Story about fear: A young monk learns a lesson on how to deal with fear

One evening, as he was meditating, a young Tibetan monk suddenly noticed a small spider crawling slowly towards him from the corner of the ceiling. He tried to shake off the fear he suddenly felt, but couldn’t do it, so he had to end his meditation early. He tried finding the spider afterward, but the spider was nowhere to be found. The monk knew that he had to deal with fear no matter in what form it manifested itself.

And then the next night the same happened once again. Only this time, the spider seemed bigger. Once more, the moment the monk stopped meditating and started looking for the creature, it miraculously disappeared. The visits soon turned into a routine. Every night, the little beast would reappear in the corner of the room, growing larger and more frightening with each passing day. The monk’s fear grew with it, and, one day, he decided to go to his teacher and ask for advice. “Next time, I want to react,” he explained, after going over the spider’s visits. “I will keep a knife in my lap and at the moment the spider comes, I will jump and kill it.”

“I see you have already made a decision,” replied the teacher, “so I won’t meddle much. However, could you do me a favor and kill the spider tomorrow evening? Today, I want you to take a chalk instead of a knife, and just try to draw an ‘X’ over the spot you intend to strike. I want to see if you will be concentrated enough to be accurate tomorrow…” The young monk didn’t like the idea of drawing an “X” over the stomach of a giant spider, but he had vowed to obey.

“Tomorrow I will kill him, all the same,” he whispered before closing his eyes and sinking into meditation. The spider appeared shortly after and the monk fought through the fear and disgust and managed to draw an “X” over the spider’s stomach. The next morning, he went to inform his teacher and remind him of his promise. “I did it, I have marked the spider with an X,” he said with a sigh of relief.  The teacher lifted the young monk’s robe: “I know you did” and pointed to the “X” written across the pupil’s stomach. “But tomorrow your fear will not be gone. Today you have finished your first lesson on how to deal with fear. Now that you know where it comes from you are able to confront it.”