The simile of the snake and the simile of the raft are both very important and telling teachings of the Buddha. The two together lay out the way in which truth should be grasped in order to be free one from suffering. The simile of the snake applies to the actual grasping of the truth of Buddha's teachings while the simile of the raft explains what to do after one has successfully grasped the teachings. The simile of the snake, in basic terms, is saying that the truth of Buddha's teachings must be handled in the same way as catching a snake. One must grab the snake by the head to prevent a fatal bite but this fatal bite may come if the snake is grabbed by the tail. This implies that there is a right and wrong way to take hold of the truth and the wrong way can be deadly. Ganeri explains this further by saying, "The truth wrongly seized will bite the one who grabs it" (Ganeri 43).
The simile of the raft speaks more specifically to what to do after one has grasped the snake properly or in this case, crossed the river successfully. To cross a river to safety, one must build and use a raft. This raft can be seen as Buddha's teachings. The teachings are used to cross the dangerous river to the better and safer land. When one arrives at the other side, the question is: what do I do with this raft? It has helped so much along the dangerous river and is the only thing that helped me to safety so, why would I merely discard it now? The Buddha is saying, why would you choose to lug around a heavy raft when you don't need to cross any more rivers? The teachings helped along the way but are not of use anymore. In my opinion, this can be directly connected to the simile of the snake. Just as one must let go of the heavy raft, one must also eventually let go of the snake. There will come a time when one becomes exhausted from holding the snakes head so firmly and the grip starts to loosen and if it loosens too much, it will result in a fatal bite even though the initial grasp was successful.
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