Jātaka Tales

The Jātaka Tales are the Buddhist equivalent of Aesop’s Fables. Coincidentally they date to about the same time, around the 5th century BCE. They are morality stories. For many centuries and right up to the present day most lay Buddhists learned about the teachings of the Buddha from these stories. Lay people did not typically meditate or study the discourses, but they did learn the Jātaka Tales.

As with Aesop’s Fables, in these stories the Bodhisatta can be a person, a king, or an animal. Some people object to stories of this type on the ground that they are not literally true. But as Joseph Campbell used to say, a myth is a metaphor. I can tell you about the importance of good judgment or wisdom, for example, but you are more likely to remember it if I tell you the charming story of Jātaka 54 in which a clever monkey outsmarts a crocodile.

The Jātaka Tales follow a formula in which there is a “story in the present” followed by the Jātaka Tale, which is then followed by the end of the story in the present. The story in the present gives the context in which the Buddha supposedly told it.

I am always warning people when it comes to literature of this type not to get too hung up on its literal truth. A more skillful way to read these stories is to concentrate on the lessons they teach and to take them to heart. These stories are quite charming and often playful, and no one ever said that the Buddha’s path could not be fun.

The Pāli Text Society

The only complete translation of the Jātaka Tales is from the Pāli Text Society (PTS). They were originally published in six volumes between 1895 and 1907. The importance of the Pāli Text Society in Western Buddhist history cannot be overstated. PTS was founded in 1881 by Thomas William (T.W.) Rhys Davids and his wife Caroline. This was after T.W. published the first Pāli to English dictionary in 1874. At that time Buddhism in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) was under pressure from Christian missionaries. The Pāli Text Society was part of an effort that helped to revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka and laid the groundwork for our ability to read Pāli texts in English today.

The Jātaka Tales were originally translated and edited by Edward Byles Cowell, a professor at Cambridge University, William Henry Denham Rouse, a linguistics scholar and teacher who was also at Cambridge, Henry Thomas Francis, and R.A Neil, a fellow at Pembroke College. To them we owe a great debt. Having said that, the PTS editions use a lot of antiquated Victorian language, idioms, and punctuation. This makes them rather inaccessible to a modern audience.

My main goal with this effort is to make these wonderful stories more accessible, more fun (that word again!). This is not a scholarly effort. I am not a scholar or a Pāli translator. I have simply taken the original texts and edited them for a modern audience. I have also added some illustrations.

You will sometimes run across single Jātaka Tales in print, and some of them are really wonderful. One of my favorites is The Magic of Patience, which was also one of my childrens’ favorite books when they were young. I strongly encourage you to find such publications. But here I want to take the entire body of literature, all 547 stories, and re-tell and edit the stories as a complete collection. The Jātaka Tales are sort of the guilty pleasure (or, to be more Buddhist, a harmless pleasure) of Buddhism.

Language Issues – Pāli and English

As I have worked my way through these stories, and indeed in my entire experience of reading the Pāli Canon, I have come to some understandings about this extraordinary literature that I would like to share.

There are many erudite discussions of the Jātaka Tales in books and on the Internet, and I am not trying to do what they do. This is not because I do not respect that type of effort because I most certainly do. But I am trying to make these stories more accessible. And to that end I am trying to balance the idioms of the original Pāli – which uses a lot of passive tense – the unique and sometimes quirky Victorian language of the original translations, and modern language. One advantage that we have now is that many Sanskrit terms like “dharma” – which is “dhamma” in Pāli - and “karma” – which is “kamma” in Pāli - have come into common use. The Victorian translators did not have that luxury, and so they tried to find terms that the people of that time would understand.

Some of the language defies translation. For example, the original texts use the term “bhikkhu.” This is normally translated as “monk.” However, the convention of that time was to address a gathering using the term that referred to the highest-ranking person in attendance. The rank order was 1) monk, 2) nun, 3) layman, and 4) laywoman. So if only laywomen were present, the Buddha would address the talk to laywomen. If both laymen and laywomen were present, the talk was addressed to laymen. And if even a single monk were present, the Buddha would address the talk to monks. Thus the term “bhikkhu” simply meant that one monk was present.

There is no way to capture this convention in English. Most of the Jātaka Tales refer to “bhikkhus.” The Victorian translations used the term “Brethren,” which mapped to their Anglican understanding. I use the term “monk.” But this does not mean that only monks were present. It only means that among the members of the Buddha’s community that were present, there was at least one monk. I was tempted to simply use the word “bhikkhu,” but the tradeoff is that in stories that I am trying to make accessible, this is an awkward term for most people.

