Two Monks and the River

It had rained for three days in the mountains, and the river had risen in the night.

By morning it was brown and fast and loud, tumbling over stones that were usually dry. The little wooden footbridge that crossed it had been swept away. Only two broken posts were left, one on each bank, leaning in the current.

Two monks came down the path towards the water. They were travelling back to their monastery after many days on the road.

The elder walked in front, easy and unhurried, looking at the sky, the dripping trees, the swollen river. The younger walked a step behind. He was serious and careful, and he had been a monk for only a few years.

The woman on the bank

At the edge of the water stood a young woman.

She was dressed for a journey, in a fine silk robe, and she held a small bundle against her chest. She was looking at the river the way people look at a closed door. Every so often she stepped towards it, and then stepped back.

The monks belonged to an order with strict rules. They were not to touch a woman. They were not even supposed to look at one too long, or speak to one unless they had to. The younger monk lowered his eyes at once and began to think about how they might walk round her.

The elder monk walked straight up to her.

"You need to get across," he said.

"My mother is ill," she said. "She lives in the village on the other side. I've been waiting since dawn, but the water is so strong, and I can't swim."

The elder monk looked at the river. He looked at her silk robe and her thin sandals.

"Then let me carry you," he said.

Across the water

Before the younger monk could open his mouth, the elder had lifted the woman into his arms and stepped down into the river.

The water was cold. It came up to his knees, then to his waist. He felt for each stone with his feet, and leaned against the current, and did not hurry. The woman held her bundle above the water and kept very still.

The younger monk followed, his robes heavy and soaked, his face burning. He could not believe what he was seeing.

On the far bank, the elder monk set the woman gently down on the grass.

She bowed deeply to him. He bowed to her. She hurried away up the path towards the village, and was gone.

The elder monk wrung out his sleeves, picked up his staff, and walked on.

The silent miles

For a long time, neither monk spoke.

The path climbed through cedar woods. The sun came out. Birds began to sing again, and the elder monk seemed to enjoy every one of them.

The younger monk did not hear the birds. He walked with his jaw clenched and his eyes on the ground.

He touched her, he thought. He picked her up. He held her in his arms. We have taken vows. He is supposed to be an example to me, and he broke the rule in front of me, as if it meant nothing.

The thought went round and round. Each time it came back, it was a little hotter. He imagined what the other monks would say. He imagined what their teacher would say. He rehearsed what he himself would say, and changed it, and rehearsed it again.

The afternoon passed. The shadows grew long. Still he said nothing, and still the thought went round.

At the gate

As evening fell, they reached the monastery. At the gate, the younger monk could hold it in no longer. He stopped and turned to face his companion.

"How could you do it?" he burst out. "We are forbidden even to go near women, and you lifted that woman up and carried her across the river in your arms! How can you call yourself a monk?"

The elder monk looked at him calmly. There was no anger in his face, only a kind of gentle surprise.

"The woman?" he said. "I set her down hours ago, back at the water's edge."

He paused.

"But you have carried her all this way."

The younger monk opened his mouth, and then shut it again.

He thought of the long walk through the woods. He thought of the birds he had not heard and the sunlight he had not seen. The elder monk had carried the woman for perhaps a hundred steps, through cold water, because she needed help. He himself had carried her for the whole of the day, in his head, and she had grown heavier with every mile.

The elder monk smiled, rested a wet hand on his shoulder for a moment, and went in to supper.

The younger monk stood alone at the gate in the dusk. And then, slowly, he set the woman down.

About this story

This is one of the best-known teaching stories of Zen Buddhism. Its most famous telling names the Japanese monks Tanzan and Ekido, and in that version they meet a girl in a silk kimono who cannot cross a muddy road after rain. It became widely known in English through Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps's collection of Zen stories in the twentieth century. Tellers today often set it beside a river, as we have here. This version is a shortened, simplified retelling.