Jataka 263
Culla Palobhana Jātaka
The Modest Seduction
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 is another one of those misogynistic stories that I have gone to some lengths to make Buddhist. The original story blames women for seducing men. The real problem, of course, is not with women. It is with sense desire. So I have tried to reframe the story in that way.
“Not through the sea.” The Master told this story at Jetavana. It is also about a backsliding monk. The Master had him brought into the Dharma Hall and asked if it were true that he was a backslider. Yes, he said, it was. “The attraction to women,” the Master said, “in past days led even virtuous men to mischief.” And he told them this story from the past.
Once upon a time Brahmadatta, who was the King of Benares, was childless. He said to his Queen, “Let us offer prayer for a son.” So they offered a prayer. After a long time, the Bodhisatta came down from the world of Brahma and was conceived by this queen.
As soon as he was born, he was bathed and given to a serving woman to nurse. As he took the breast, he cried. He was given to another nurse, but while that woman held him, he would not be quiet. So he was given to a man servant, and as soon as the man took him, he was quiet. After that, men always cared for him. When they fed him, they would give him breast milk from a bottle, or they gave him the breast from behind a screen. Even when he grew older, they could not show him a woman. The King made a separate space for him and a separate room for meditation. These were exclusively for him.
When the lad was 16 years old, the King thought to himself. “I do not have any other son, and this one enjoys no sense pleasures. He does not even wish for the kingdom. What's the good of such a son?”
There was a certain dancing girl. She was clever at dancing and singing and playing music. She was young and able to attract any man she came across. She approached the King and asked what he was thinking about. The King told her what it was.
“Let be, my lord,” she said. “I will charm him, and I will make him love me.”
“Well, if you can attract my son, who has never had any dealings whatsoever with women, he shall be King, and you shall be his chief Queen!”
“Leave that to me, my lord,” she said, “and don’t worry.”
So she went to the royal guards and said, “At dawn tomorrow I will go to the sleeping place of the prince, and outside the room where he meditates I will sing. If he is angry, you must tell me, and I will go away. But if he listens, speak my praises.” This they agreed to do.
So in the morning she took her place and sang with a voice of honey so that the music was as sweet as the song, and the song as sweet as the music. The prince lay listening. On the next day, he declared that she should stand near to him and sing. On the next day, he asked her to stand in the private chamber, and on the next, in his presence. And so by and by desire arose in him. He went the way of the world and knew the joy of love. “I will not let another man have this woman,” he resolved. And taking his sword, he ran amuck through the street, chasing the people away. The King had him captured, and he banished the prince from the city along with the girl.
They journeyed together to the jungle, away down the Ganges. There, with the river on one side and the sea on the other, they built a hut, and there they lived. She sat indoors and cooked the roots and bulbs, and the Bodhisatta brought wild fruits from the forest.
One day, when he was away in search of fruits, a hermit from an island in the sea, who was going on his rounds to get food, saw smoke as he passed through the air. So he went up to this hut.
“Sit down until the food is cooked,” the woman said. He was seduced by this woman’s charms. It brought him out from his mindfulness. This caused a breach in his purity. And he, like a crow with broken wing, was unable to leave her. He sat there the whole day until he saw the Bodhisatta coming. Then he ran off quickly in the direction of the sea. “This must be an enemy,” he thought, and drawing his sword, he set off on a chase.
Figure: “This must be an enemy!”
But the ascetic, pretending to rise up into the air. fell down into the sea. Then the Bodhisatta thought, “That man is undoubtedly an ascetic who can fly through the air. But now that his mindfulness is broken, he has fallen into the sea. I must go help him.” And standing on the shore he uttered these verses:
“Not through the sea, but by your magic power,
You journeyed here at an earlier hour.
Now by a pretty woman’s company
You have been made to plunge beneath the sea.
“Full of seductive traits, beautiful all,
They tempt the most pure-hearted to his fall.
Down—down they sink, a man should flee afar
From desires, when he knows the lure they are.
“Whomso they serve, for gold or for desire,
They burn him up like fuel in the fire.”
When the ascetic heard the words that the Bodhisatta spoke, he stood up in the midst of the sea. He resumed his mindfulness, rose up into the air, and went away to his dwelling place. The Bodhisatta thought, “That ascetic, with all his weight, flies through the air like a fleck of cotton. Why should I not cultivate my mind and pass through the air!”
So he returned to his hut and led the woman back to the city again. Then he told her to be off. He went into the jungle where he built a hut in a pleasant spot. There he became a recluse. He developed his mental qualities, cultivated the Faculties (1) faith/confidence, 2) energy, 3) mindfulness, 4) concentration/samadhi and 5) wisdom/insight) and the Attainments (jhānas), and he became destined to be reborn in the world of Brahma.
When the Master ended this discourse, he taught the Four Noble Truths, at the conclusion of which the backsliding monk became established in the fruit of stream-entry. Then he identified the birth: “At that time,” he said, “I was the youth that overcame sensual desire.”