Another issue is the as mentioned passive tense. Modern writers will probably cringe at the pervasive use of passive tense. But this is how both the original Pāli and the Victorian translations tend to be. I have also seen – since I live in the desert Southwest – that the oral traditions of Native Americans tend to be this way as well. Again, I am no expert in this area, but it may be that stories that are told around a campfire tend to use more passive tense.

So these are some of the language issues that I am trying to balance. The goal is to provide a readable rendering of the stories, one that is enjoyable and yet also maintains some of the original idioms and flavor.

The Oral Tradition

And while I am on this topic, I would like to give special thanks to the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Before I moved here, I read a lot about the oral tradition. I experienced a little of that when I went to India. But here in New Mexico, living among Native Americans, I have gotten to experience first-hand what that is like.

Native American languages are, like Pāli, oral traditions. They have no written language. So from the time children are very young, they learn everything from stories that are told and retold.

I have had two wonderful experiences in how this feels. One was at Taos Pueblo, where a young University of New Mexico student and a member of the Pueblo gave a tour of the Pueblo. He told many stories. When I got home I looked up his stories on the Internet, and what I found was that the stories that the Indians tell about events can be quite a bit different from the “conventional history.” For example, the Taos Pueblo version of the Taos Revolt of 1847 is quite a bit different, and it turns out that there is a lot of evidence to support the Taos Pueblo version.

Later that summer I had a wonderful tour of Santa Clara Pueblo, which is near Los Alamos. This was also done by a member of the Pueblo. His day job was as a fire fighter. Many of the Pueblos and Reservations here have firefighting brigades, mainly to fight wildfires. It is one of the ways in which they can make a living. It is extremely dangerous work.

This man was on vacation, but instead of going away or doing nothing, he decided to give tours of the Pueblo. For over two hours he told story after story. One story went as far back as pre-Spanish times. (Coronado led the first Spanish expedition to New Mexico in 1540. Locally this is known as the Entrada.) Another story happened only a few years ago. He went from one story to another as if all of time were part of a single continuum. What happened 600 years ago may as well have been last Tuesday.

You could tell that these stories were embedded in his DNA, and that is probably true for most of the people from the Pueblo. It is one thing to write something down and read it in a book. It is quite another thing to grow up hearing these stories over and over again. Everyone in the community knows these stories, and they can probably all repeat them verbatim.

The issue of time in such a culture is quite different from what we normally experience. When I was in India they told me that they do not think of time as being a particular year or day or month. Time is relative. It happened before this or about when that happened and so on. Time is more fluid. It weaves together. It is more like the water in a stream than discrete events. And as for the Santa Clarans, it all blends together.

This is why for cultures like Native Americans the preservation of language is so important. Language reflects culture, and the culture can only be properly preserved in a language that reflects that culture. For Buddhists, we are fortunate that Pāli and Sanskrit - which are the technical languages of Buddhism - did not face near cultural extinction. In fact, Pāli and Sanskrit have thrived and been preserved now for something like 3,000 years. And many times the best way to “translate” something into English is not to translate it at all, but to use the original term, and then make sure that English speakers understand the nuances of the term.

One of the advantages of reading a great deal of the Pāli Canon is that over time some of these subtle cultural nuances work their way into your own DNA. This is why I tend to emphasize quantity over detailed analysis in reading the Buddhist texts. Just read as much as you can and understand it as best as you can, and don’t turn anything that isn’t clear into a problem. Even the greatest scholars disagree about what some things mean. But by reading as much as you can rather than diving in as deep as you can, I think you can replicate some of the experience of the oral traditions. Then a lot of the subtle culture of Buddhism creeps into your DNA, rather than putting you in a position to write a paper about something.

But whatever you do or however you approach these texts, please do not follow what I say blindly any more than you would anyone else. The best way to approach the Pāli Canon is to work your way through it as best you can. Over time it will become personal. You will make your own observations and come to your own conclusions. The best outcome is that at some point you make it your own.

The Jātaka Tales and the Path

One of the things that stands out to me about the stories of the monks and nuns of the Buddha’s time is the different temperaments and how an individual’s personality leads them to the Dharma through a different doorway. Subsequently this different doorway leads to the Dharma expressing itself in different ways. It is like artists, all of whom create different art.

We have a vast literature from the Buddha’s time, many thousands and thousands of pages of teachings that have been preserved by the Saṇgha over the past 2500 years. Students of the Buddha’s teaching will know the iconic teachings: the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the four elements, dependent co-arising, and so forth. But for any one student, one approach may speak to her or him in a uniquely personal way.

