So come on man, let’s be honest here. I got serious sacred masterpiece vibes from this story.
This reminds me of some Hindu parable about people who let go of possessions and head out to become ascetics. So there is this wealthy man and wife and the wife is all upset because her brother keeps insinuating that he’s gonna go ascetic and cut loose. The husband tells her to stop her crying and don’t worry about it, he ain’t going to do it. The wife asks him: ‘but how can you be so sure?’ Because, the husband says, this is how you do it, and then and there he rips open his shirt, tells her “you’re my mother” and heads out to the woods.
It's almost as incomprehensible as a Zen koan. I think the husband is showing the difference between talking and doing by, well, doing it. A radical way to demonstrate it.
What an utterly bizarre story. What’s the point of it? Why is the wife upset about her brother? Why is the husband so sure the brother won’t do it? What’s the significance of his little performance at the end? Why is the wife the husband’s mother, what does that have to do with anything, considering the issue is with the wife’s brother? Why don’t we get to see what the wife’s reaction to the husband’s stunt is - is she convinced by his actions, or is she as baffled as i am?
Did I just fall for a chat gpt generated nonsense fable?
It's a simple twist ending. The twist is that the wife was worried her brother would become an ascetic - but the person she should have worried about, the person who was planning to and did become an ascetic, was her husband. The performance is his declaration of asceticism, and the "you're my mother" line is a stock part of it, essentially meaning I renounce sexual attraction when said to your (former) partner.
I put one (possibly wrong) interpretation in an earlier comment.
As for the mother part, in many Hindu traditions monks and voluntary celibates are encouraged to see all women the same as their mothers, to remove temptation. Now he's an ascetic ergo his ex-wife is like a mother to him.
The cryptic yet amusing tone is much like a Zen koan, not a Hindu parable.
I think the wife is upset because "going ascetic" means cutting off contact. The husband is sure he won't do it because the brother is talking about it instead of doing it, which he demonstrates.
It feels like there should be more to the lesson learned than, "people who have decided will act, people who haven't only talk," but I am not quite grasping it. Maybe the other part is, "and worrying about things you cannot change harms yourself," or something?
This reminds me of some Hindu parable about people who let go of possessions and head out to become ascetics. So there is this wealthy man and wife and the wife is all upset because her brother keeps insinuating that he’s gonna go ascetic and cut loose. The husband tells her to stop her crying and don’t worry about it, he ain’t going to do it. The wife asks him: ‘but how can you be so sure?’ Because, the husband says, this is how you do it, and then and there he rips open his shirt, tells her “you’re my mother” and heads out to the woods.