In April of 1945 with the second world war ending, Benito Mussolini, the tyrant of fascist Italy, made a run for the Swiss border. He came up short. Captured near Lake Como, he and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were caught and machine gunned to death the following afternoon. For the partisans of northern Italy, justice done. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacchi were then taken back down the mountain to Milan where they were hung by the heels from a girder of an Esso gasoline station so that the people might vent their spleen.

On the other hand …

A mendicant monk named Ryokan lived a life of simplicity in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into his hut only to discover that Ryokan had nothing worth stealing.

As the thief stood scratching his head, Ryokan returned and found him. “You’ve come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my hat, and this jacket as gifts.”

The thief was suspicious and bewildered, but he took the hat and jacket and backed out of the hut. “Ah, but wait, Ryokan said. From his bundle he pulled a battered wooden bowl. Have this, too, he said. The thief, fearing this fellow was a tengu, a mountain devil, yelped and off he ran.

Ryokan sighed. He went out behind the hut and sat in his loin cloth on a flat stone, gazing up at the night sky. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “ I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”

from One Robe, One Bowl The Zen Poetry Of Ryokan. See synopsis in BOOKS.