It is most interesting.

It is most interesting to read this popular Buddhist parable from a non-Buddhist intellectual.

Azli Rahman's "Illuminations":
[When one is bleeding after being shot by an arrow, the first step is not to look for the culprit that shot the arrow and pondering why was it shot but to pull out the arrow from the victim's body and to quickly put a stop to the bleeding. This is what Siddharta Gautama would teach as crisis intervention.]


The full version can be found in my learned Buddhist friend's blog :

[Parable of the arrow smeared thickly with poison.

It is as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and kinsmen were to get a surgeon to heal him, and he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know by what man I was wounded, whether he is of the warrior caste, or a brahmin, or of the agricultural, or the lowest caste. Or if he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know of what name of family the man is -- or whether he is tall, or short or of middle height ... Before knowing all this, the man would die.

Similarly, it is not on the view that the world is eternal, that it is finite, that body and soul are distinct, or that the Buddha exists after death that a religious life depends. Whether these views or their opposite are held, there is still rebirth, there is old age, there is death, and grief, lamentation, suffering, sorrow, and despair.... I have not spoken to these views because they do not conduce to an absence of passion, to tranquility, and Nirvana.

And what have I explained? Suffering have I explained, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering, and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering have I explained. For this is useful.

The most important thing for a Buddhist is to practise The Noble Eightfold Path. Mere speculation will lead a person nowhere.]