In a monastery there lived ten monks.
One day they decided to go on a pilgrimage. They set off and reached a river.
Making it to the other side, the abbot began counting and was horrified to find that only nine had reached the other shore. He counted again but the number remained nine. The monks desperately started to look everywhere for the one missing, but did not find any trace. In their bewilderment they started to cry.
A shepherd walked by and asked, “What is the matter?”
“We have lost one of our party,” they answered, “this morning when we started we were ten, and now we are only nine.”
The shepherd comforted them, “You have no reason to be sad. You can find the missing one without moving from the spot.”
He asked the abbot to count again. The abbot counted again by putting his finger onto the chest of each fellow monk … eight, nine.
Then the shepherd put his finger onto the chest of the abbot.
“Ten. You are the tenth.”
Image header: Tevaprapas, CC-BY-3.0)