One of the stories from this collection that speaks to a unique path is Jātaka 124, The Fruits of Selflessness. In this story an unusually selfless monk finds his doorway to the Dharma through service. He spends his time taking good care of the monastery:

He was meticulous in the performance of the duties of the Dharma Hall, the monastery’s bath house, and so forth. He was perfect in the observance of the 14 major and the 80 minor disciplines. He used to sweep the monastery, the cells, the walkways, and the path leading to their monastery.

The Dharma is not all about supernormal powers and meditative accomplishments. Sometimes it is about the simplicity of selfless service. This is the lesson of this particularly simple and profound story, and it is through stories like this that we see one of the many doorways to the Dharma.

This is part of the challenge of following the Buddha’s path. In the beginning it can be overwhelming. The Buddha’s teachings are not simple. They have great depth and great breadth. And we have to keep pushing – gently – in order to find our unique doorway, and our own unique expression of the Dharma.

The way we do that is one step at a time. One of the great values of this wonderful literature is that we can nibble away at the edges of the Dharma. We see people just like us, even though these stories are centuries old. We know these people all too well. They have the same foibles and challenges that we do. And it is in these common traits that we connect to followers of the Buddha throughout time.

Stories about Virtue

One of the most touching stories in this collection is Jātaka 180. It is about generosity. It so happened that at the time that I was editing this story, I heard Ajahm Brahm (Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia) tell an inspiring story about the generosity of a brain damaged girl in Thailand. (I retell this story in the introductory notes to Jātaka 180.) One of the beauties of virtuous qualities is that you don’t have to be especially smart or accomplished or successful or anything like that to act on them. In fact, the especially smart and accomplished and successful are often the most handicapped when it comes to manifesting the profound simplicity of virtue.

We live in a world with so much negativity. Of course this is not lost in the Buddha’s teachings. It is, after all, the First Noble Truth. Bad stuff happens. But our minds are so drawn to negativity that – as also the Buddha classically taught – we are simply making our own misery.

The beauty and the gratitude that come with deeper understandings of the Buddadharma can make you increasingly sensitive to how our minds do this. I am amazed at how often I will make a simple, positive remark, and someone will push back with something negative. More often than not it is something simple like commenting on a majestic view of a mountain or the good that a charity does or something like that. It could be anything. And so often and so inevitably someone will say, “Oh, that view isn’t so great” or “that charity has this or that problem.” The mind has to go instantly for the kill. And I often wonder, “Why would you even say something like that.”

Even seemingly positive things like generosity can come from a negative point of view. I give to this charity because I hate the people who oppose it. It is a statement more about what you are against than what you are for.

The world has plenty of negativity. While the First Noble Truth points out the inevitability of stress in the human realm, ultimately the Buddha’s teachings are about how to find true happiness. Being kind and generous brings happiness. Being compassionate, patient, and forgiving brings happiness. The calming, healing practice of meditation brings happiness. Wisdom brings happiness. And the usual ways of searching for happiness - ways that are rooted in fear, anxiety, self-absorption, greed, anger, and delusion – do not. What you buy next at Walmart really isn’t going to do it. Really. And the poor planet suffers very time you act on that delusion.

These stories help to create a mindset that puts virtue before anything else. They encourage a culture of good qualities. And those good qualities are available to anyone. We simply have to move in that direction, away from suffering and toward greater happiness. You will be happier, and the people around you will be, too.

The Pāli Canon as Storytelling

I was writing a friend of mine recently about this project, and I wrote this:

It is probably because of my work with the Jātaka Tales that I have come to think of the suttas more as stories than as didactic teachings. I mean, I know they are teachings, but the discourses always give a context. We know where the Buddha was, who was there, and so on. And we learn so much about the characters of the people. These were real people and real events. We are just so blessed to have had them preserved for 2500 years by the Saṇgha. It gives me a great deal of humility to think that I am the beneficiary of generation after generation of such loving care.

One of these stories is one that I revisited recently because of Vesak, the annual celebration of the Buddha’s birth, his enlightenment, and his passing away. By tradition these all happened on the same day, which is the full moon day in May.

Several months before the Buddha passed away, one of his two chief disciples – Sāriputta – also passed away. Sāriputta is one of the giants of Buddhism. Some of the most complex discourses in the Pāli Canon were given by Sāriputta. He was the great intellect of the Dharma.

To give you some idea of what the Buddha thought of Sāriputta – as well as his other chief disciple Moggallana - see this passage from the Ukkacala Sutta [SN 47.14]. It is the Buddha’s praise for his chief disciples after they passed away. (They died very close to each other):

“This assembly, oh bhikkhus, appears indeed empty to me, now that Sāriputta and Maha Moggallana have passed away. Not empty, for me, is an assembly, nor need I have concern for a place where Sāriputta and Maha Moggallana dwell.

