Once upon a time, there was a wonderful sandalwood tree that had the best fragrance in the world. And next to the sandalwood tree there lived a cobra and this cobra would keep biting the sandalwood tree and the sandalwood tree would keep passing its fragrance to the cobra. People would ask the cobra, “Why do you bite this tree which gives you its fragrance?” The cobra would say, “It is my nature.” People would ask the sandalwood tree, “Why do you keep giving fragrance to this cobra that keeps biting you?” The sandalwood tree would say, “It’s my nature.” Now it so happened, that a woodcutter was passing by and he was thinking of cutting of the sandalwood tree. But as it happened he saw the cobra and ran off. This happened once, twice, thrice, hundred times, two hundred times — many times it happened. Now the cobra lived for a long time, because it had after all the nagamani — it was a immortal cobra. And in midst of all this the sandalwood tree also lived for a long time. It was an evergreen, everfresh, ever fragrant sandalwood tree. And that was the story of the cobra and sandalwood tree.
Touchstone Alice 