Once upon a time there was a man named Kandatta. He was a villainous person who was capable of all manner of terrible things. One day Kandatta was walking somewhere when he saw something black under his foot. He was just about to put his foot down, and crush what turned out to be a spider, but instead he experienced a moment of compassion.

“Why bother crushing it to death?” Kandatta thought. So he lifted his foot and stepped over it, saving the spider’s life.

Kandatta was a remorseless criminal who did anything wicked, so upon his death he was condemned to Avici hell to experience unmitigated torment. But amidst his suffering a shiny, silver thread of spider’s silk, as thin as steel wire, came floating down from the sky. Kandatta was like a man drowning in the ocean who had caught sight of a lifeboat, so he quickly grabbed hold of the spider thread and began to climb with all his might, wishing to be free from the uninterrupted pain of hell.

But once he looked down, he saw that the many other denizens of hell were climbing up behind him. Kandatta thought to himself: “How can such a thin spider’s thread bear the weight of so many people? If the spider’s thread were to break, then I will be trapped here for thousands of kalpas without any hope of being released.”

So he thrust out his leg and started kicking those climbing up from behind off the thread one by one. Just then, the spider’s thread snapped somewhere up above, and Kandatta along with the other denizens of hell all fell back into the bottomless blackness of hell to suffer its endless knife cuts and burning flames. With their physical eyes and desiring minds, living beings only see their own suffering and only think about their own liberation.

The story of the spider’s thread is a very skillful teaching on the power of a single compassionate thought. Kandatta had a single thought of compassion towards a spider; however, while he was trying to save himself from Avici hell a single thought of selfishness doomed him to fall back into its hell’s maw. A single dark thought is Avici hell, while a single compassionate thought to benefit oneself and others brings great good fortune. We exist in a relationship of oneness and coexistence, for all the world is one, and all things are interconnected through causes and conditions.

Source: Hsing Yun. Four Insights for Finding Fulfillment: A Practical Guide to the Buddha’s Diamond Sutra. Los Angeles: Buddha’s Light Publishing, 2012.