# The Chicken Farmer and the Missionaries

The owner of a chicken farm had always despised missionaries. He believed that most missionaries preached one thing but practiced another. So he would often speak ill of them whenever the opportunity arose.

One day, two missionaries came to his door and said they wanted to buy a chicken. These two fellows spent a long time picking through the large chicken farm and finally selected a rooster with most of its feathers fallen out, extremely ugly and lame.

The owner was quite puzzled and asked them why they chose this particular chicken. The missionaries replied: "We want to take this chicken back to the monastery courtyard and tell everyone that this is a chicken from your farm, so we can give you some publicity."

The owner immediately became anxious: "No! Look at the chickens in this farm—aren't they all beautiful and robust? This rooster fights all day long, which is why it ended up in this condition. If you take it as your representative and let everyone think all our chickens are like this, it's simply too unfair to me."

The other missionary smiled and said: "Exactly! A small number of missionaries have poor conduct, yet you use them as representatives of us all. Isn't that equally unfair to us?"

Only then did the chicken farm owner suddenly understand.