...a ZEN story...

Will the Buddha Save Him? – Then the master asks, “What is wrong with this story?” The disciples missed the point, but can you find out?

In a Zen monastery, the disciples had gathered around the master. "Please listen to the story I am going to tell you attentively," said the master and started his narrative.

"Once when the Buddha was sitting with his eyes closed, he heard someone screaming ‘Help! Help!’ He realized that it was the voice of a man who had fallen into the pits of hell and was suffering there. The Buddha realized that this punishment was given to him because he had committed many murders and thefts when he was living. He felt compassionate and wanted to help him out.

He looked for some good deed the man had performed when he was living. The man had once carefully avoided stepping on a spider while he was walking. Buddha asked that spider to help the man. The spider sent a long strong thread into the pit, the type that it uses to spin its web. The man caught hold of the thread and started climbing up. When the others who were suffering their punishments tried to climb up using the same thread, the man got anxious. "This thread has been sent for me. If so many people try to climb on this, the thread will break!" he shouted angrily. That very moment the thread broke and he fell into the pit again.

The man started screaming, "Help, Help!" again, but this time Buddha did not pay attention to his cries.

The master stopped the story here and asked, "What is wrong with this story?"

One disciple said, "The thread of a spider does not have the strength to carry a man."

"There is no such thing as heaven and hell," said another.

Another disciple said, "When Buddha was sitting with his eyes closed and meditating he must have heard some other sound."

"All of you have missed the important thing," said the master with a smile and got up and walked away.

ServantOfTheGoddess · 61-69, M

I don't know what's wrong with the story, but I do know that it's also a Christian story! Here it is as Grushenka tells it to Alyosha in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov:

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’ And he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.