The Spider & The Missing Axe

"A Tibetan story tells of a meditation student who, while meditating in his room, believed he saw a spider descending in front of him. Each day the menacing creature returned, growing larger and larger each time. So frightened was the student, that he went to his teacher to report his dilemma. He said he planned to place a knife in his lap during meditation, so when the spider appeared he would kill it. The teacher advised him against this plan. Instead, he suggested, bring a piece of chalk to meditation, and when the spider appeared, mark an X on its belly. Then report back.

The student returned to his meditation. When the spider again appeared, he resisted the urge to attack it, and instead did just what the master suggested. When he later reported back to the master, the teacher told him to lift up his shirt and look at his own belly. There was the X."

"Another version has it that a man lost his axe. He suspected that it had been stolen by his neighbour's son. He looked at him closely. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief and talked like a thief. A few days later, the man found his axe while he was cutting wood in the valley.

The next day when he saw the boy, the boy walked, looked and talked like any other child."

The moral of the stories is, don't we all sometimes behave like the student and the man? That we see what we want to see?

That a US$100B industry can be seen as a scam by some is indeed laughable at times!