These are two of my favourite parables I have quoted time and time again to people, usually when conversation has died or people are troubled with something. I have found them that people get a different answer from them and I tell them not to give me their answer if they do not want to. Usually the answer does not come to them as quickly has it had when I first read them 5-6 years ago. They are Zen parables, and before you think, I have gone all Bruce Lee monk style on you all, I am afraid that is not the case. I enjoy reading them and enjoy becoming 'enlightened' by the answer it gives me.

Muddy Road
Tanzan and Ekio were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.
"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself.
"We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"
"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

A parable
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine substained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine.
The man saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted.