A long, long time ago there was a monkey who wanted to be the Lord of the Skies. He thought he deserved it, as he was not an ordinary monkey. He had been born out of a stone egg no bird had ever laid. The egg simply appeared in the middle of the grass, cracked suddenly and let the monkey out.

The animal, made out of a finely polished stone, thought very highly of himself. Other monkeys of the mountain asked him to be their king, but more than anything he wanted to rule over the skies. He decided to learn the most precious tricks from a master magician, so he could be more suitable for this high position.

He learned how to cover infinite distances in just one jump, and was, because of that, very confident when he met Buddha. The Enlightened One promised the monkey that he would indeed be the Lord, if he managed to jump out of His hand.

The monkey jumped, and jumped, and jumped, until reaching the very limits of earth. Right at the earth's edge he saw five red columns separating all that exists from the nothingness. The monkey decided to make a scratch on one of those columns, as a proof that he had actually reached that point.

Upon his return to the hand, the Buddha showed the scratch on His finger, indicating to the monkey that he had not even started jumping. The red columns were in fact the Buddha's fingers. It does not matter how far you can get, you will always be within the reach of His hand...