by Sarah Shaw
Four countless aeons and one hundred thousand kalpas in the past
125. So then: I search for things that lead to awakening. Above, below, in the ten directions, as far as the very element of things. 2
126. Searching, I saw the first perfection, of generosity, the magnificent highway walked by the great teachers of old.
127. ‘If you wish to find awakening, go, making firm and taking upon yourself this first perfection, of generosity.
128. Just as a jar filled to the brim, toppled by someone, pours forth water, and does not hold onto anything that remains there,
129. So you, when you see supplicants, low, middling or high, practise generosity, like the toppled jar, with nothing remaining.’
130. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
131. Searching, I saw the second perfection, of virtue, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
132. ‘If you wish to find awakening, go, making firm and taking upon yourself this second perfection, of virtue.
133. Just as a camari cow, with her tail caught in something, approaches death and still does not harm her tail,
134. So you, for the fulfilment of the precepts on four levels, 3 continually guard virtue as a camari cow her tail.’
135. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
136. Searching, I saw the third perfection, of renunciation, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
137. ‘If you wish to find awakening, go making firm and taking upon yourself this third perfection, of renunciation.
138. Just as a man who has stayed a long time, painfully afflicted, in prison does not feel desire for it but seeks only release,
139. So you too, see all states of becoming like a prison; Be one who turns his face to renunciation, for the complete release from becoming.’
140. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
141. Searching, I saw the fourth perfection, of wisdom, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
142. ‘If you wish to find awakening, go, making firm and taking upon yourself this fourth perfection, of wisdom.
143. Just as a monk, begging for alms, avoids neither low, middling nor high families, and takes his sustenance in this way,
144. So you too, at all times ask questions of wakeful people, and, going to the perfection of wisdom, you will attain full awakening.’
145. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
146. Searching, I saw the fifth perfection, of heroic effort, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
147. ‘If you wish to find awakening go, making firm and taking upon yourself this fifth perfection, of effort.
148. Just as a lion, the king of the beasts, whether lying down, standing or walking, exhibits unabated vigour and is always courageous,
149. So you too, firmly exerting effort in every state of becoming, going to the perfection of effort, will attain full awakening.’
150. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
151. Searching, I saw the sixth perfection, of forbearance, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
152.‘You, with an undivided mind, make firm and take upon yourself this sixth, and you will attain full awakening.
153. Just as the earth endures everything thrown upon it, pure and impure alike, and does not show anger or favour,
154. So you too, patient of all respect and disrespect, going to the perfection of forbearance, will attain full awakening.’
155. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
156. Searching, I saw the seventh perfection, of truth, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
157. ‘Making firm and taking upon yourself this seventh, with undivided speech, you will attain full awakening.
158. Just as the healing star, Venus, is balanced for gods and men in all times and seasons and does not deviate from her course, 4
159. So you, do not deviate from the course of the truths, and, going to the perfection of truth, you too will attain full awakening.’ 5
160. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
161. Searching, I saw the eighth perfection, of resolve, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
162. ‘You, making firm and taking upon yourself this eighth, be unwavering there and you will attain full awakening.
163. Just as a mountain, a rock, unwavering, is well established, and does not tremble in rough winds but remains in its own place,
164. So you too, be unwavering at all times in your resolve, and, going to the perfection of resolve, you will attain full awakening.’
165. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
166. Searching, I saw the ninth perfection, of loving kindness, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
167. ‘You, making firm and taking upon yourself this ninth, be without an equal in loving kindness if you wish to attain full awakening.
168. Just as water suffuses with coolness good and bad people alike, and washes away dust and dirt,
169. So you too, cultivate loving kindness for friend and enemy, and, going to the perfection of loving kindness, you will attain full awakening.’
170. But these are not all the things that are needed for awakening: I will search for other things that ripen awakening!
171. Searching, I saw the tenth perfection, of equanimity, frequented and practised by the great teachers of old.
172. ‘You, making firm and taking upon yourself this tenth, be balanced and firm and you will attain full awakening.
