Two Monks and the River
An old parable on how long we carry what we should have set down at the bank.
Two monks travelled together to a distant monastery. On the road they came to a river, swollen by recent rain. A young woman stood at the bank, unable to cross. Their order forbade them from touching women, but the elder monk, without a word, lifted her in his arms and carried her across. He set her down on the far side, bowed, and walked on. The young monk followed in silence, his face dark.
They walked for hours. They walked through the afternoon. They walked through the evening. At last, as the moon rose, the young monk could hold his anger no longer. He said, 'How could you carry that woman? It is forbidden. You broke our rule.'
The elder monk stopped on the road and turned to him. 'I set her down on the far side of the river,' he said. 'You have been carrying her all day.'
Most of what weighs us down is something we lifted up hours, years, decades ago — and forgot to set down at the bank. The grudge, the slight, the unfair word, the failure we still narrate to ourselves. We carry them long after the river is behind us.
Resilience is not the strength to keep carrying. It is the wisdom to know when to put it down.
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
Name the technique
Every story here ends on a quoted line. These entries explain how lines like it are built, credited, and misused.
- Stoic Quote Tradition
- A 2,000-year-old practice of distilling ethical instruction into short, repeatable lines.
- Exhortation
- A quotation that urges action rather than states a truth.
- Attribution
- The act of naming the original speaker or writer of a quote.