The Tiger and The Snake

A Buddhist allegory overheard in a podcast recently:

One day, a man decided to take a walk in the jungle. This happened to be extremely foolish because the jungle was dangerous and there were rumors of a man-eating tiger in the area.

But he wasn’t quite thinking and decided it might be a nice day for a stroll. Sure enough, as he was getting deeper into the wood, a tiger jumped out of the underbrush and ran towards him. He took off running, but knew he wouldn’t be able to outrun a full-grown, hungry tiger. Instead of just resigning to his fate, he ran as fast as he could and looked for a way out.

As he ran around a small tree, the crashing of the tiger’s feet right behind him, he saw a well. He jumped into the well just as the tiger swiped at his back. As he was falling, he saw that the well had no water. A drought dried up almost everything and this well was no different. Just before hitting bottom, he grabbed a tree root that was growing through the side of the well to break his fall.

The man made so much noise during his escape that it woke the snake that was sleeping in the bottom of the well. The snake rose up and showed it’s hood, striking at the man as he hung onto the root. The man was just high enough not to get bitten by the snake and just low enough that the tiger couldn’t reach him with it’s paws. He sighed as he realized he was trapped.

As the man hung there, two small mice crawled out of a hole near the top of the root, one white and one black. They both started to gnaw on the base of the root, making the base of the root thinner and thinner. The man tried to shoo them away, but the tiger prevented him from getting close enough to scare the mice.

As the tiger paced above, he kept rubbing up against the small tree by the well, shaking it little by little. In the tree was a bee’s nest and it started to sway back and forth in the branches. The bees started swarming around the top of the well and the nest started to drip honey right down the center of the well. The man leaned out and was just barely able to catch the honey with his tongue.

It was delicious.