The Spider's Thread

I

One morning, the Buddha was strolling alone along the edge of the lotus pond in Paradise. Every lotus blooming in the pond was as white as a pearl, and from the golden stamens at the heart of each flower an indescribably lovely fragrance continually filled the air. It must have been morning in Paradise.

Before long, the Buddha stopped at the edge of the pond and happened to look down between the lotus leaves covering the water. Directly beneath this lotus pond in Paradise lay the very bottom of Hell. Through the crystal-clear water, the River of Three Crossings and the Mountain of Needles could be seen as plainly as through a spyglass.

There, at the bottom of Hell, his eyes fell upon a man named Kandata, writhing among the other sinners. Kandata was a notorious thief who had murdered people, set houses on fire, and committed all manner of wicked deeds. Even so, he could remember having done one good thing. Once, while walking through a deep forest, he saw a tiny spider crawling beside the path. He promptly raised his foot to crush it, but then suddenly thought better of it. "No, no. Small though it is, this creature surely has a life of its own. It would be too cruel to take that life for no reason." And so he spared the spider instead of killing it.

As the Buddha watched what was happening in Hell, he remembered that Kandata had once saved a spider. In return for that single good deed, he thought that, if possible, he would rescue the man from Hell. Fortunately, when he glanced to one side, he saw a spider of Paradise spinning a beautiful silver thread upon a lotus leaf green as jade. Gently taking the spider's thread in his hand, the Buddha lowered it straight down between the pearl-white lotuses, far into the depths of Hell below.

II

Down at the bottom of Hell, Kandata was rising and sinking with the other sinners in the Pool of Blood. Whichever way he looked, all was pitch-dark. Now and then, something glimmered dimly out of the blackness, but it was only the terrible needles of the Mountain of Needles catching the light, which made his desolation all the worse. The place was as silent as the inside of a grave. The only sounds occasionally heard were the sinners' faint sighs. Those who had fallen so far had been exhausted by Hell's many torments and no longer possessed even the strength to cry out. Thus even Kandata, hardened thief though he was, could do nothing but choke on the blood of the pool and struggle like a dying frog.

Then, at one moment, Kandata casually lifted his head and gazed up into the sky above the Pool of Blood. Through the hushed darkness, from the far, far heights of Heaven, a silver spider's thread came softly descending toward him, shining in one slender line as though afraid of being seen. At the sight, Kandata clapped his hands with delight. If he clung to this thread and climbed on and on, he would surely escape from Hell. If fortune favored him, he might even enter Paradise itself. Then he would never again be driven up the Mountain of Needles or plunged beneath the Pool of Blood.

With that thought, Kandata at once seized the spider's thread firmly in both hands and began hauling himself upward with all his might. Being a master thief, he had long been thoroughly accustomed to climbing of this sort.

But the distance between Hell and Paradise was tens of thousands of miles, and no matter how desperately he hurried, the way out was not easily reached. After climbing for some time, Kandata finally grew so weary that he could not pull himself up another inch. With no other choice, he hung midway along the thread to rest awhile and looked far down beneath him.

His desperate climbing had not been in vain. The Pool of Blood, where he had been only moments before, had already vanished somewhere into the depths of darkness. Even the dreadful, dimly gleaming Mountain of Needles now lay beneath his feet. If he continued at this rate, perhaps escaping Hell would prove easier than he had expected. Twining both hands around the spider's thread, Kandata laughed in a voice he had not used once in all the years since arriving there. "I've done it! I've done it!" Then he suddenly noticed that countless sinners below were following the path he had climbed. Like a procession of ants, they too were scrambling upward and upward with all their strength. At the sight, Kandata was so startled and frightened that for a while he could only gape stupidly, moving nothing but his eyes. This slender spider's thread looked ready to break beneath his weight alone. How could it possibly bear so many people? If it snapped halfway up, then he himself, after struggling all this way, would plunge headlong back into Hell. That would be a disaster. Yet even as he watched, hundreds and thousands of sinners swarmed up from the black depths of the Pool of Blood and climbed in a single line along the thin, shining thread. Unless he did something at once, it was certain to break in two and send them falling.

So Kandata shouted at the top of his voice, "Hey, you sinners! This spider's thread is mine! Who gave you permission to climb it? Get down! Get down!"

At that very instant, the spider's thread, which until then had shown no sign of strain, suddenly snapped with a sharp sound exactly where Kandata was hanging. Kandata had no chance to save himself. In less than the blink of an eye, he went spinning through the air like a top and fell headfirst, faster and faster, into the depths of darkness.

All that remained was the spider's thread from Paradise, glimmering slender and bright, hanging short in the empty sky where there was neither moon nor star.

III

The Buddha stood beside the lotus pond in Paradise and watched everything from beginning to end. When Kandata finally sank like a stone to the bottom of the Pool of Blood, the Buddha's face grew sorrowful, and he resumed his leisurely stroll. Kandata had tried to escape from Hell by himself alone. His merciless heart had received its fitting punishment, and he had fallen back into Hell. To the Buddha, this must have seemed a pitiful and shameful thing.

Yet the lotuses in the pond of Paradise paid no attention to any of it. Their pearl-white blossoms swayed gently around the Buddha's feet, while from the golden stamens at their centers an indescribably lovely fragrance continually filled the air. In Paradise, it must already have been nearing noon.

April 16, 1918