David McNett

Zen and the Art of Troll Maintenance

Embittered by useless message board wars, I climbed the stone path to the
temple and found the master sitting crosslegged in the garden. He regarded me
with his one, good eye, then smiled his inscrutable, toothless smile:

Ah.. grasshopper, you have come far! Tell me now the sound of one troll
yapping.

"Blessed master," I said. "One troll yapping is a rarity indeed. Most often one
finds a yapping troll in the company of many others who seek to reason with
him."

"And these 'others' you mention? Do they succeed in their endeavors?"

"Oh no, master. They never succeed. The yapper yaps all the louder...even yips
and yells. It is useless to reason with a troll."

"And if you allow the troll the freedom to yap by himself, what sound does such
a troll make?

"YAP!YAP!YAP!.... YAP!.... yap!yap!.......yap!..... yap.........yap.... I
suppose the troll grows weary and eventually falls silent unless.... unless.."

The master's eye glinted in the light of the afternoon sun with an intensity I
had heretofore not seen.

"Unless what?" he asked as he leaned forward to hear my response.

"Unless..... unless someone pokes him with a stick, Master. Then, like an angry
beehive, he starts buzzing and yapping again."

The master smiled. I could tell he was pleased with my answer.

"Grasshopper, why would someone poke a troll with a stick, knowing as he does
that it is the eternal destiny of trolls to yap endlessly?"

"I do not know the answer, Master."

He grew silent as a stone. A slight breeze stirred the cedars on the hillside
behind us. For the space of a minute, we sat. Even an hour. Finally, as the sun
cast its last rays onto the features of his face, he lifted himself from the
ground, picked up his walking stick and headed down the path toward the
monastery at the foot of the hill.

The words floated to me on the wings of encroaching night:

"As tossing pebbles into a black hole, Such is offering reason to a troll....

Offer silence instead- for a troll can never master silence."

SenseiBillsan

(Shamelessly copied from a subscriber-only fool.com post)