A Dog With Its Shadow

by Dhammacaro

One upon a time, there was a dog in the village which stole a piece of meat. It ran away as fast as possible, till it knew that no one was chasing after it. When it got to the river, on the bridge it saw its shadow in the water, it saw the piece of meat in the water bigger than the one in its mouth. It didn’t know that it was its shadow, and thought, “That dog in the water has a bigger piece of meat in its mouth, I should jump down and snatch it.” It threw the meat from its mouth and then jumped down into the water.

When it was in the water, the dog it had seen with the bigger piece of meat disappeared. The dog lost the meat in its mouth because of greed; finally it had nothing to eat.

The moral of this story:
When a person is overwhelmed by greed, in the end he has nothing, because greed blocks his wisdom, so he is deluded, like the dog in the story.