The Hermit and the Mouse
Moral of the story: To defeat your enemy, you must strike at their source of power.
There was a temple of Lord Shiva near a city called Mahilaropyam. A holy sage lived there and took care of the temple. Every day, he would go to the city to collect alms and return in the evening for his meal. He collected more than he needed for himself and kept the extra food in a bowl. He would give this food to the poor workers who cleaned and decorated the temple.
A mouse lived in a hole in the hermitage. Every day, it would sneak in and steal some food from the bowl. When the hermit realized that a mouse was stealing the food, he tried everything to stop it. He hung the bowl as high as he could and even tried to hit the mouse with a stick, but the mouse always found a way to reach the bowl and steal some food.
One day, a mendicant came to visit the temple and the sage. But the hermit was not paying attention. He was looking for a chance to hit the mouse with his stick in case it came back. This made the mendicant angry. He said, “I will not visit your hermitage again because you are not answering my questions properly. You seem to be thinking about something else that is more important than talking to me!”
The hermit explained his problem to the mendicant. He told him how the mouse kept stealing from him no matter what he did. “This mouse can jump higher than a cat or a monkey,” he said. “I have tried everything. I keep hitting my bowl with my stick even while I am talking to you so that I can save the food for my workers from being stolen by the mouse.”
The mendicant understood the hermit’s problem and gave him some advice. “A mouse that can jump higher than it should and is faster than other mice must have a reason for it,” he said. “I am sure it has stored a lot of food in its hole. That is why it feels so strong and can jump so high. The mouse knows it has nothing to lose, so it is not afraid.”
The hermit and the mendicant decided that if they could find the mouse’s hole, they would be able to find its store of food. They followed the mouse’s tracks the next morning and arrived at the entrance of its hole. They started digging with a pickaxe and uncovered a huge collection of food stored by the mouse.
The mouse was very sad when it realized that all its food was gone. It felt very upset and lost all its confidence.
That night, when it tried to jump for the bowl, it realized that it did not have enough strength or confidence to reach it.
At that moment, the sage hit it with his stick. The mouse was so sad that it could not react quickly enough and got hurt.
It was not badly hurt, but it managed to escape and left the temple forever.
Moral of the story “The Hermit and the Mouse” is to defeat your enemy, you must strike at their source of power.