173. Just as the earth remains unperturbed at both the pure and impure thrown down upon it, and avoids both anger and favour,
174. So you too be balanced at all times to the happy and the painful, and, going to the perfection of equanimity, you will attain full awakening.’
So few are all the things in this world that bring awakening to maturation, that bring about Buddhahood and that have to be fulfilled by Bodhisattas. Beyond these ten perfections there are no others. And these ten perfections are not in the sky above; they are not in the earth below, nor are they in the directions that start with the east. They are established right in the depths of my heart.
(Sections from J I 14 and 20–5)
Notes
1 It is found, in Pali, at the beginning of the first volume of the Fausbøll edition. I.B. Horner’s notes to The Basket of Conduct (Cariyapitaka = Cp), (London: PTS, 1975), which contains an almost identical version of the ten perfections, have been a great help in translating this section, as has the clear translation of the Jatakanidana, by N.A. Jayawickrama, The Story of Gotama Buddha (Oxford: PTS, 1990).
2 The ‘element of things’ (dhammadhatuya) is usually applied to the range of omniscient knowledge of a Buddha (see Franklin Edgerton, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit: Grammar and Dictionary, 2 vols. (Delhi, Poona, Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1953) Vol. II, pp. 278–9. It probably refers here to th
e highest formless realms, the subtlest forms of existence (See Cp 20, n. 1).
3 Control over the rules laid down for the monks, control over the sense organs, purity of livelihood and reliance only on the requisites of a monk’s livelihood (Basket of Conduct, p. 20, n. 4). As the vow is being made in the time of a Buddha, all of these would be known to the aspirant Bodhisatta.
4 Osadhi, supposed to have healing properties: medicinal herbs are gathered when it is in the sky. It seems to be Venus, the morning star. See CPD II 790.
5 The truths are the four noble truths of suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the way leading to that end.
{1}
A true story
Apannaka Jataka (1)
Vol. I, 94–106
Homage to the Exalted One, the Enlightened One,
the Fully Awakened Buddha
After the customary homage given above, the story from the present starts with a tribute to the Fully Awakened Buddha, the teacher of the path to freedom and the narrator of the stories from the past. The majesty of his presence is intended to be self-explanatory, but mention should be made of some features, found only in this introduction, which help place his first appearance and the stories in context. First, there is the extensive description of the attributes that distinguish the Buddha, the fully awakened teacher, from other men. He is said to be endowed, for instance, with the thirty-two marks of the Great Man (mahapurisa), which include the turban-crowned head and the fine wheels on the hands and feet, often seen on statues and pictures. 1 His body and voice are here said to be like those of Brahma, the lord of the heavens beyond the sense sphere. Although these characteristics mark him out as heroic and impressive, he is not considered a god in early Buddhism and is never described as such: he is beyond the gods (atideva). When Anathapindika, the lay follower in this story, pays homage to this man it is to the possessor of the fully awakened mind, who has fulfilled the highest potential possible for a living being.
The introduction also makes an assertion not often found in early Buddhism. It states that the meditation on the Triple Gem, the Buddha (Buddhanussati), his teaching (dhammanussati) and that of his followers (sanghanussati) can lead the practitioner to all stages of enlightenment: taking refuge in these is the only safe refuge. These three recollections number amongst the forty subjects for meditation recommended by Buddhaghosa in his fifth-century manual for meditators, The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), and are constantly encouraged in the tradition as ways of bringing calm (samatha) and confidence (saddha). 2 They are not usually accorded such emphasis, however, and their presence suggests a certain orientation towards laymen. Anathapindika, to whom the story from the past is primarily directed, would have been the head of an extended family, a ‘houselord’ or householder (gahapati), and his friends are laymen. He is elsewhere praised by the Buddha as foremost amongst his disciples who support his order of monks and nuns. 3 In these and in other ways the introduction gives us a key to the tales: the full request is made to the Buddha to remember the past and to reveal what has been hidden, which he does, in a formula we do not also find in other stories. This story from the present is, in part, an introduction to and validation of this Buddhist tradition: it packs in a great deal of terminology associated with doctrine and practice that might be unfamiliar to a reader new to Buddhist texts. Because of this, and the number of suttas quoted that were presumably intended to remind listeners of other texts that they had heard, there are quite a few explanatory footnotes for this section. These are intended to explain new terms and help the reader find complementary texts in the Buddhist canon: the other ‘stories from the present’ do not need such lengthy explanation.
