The Monk Who Tried to Out-Meditate His Cat

He sat cross-legged for 10 hours. The cat blinked once and won.

When you spend ten years chasing enlightenment, and your cat achieves it accidentally between naps.

There once was a monk named Dorian who took enlightenment personally.
He didn’t just want peace. He wanted to win peace.

When the bell rang at dawn, he didn’t just meditate—he strategized his stillness.
Back straight. Mind calm. Breath slower than a glacier.
Somewhere, in the dim corridors of his ego, he whispered,
“I will become the most unmoved being in this monastery.”

And then—like every good spiritual downfall—along came a cat.

Not a majestic tiger, not even a sleek temple guardian.
Just a chubby orange creature named Noodle,
whose main spiritual practice was napping in inconvenient places.

The monk saw Noodle sprawled on a sun-warmed rock,
blissfully oblivious to enlightenment,
and felt that ancient competitive itch bubble up from his lower chakras.

“Ah,” he thought, “the perfect adversary.”

He sat cross-legged beside the cat and vowed not to move until the feline twitched first.
Hours passed. The sun arced. The bell tolled.
Noodle didn’t so much as flinch.
Dorian’s leg went numb. His mind hallucinated soup.
He tried to remember if the Buddha ever mentioned sciatica in the Pali Canon.

After ten hours, the cat blinked once—slowly, smugly—
and wandered off to lick its butt, victorious.

Dorian remained, a statue of misplaced devotion.
Finally, a voice in his head whispered:
“You’re not meditating. You’re trying to win.”

He laughed so hard his mala beads snapped.
Noodle yawned. The cosmos purred.

Lesson: Stop competing with beings who don’t even know there’s a contest.
The truly enlightened aren’t keeping score—they’re just basking in the sun.

Blessed be the ones who lose on purpose,
for they’ve already stopped playing the wrong game.

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