(no subject)
In Tibet, there is a small mammal, a predator that eats mice and other small rodents. When it wants to catch a mouse, it sits at the entrance to the mouse hole as if it is meditating and waits. Then, when a mouse sticks its head out, the bigger creature grabs it. 'There must be more in there,' he thinks. 'Rather than eat this one now, I’ll save it and catch some more.' So he sticks the victim under his butt and sits on it and goes on waiting. When the remaining mice don’t come quickly, he leans forward to look in the hole, and the one wedged under his butt sneaks off and escapes. Another mouse comes, and he grabs it and sits on it. He manages to catch 10 mice, one after the other, but they all escape, and he ends up having nothing to eat. Why? Because he keeps preparing for what he will eat later and ignores the present. He ends up going to bed hungry. With that attitude toward practice, you will never practice. Wherever you are, whatever you are going through, whatever the setting, practice right there.
Fearless Simplicity, p. 282
It's a fun story. I think the small mammal is a cat, which makes the story cuter. I've been trying to figure out what kind of small mammals there are in Tibet, but wikipedia is failing me hard.