it down again, it is stuck between the jaws. You cannot eat anything else, or rather you can eat everything but nothing will satisfy you, nothing except that nut of enlightenment. This is the situation that one comes to, and it is a truly hopeless situation. What to do?

Give up, is the answer. Give up trying to get inside the walnut. Give up trying to run away from the walnut, trying to put it down. Give up on being able to do anything. Only in this total surrender, in the dark night of the soul where the true extent of the hopelessness of the situation is felt, all alone, no one to help, nowhere to turn to, and nothing can be done. The great miracle is that if one can surrender totally to that hopeless state, then without doing anything, one becomes the walnut inside the shell. With that transformation the squirrel ceases to exist and the shell of the walnut flies apart and you are all that is, not just a nut, not just a seed, but the tree that grows from the seed and the flowers that grow on the tree, and the nuts, the fruit of the tree. But first, we have to go through that rather painful and awkward stage of being a greedy squirrel with a walnut stuck in our jaws.