The Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta: Majjhima Nikaya 63
The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya
At Jetavana the monk Malunkyaputta, troubled by Gautama Buddha's silence on fourteen unanswerable questions about the nature of the cosmos and life after death, asks him for answers to these questions.
Buddha replied with the following parable:
"It is just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison.
"His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.'
"He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.'
The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him."
ords.