“Those who in the past have been Holy Ones. Fully enlightened Ones, those Blessed Ones, too, had such excellent pairs of disciples as I had in Sāriputta and Maha Moggallana. Those who in the future will be Holy Ones, fully Enlightened Ones, those Blessed Ones too will have such excellent pairs of disciples as I had in Sāriputta and Maha Moggallana.

“Marvelous it is, most wonderful it is, bhikkhus, concerning those disciples, that they will act in accordance with the Master’s Dispensation, will act in according to his advice; that they will be dear to the four Assemblies (monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen), will be loved, respected and honored by them.

This is high praise indeed, from the Buddha himself.

Sāriputta had a particularly close relationship with Ānanda. Ānanda is one of the most endearing people from the Buddha’s time. He was the Buddha’s cousin, although Ānanda was 15 years younger than the Buddha. Ānanda at one point became the Buddha’s personal attendant, but that does not begin to do justice to the role he played. He was the CEO of the Saṇgha. He controlled access to the Buddha, like a chief of staff. You can imagine that a lot of people wanted access to the Buddha, and Ānanda is the one who guarded and protected his time.

But unlike all of the other important disciples during the Buddha’s time, Ānanda was not “perfectly enlightened.” That did not happen to Ānanda until after the Buddha passed away. So one of his endearing qualities is that he is still flawed. In the Buddhist texts he often acts as our surrogate. He asks the kinds of questions that we would ask.

And yet, despite his “flaws,” he was enormously important in the Saṇgha. And he and Sāriputta often resolve problems in the Saṇgha together. There is the famous dispute at the monastery in Kosambi (Kosambiya Sutta [MN 48]) which was finally resolved by the intervention of Sāriputta and Ānanda. As a result of these sorts of situations, Ānanda had a close relationship with Sāriputta, and he was very fond of him.

So when Sāriputta passed away, Ānanda – not being fully enlightened – was quite distraught:

“Venerable sir, since I heard that the Venerable Sāriputta has attained final Nibbāna, my body seems as if it has been drugged, I have become disoriented, the teachings are no longer clear to me.”

The Buddha compassionately but firmly reminds Ānanda of what the Dharma teaches us:

“Why, Ānanda, when Sāriputta attained final Nibbāna, did he take away your aggregate of virtue, or your aggregate of concentration, or your aggregate of wisdom, or your aggregate of liberation, or your aggregate of the knowledge and vision of liberation?”

“No, he did not, venerable sir. But for me the Venerable Sāriputta was an advisor and counsellor, one who instructed, exhorted, inspired, and gladdened me. He was tireless in teaching the Dhamma; he was helpful to his brothers in the holy life. We recollect the nourishment of Dhamma, the wealth of Dhamma, the help of Dhamma given by the Venerable Sāriputta.”

“But have I not already declared, Ānanda, that we must be parted, separated, and severed from all who are dear and agreeable to us? How, Ānanda, is it to be obtained here: ‘May what is born, come to be, conditioned, and subject to disintegration not disintegrate!’? That is impossible. It is just as if the largest branch would break off a great tree standing possessed of heartwood: so too, Ānanda, in the great Bhikkhu Saṅgha standing possessed of heartwood, Sāriputta has attained final Nibbāna. How, Ānanda, is it to be obtained here: ‘May what is born, come to be, conditioned, and subject to disintegration not disintegrate!’? That is impossible.

“Therefore, Ānanda, dwell with yourselves as your own island, with yourselves as your own refuge, with no other refuge; dwell with the Dhamma as your island, with the Dhamma as your refuge, with no other refuge.

Those bhikkhus, Ānanda, either now or after I am gone, who dwell with themselves as their own island, with themselves as their own refuge, with no other refuge; who dwell with the Dhamma as their island, with the Dhamma as their refuge, with no other refuge — it is these bhikkhus, Ānanda, who will be for me topmost of those keen on the training.”

So of course the Buddha is teaching a lesson here. And it is a lovely, poetic, and iconic passage: “dwell with yourselves as your own island.”

But it is also a powerful story. It can easily stand alone as one without the Dharma teaching.

I know that a lot of people find the language and the idioms of the Pāli Canon difficult. And I understand that. It took me a year to work my way through the Majjhima Nikāya the first time that I read it. But one way to make the discourses more accessible is read them as stories. Ask yourself basic questions. What is going on here? Rephrase the passages into story elements. Remember that these are real people These are real events. And as I have said so many times before, we find that in the 2500 years since the Buddha passed away, the human mind and the human condition has not changed one bit.

I hope you find these stories enjoyable and useful.

Eric K. Van Horn

Rio Rancho, NM