There’s an old story about a sage who lived in a lofty mountain hermitage. It was attached to a cave where he often meditated, but his followers and benefactors had also built him a lovely little building that housed all his books and provided him with a very comfortable place to sleep and a dining area with a sweeping view of many valleys below and peaks in the distance. Also attached to the building was a closet-like dwelling for his faithful attendant.
One morning the sage declared that he would like to go down to the village to exchange some of his tattered books for new ones and see what newly minted works of philosophy he could get his hands on. Reaching the village required crossing a rope bridge strung high above a gorge. As they approached the entry to the bridge, the attendant hesitated. He rarely interrupted his master, who loathed having his contemplative silence broken, but this time he felt he must speak up, knowing that his master’s eyesight had been weakened by so much reading. “Master,” he broke in, “I fear the bridge needs to be repaired. The rope looks very frayed to me.” Perturbed, and eager to get to the village, the sage responded brusquely, “How would you know? It seems perfectly fine to me.”
The attendant offered to go first to test it. Perturbed even further by this implicit questioning of his authority, the sage simply harrumphed and set foot on the bridge. No sooner had his trailing foot landed firmly on the bridge than the rope snapped. The attendant, his arms full of dozens of books, lunged for the rope, sending the books flying in the direction of his master, but he could not reach the rope in time. The sage went flying down with the loosened bridge. Too weak to hold on, he had soon let go, and the books released from the outstretched arms of the attendant rained down on the sage’s head as he plunged into the rushing waters below and drowned.