One morning, the Buddha was taking a walk by a lotus pond. The pond was filled with beautiful lotus flowers blooming in all kinds of colors. Looking into the depths of the pond, he discovered that under the beautiful petals was all foul mud. Looking even deeper into the slime, he saw a hell!

There was a huge pool of blood in which stood mountains of swords with thousands of sharp blades that glittered coldly. A great multitude of sinners, howling with pain, thrashed about looking for a way to escape, but all their struggles were in vain.

When the Buddha saw this miserable scene, his heart was filled with pity and he tried to think of a way to save these sinners. Unfortunately, the sins they had committed in their previous lives were too severe and there was no cause for any of them to be saved.

At last, the Buddha finally found a man who could be rescued, even though he had committed every kind of crime. One day in his lifetime, when he was walking on the road, he was about to step on a spider. Just at that moment a sense of kindness came over him, and he stopped and let the spider go. Because of this single good deed, the man had a chance to be rescued from this hell.

So, the Buddha softly picked up a spider that was spinning a web, and he extended a strand of its silk down into the pond. Between the petals and leaves and down through the mud, the thread finally reached all the way down to that hell. On seeing the thread, the sinner felt overjoyed. He immediately grabbed it and carefully began to pull himself up.

It seemed like a very long way from the hell to the lotus pond. He climbed and climbed for a very long time. Exhausted, he stopped for a rest halfway up. He looked down and saw a great number of people climbing up after him. He became very anxious. "I may never get another chance to escape. If this silk thread breaks under the weight of all those people, I'll fall back into that terrible hell again."

He cried out to the people below, "This thread is mine, none of you can touch it!" But the people below still kept climbing up. In a panic, he began to kick the others back down. When he did this, the thread suddenly snapped, and everyone fell back into the pool of blood.

The Buddha had lovingly hoped to rescue those suffering souls, but because of one man's anger they all fell back into that hell. "Why is a common man's love so weak?" sighed the Buddha. "He only knows to love himself, but not others. This is why people must always endure inexpressible suffering in the cycle of reincarnation."

Life in this world is full of suffering and everyone hopes to be rescued. However, if they only seek their own salvation and don't care whether others live or die, their selfishness only results in bad karma and more suffering.