One day, a novice overheard the master telling a frustrated student that confidence was the key to achieving the Perl-nature. A few weeks later, the master paid a visit to the lab in which this novice was studying.

- What are you working on? - he asked the novice, to which he frustratedly replied:

- I'm working on a real-time operating system written in Perl, but for some reason these coderefs don't seem to work.

The master then rewrote the student's entire program logic into 10K of FORTH code, and said:

- Although all things have the Perl-nature, not all programs are for Perl. To achieve oneness with Perl is also to achieve oneness to that which is without Perl. This is a great mystery; to understand it is to become enlightened.

The master then hit the student in the head with a 1000-page copy of _The Symbolics Lisp Machine Manual_.