Jataka 244
Vīticcha Jātaka
Free from Desire
as told by Eric Van Horn
originally translated by William Henry Denham Rouse, Cambridge University
originally edited by Professor Edward Byles Cowell, Cambridge University
This story reads like a Zen kōan. The punch line is a familiar Buddhist teaching about craving and non-craving.
“What he sees.” The Master told this story while he was at Jetavana. It is about a runaway samaṇa (spiritual seeker) who wandered about the country.
It is said that this man could not find anyone who would debate with him in all India. Then he went to Sāvatthi and asked whether there was anyone who would debate with him. “Yes,” he was told, “the Supreme Buddha.” When he heard this, he and his many followers went to Jetavana. They asked a question of the Master while he was giving a discourse on the four kinds of disciples (stream-enterer, once-returner, non-returner, and arahant). The Master answered his question and then put one to him in return. The man was unable to answer it, so he got up, and ran away. The crowd sitting there exclaimed, “One word, sir, vanquished the wayfarer!” The Master said, “Yes, mendicants, and just as I vanquished him now with one word, so I did before.” Then he told them this story from the past.
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was the King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a brahmin family in the kingdom of Kāsi. When he grew up, he mastered his passions and embraced the holy life. And he lived for a long time in the Himalaya Mountains.
Once he went down from the mountains and lived near a large town. He stayed in a hut of leaves built beside a bend of the river Ganges. A certain samaṇa, who found no one who could debate him throughout all India, went to that town. “Is there anyone,” he asked, “who can debate with me?”
“Yes,” they said, and they told him about the power of the Bodhisatta. So, followed by a great multitude, he made his way to the place where the Bodhisatta lived, and after greeting him, took a seat.
“Will you drink,” the Bodhisatta asked, “of the Ganges water, infused with wild wood odors?”
The samaṇa tried to trick him with his words. “What is Ganges? Ganges may be sand, Ganges may be water, Ganges may be the near bank, Ganges may be the far bank!”
The Bodhisatta said to the man, “Besides the sand, the water, the near and the far bank, what other Ganges can you have?”
The samaṇa had no answer for this. He got up and ran away. When he had gone, the Bodhisatta spoke these verses as a teaching to the assembled multitude:
“What he sees, he will not have.
What he sees not he will crave.
He may go a long way yet,
What he wants he will not get.
“He condemns what he has got.
Once ’tis gained, he wants it not.
He craves everything always,
Who craves nothing earns our praise.”
Figure: Don’t Mess with Mr. B.
When this discourse ended, the Master identified the birth: “The samaṇa is the same in both cases, and I was the recluse.”