The events and easy momentum of the first tale in the past, which introduces the hero of the tales, set a completely different tone. A straightforward story of common sense and care triumphing over self-seeking greed, it reveals the pragmatism, native wit and occasional humour which so often characterize the Bodhisatta as the one who has skill in means (upayakusala). The Bodhisatta is a cautious, shrewd but, in his willingness to offer choice to the other trader, generous hero. The ability not to be seduced by appearances, to exercise authority and to win over his followers through appeal to their own judgement prove vital in the course of the dangers that confront him. Up until the end, when he sells his wares for a good price after staying up on guard all night, he is shown as a reliable and utterly down-to-earth leader of men. Buddhism arose at the outset of a period which saw great mercantile and urban development. It exercised an appeal, which, unusually for the time, crossed all social boundaries. We know that merchants were often the principal donors to temples from the first century CE. 4It is apt that the first story has such a simple figure as hero, exemplifying virtues that would be valued as those of a reliable and honest ‘man of the people’. He is juxtaposed against the foolish trader, who leads his followers into the wilderness of opinions and falsity and so, crucially, lacks skill in means. In the Buddha’s last lifetime Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin, continually plots against him, attempting to divide the order of monks and constantly undermining the Buddha’s authority amongst his followers. 5 In him we are introduced to one of the main sources of tension in the Jatakas as a whole: a corrupt leader who shares the Buddha’s popular charisma and genius for leadership, but is dedicated to jealousy and hatred. His dedication to undermining the Bodhisatta and his followers provides, throughout many stories, a dark parody of the search to develop the perfections.
A story of travel across a wasteland is a fitting starting point to the collection of 547 tales. The treasurer’s friends are described as living in a kind of wilderness, in the belief that, for instance, one’s fate is predetermined or that actions have no consequences. 6 Elsewhere in the Pali canon the image is used to express the state of scepticism and the kind of doubt that is unhelpful to the mind. In the Payasi sutta an almost identical story is told by the Buddha to illustrate the ruin and disaster that befalls the one who follows false views. 7 In the Samannaphala sutta the same word, kantara, is used in a simile that describes doubt, which is considered one of five hindrances to the meditation practice and the healthy and skilful mind (kusalacitta). 8 The one who doubts, the sutta says, is like a man lost in a wilderness. The one who relinquishes doubt is like one who has crossed over it, and finds himself safely returned to the outskirts of his own home territory. The wilderness can also be taken to describe the condition of all living beings. Existence itself, samsara, the world in which continuous rebirth takes place, means wandering or continuous movement, from a verb that means literally ‘to flow together, to go about, wander or walk or roam through; to walk or pass through (a succession of states), undergo transmigration, enter or pass into’: the fate of all beings until they find release. 9 In the canonical The Path of Discrimination (Patisambhidamagga) the Buddha says, ‘Worldly life has entered a great wilderness, there is none other than myself to get it across the wilderness.’ 10 There are striking parallels with the opening lines of two other voyages of psychological and cosmological exploration. Dante’s Inferno begins ‘nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/che la diritta via era smarrita’, 11(‘Halfway along the road we have to go,/I found myself obscured in a great forest,/ Bewildered, and I knew I had lost the way.’ 12 The Pilgrim’s Progress starts with the words, ‘As I walked through the wilderness of the world’. 13 One only has to fly over the vast stretches of wild terrain in India to see the pertinence of the image for these stories: just as the trader travels with his caravan from east to west, and from west to east, so the Bodhisatta, with many disciples, travels from one birth to the next, and from one identity to another. It is a characteristic of the Bodhisatta’s method that he does not always follow what might seem the easy path (magga), the same word used in Buddhism for the attainment of the stages of enlightenment, but the way that crosses the wilderness safely. The �
�true’ in the title of this story, apannaka, is the word used for something that has a certain or safe outcome. 14
Story from the present
When staying at the great monastery at the Jetavana Grove near Savatthi the Teacher gave this dhamma talk about being true. And what prompted this story? Well, it was the five hundred friends of the treasurer, who followed teachers of other schools. For one day Anathapindika, the treasurer, took a large group of friends of his, who followed other schools, to the Jetavana to pay homage to the Exalted One. He arranged for them to take a large quantity of garlands, perfumes and ointments, together with oil, honey, sugar cane, clothes and robes. He offered the flowers and handed over the medicinal foods and robes to the order of monks. When he had done this he sat down, avoiding the six faults that can be made in taking a seat. 15 The lay disciples from other schools similarly paid homage, sat down next to Anathapindika and gazed upon the Teacher: at his face, as glorious as the full moon, at his Brahma-like body, surrounded by light and adorned with all the marks and signs of a Great Man and at the rays of awakening that emanated from him like garlands, pair upon pair.
Then, like a young lion giving a great roar in Manosilatala, in the Himalayas, or like a storm cloud in the rainy season thundering as if bringing down the Ganga from the sky, [96] he gave a pleasing dhamma talk, as if knotting a garland of jewels. It was varied and full of detail, and he spoke with the voice of Brahma, endowed with the eight special qualities of speech, pleasant to hear and friendly. 16They all listened to the talk from the Teacher, and, rising with minds that had become clear, they paid their respects to the Ten-Powered One, broke their allegiance to other teachers and took refuge in the Buddha instead. 17 And after that they used to visit with Anathapindika and went to the temple with perfumes, garlands and suchlike in their hands and kept the uposatha day. They listened to the dhamma, made acts of generosity and guarded their virtue.
Then the Exalted One went from Savatthi back to Rajagaha. But when the Thus-gone had departed they broke their refuge and went to take refuge in other teachers and established themselves back in their original position. The Exalted One spent seven or eight months in Rajagaha and went back to Jetavana. Then Anathapindika brought them again in the presence of the Teacher, made offerings of flowers and suchlike and sat down to one side. They also paid homage to the Exalted One and sat down to one side. Then Anathapindika informed the Buddha that when he had gone on his journey they had broken their refuge, taken refuge in other teachers and established themselves in their original position. The Exalted One opened the lotus of his mouth and, as if opening a jewelled casket filled with various perfumes and scented with divine smells by the virtue of his having displayed good speech for countless thousands of aeons continuously, spoke out with a sweet voice. ‘Is it true, what they say, that you disciples have broken your allegiance and taken refuge in other teachers?’ he asked. And they were unable to hide it, and said that it was. So the Teacher said, ‘Lay disciples, if you made a measure from the lowest hell, the Avici, 18up to the highest level of existence, 19or across through boundless world systems, you would not find such a one as the Buddha, endowed with virtue and other qualities of excellence: much less a superior’. ‘Bhikkhus, whatever beings, whether those without feet, with two feet, with four feet, or those with many feet, those with form or without form, perceiving or non-perceiving, those that neither perceive nor do not perceive: a Thus-gone, an arahat, a Fully Enlightened One is reckoned the best of them.’ 20‘Whatever wealth there is, in this world or in the other, or whatever jewel is the greatest in the heavens: it is not equal to the Thus-gone.’ 21‘Of those that have clear minds the Thus-gone is the chief.’ 22 He then explained the excellent qualities of the Triple Gem, with a number of suttas and said, ‘There is no such thing as rebirth in hells for laymen and laywomen who have gone for refuge in the Triple Gem, which is endowed in this way with the highest qualities. 23Freed from rebirth in a bad destiny, 24they rise up to the heavens and experience great glory. Therefore it is not right for you to break your allegiance and go for refuge in other teachers.’