In one village there lived a poor man. One day he went out for a walk and saw a snake hole. The snake placed a gold dinar in front of the hole.
The man was very happy, took the dinar and went home. The next day he thought to himself: “I’ll go to the snake’s hole again.”
He got up early in the morning and hit the road. Arriving at the hole, he saw a second dinar near it.
The same thing happened on the third day and on the fourth. This went on for a whole year.
But one day, approaching the hole, the man saw a sleeping baby snake basking in the sun. The man grabbed a stone, threw it at the baby snake and cut off its tail.
The little snake ran into the hole and told his mother about everything. The snake became very angry. She thought: “Woe to the man who rejected my friendship! From now on I will know what to do!”
The next day this man came to the hole again and sat down near it, waiting for the dinar. A snake crawled out of the hole and said:
- O greedy and ungrateful man! You will be treated to the same thing that you treat your friends to. You will get what you deserve: hatred and enmity of the entire serpentine race. Know, greedy man, if you had not acted so vilely, I would have put a dinar for you every day and you would have become a rich merchant. But since you deprived my cub of its tail, go home empty-handed. From today onwards you will not receive anything from me. Go home and don't come here again.
And this man left, very upset and saddened.
This teaching refers to greedy and ungrateful people.
You shouldn't wish for too much.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru