Ants were busy working under the sunshine. Peter crouched down to look at them and his shadow covered the sunlight. All the ants became frightened and said, “What has covered the sunlight?”
Ant A said, “It looks like some sort of gigantic life force, could it be that high-class life form that’s rumoured to be infinite times superior than us, which is called human being.”
Ant B said, “Yes, I’ve heard about this rumour for a number of years.”
As a result, the ants all talked and debated on this subject. There was one ant amongst the crowd who said that it did not believe in the existence of human being, and said, “If there’s truly the existence of human being, go and find a human being for me to have a look. If I see him, I’ll believe, if not, I’ll not believe.”
This rumour on the existence of ‘Human Being’ was widely circulated amongst the population of ants. When the news reached the King of Ants, he grew angry, “What! How can there be a form of life superior than the high-class and almighty King of Ants.” He decreed to establish a forum of science seminars within his territory, and to generate the propaganda so as to dispel the myth of this superstition. However, the rumour about Human Beings was so well entrenched in the minds of the ants, the propaganda failed. When the King of Ants heard about this, he screamed madly, “I can’t believe that the ‘Non-existence of Human Theory’ cannot defeat the ‘Existence of Human Theory’. Go and educate all the infant ants.” All the ants who believed in the existence of human beings had to make a decision in their midst of life and religion; whilst infant ants had to answer the question in their final examination: “Which is more superior, Human Being or King of Ants?”
Peter got up and went.
By accident, the King of Ants was stepped on and was crushed to death by Peter. Unfortunately those ants that were brainwashed could not understand what had happened. They still pondered over whether there was truly the existence of a life form called ‘Human being’!
There is a lesson in this small story:
In this world, are there any micro-organisms smaller than ants? Is it not the case that if the ants were to stand in front of these micro-organisms, the micro-organisms would not be able to see and understand the ‘true situation’, similar to the ants that fail to see and understand the existence of human beings.
In this world, is there any living thing, compared with human beings, that is more macro in view or more micro in view, could human beings know everything?
At present, human beings’ exploration of the universe is only at a superficial stage. When humans believe that their science technology is at its pinnacle, they think that they can use the theory of science to prove whether ‘Deity’ and His substance exists or not, even up to the point of stubbornly disproving the existence of Deity. In fact, compared with the universe, ‘human beings’ are probably equivalent to the ‘brain of the ants’. The mystery of nature itself and the wonders of the universe, are just beyond the imagination and comprehension of a human being’s limited mind. To see how humans are created, carrying eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, nostril hair, teeth, blood, immune system, DNA …, we know that there is the existence of ‘Deity’ in the space and dimension of nature. He exists within the wonders of a far away place! Furthermore, within this world, there are definitely living entities that exist, entities that are more macro or more micro than human beings, the ones which human beings may not know about. Human beings are merely very tiny living creatures!
What about the Dharma that transcends the material world? Sometimes, bad people commit evil deeds thinking that nobody would ever find out, or they think that they can luckily escape notice somehow, yet they do not know that even by raising one’s head by three feet the deities are aware. Kindness is rewarded by kindness, evil is rewarded by evil, if the reward has not taken effect, it is just a matter of time!
Also, there are times when people exploit the fact that they practise Buddhism. They have learnt merely a fragment and immediately start spreading words that confuse others, even to the point of distorting the true meaning of religion (The Truth of Buddhism). They fail to believe in the consequential retribution of karma or the existence of the dharmapala (dharma-protector) and throw themselves into an even deeper depth of a huge pit. Those pitiful people!
Or, there are those fellow practitioners who fail to understand their Master; they believe that they have already learnt a lot, they are very experienced and knowledgeable. They believe that they can understand and handle almost everything, and they no longer entreat their Master’s support to help raise their spiritual minds to a higher level. In fact, if this kind of mentality ‘I believe I am wonderful!’ is not corrected properly, in time, can develop to a point where they will perceive their Master as just an ordinary person, no different from themselves. The Master can exhort and kindly persuade by giving numerous discourses, yet they will not listen, and they will just stubbornly follow their own opinion; this is exactly the type of vision those ants adopt, or this can also be the capacity of ordinary and average people! How sad! The Buddhist scripts say: “The depth of a Buddha’s wisdom is beyond contemplation, even beyond a celestial being’s ability to measure ” To say nothing of human beings!!!
