Jataka 328
Ananusociya Jātaka
The Recluse’s Wife
as told by Eric Van Horn
originally translated by H.T. Francis and R.A. Neil, Cambridge University
originally edited by Professor Edward Byles Cowell, Cambridge University
Even if you are not a Buddhist, the relentless truth of death is a constant reality for everyone. Death can come at any time, and it is inevitable for everyone. So I am often surprised at how even my Buddhist friends will grieve inconsolably when someone dies.
The Buddha’s message to us is this: Develop good qualities while you can. Be a good person. Cultivate virtue. This is the way to empower yourself in this life, and to ensure a good future, wherever you are reborn. If you do that, then when you die, your friends should rejoice because you will most likely be reborn in a heavenly realm.
“Why should I shed tears.” The Master told this story while he was living at Jetavana. It is about a certain landowner who had lost his wife. On her death, they say, he neither washed himself nor took food, and he neglected his farm duties. Overcome with grief, he would wander around the cemetery grieving. Yet despite this, his capacity to attain stream entry blazed forth like a halo upon his head.
Early one morning, the Master cast his eye upon the world and considered him. He said, “Except for me, there is no one that can remove this man’s sorrow and grant him the power of entering the First Path. I will be his refuge.”
So when he had returned from his alms rounds and eaten his meal, he took an attendant monk and went to the landowner’s house. When the landowner saw that the Master was coming, he went out to meet him. With marks of respect, he seated him in an appropriate place, and then he sat down next to him.
The Master asked, “Why, lay brother, are you silent?”
“Reverend sir,” he replied, “I am grieving for my wife.”
The Master said, “Lay brother, that which is breakable is broken. But when this happens, one ought not to grieve. Sages of old, when they lost a wife, knew this truth, and therefore they did not sorrow.” And then at his request, the Master told him this story from the past.
This story will be found in the Cullabodhi Birth (Jātaka 443). Here follows a short summary of it.
Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a brahmin family. And when he grew up, he studied all the arts at Takkasilā University, and then he returned to his parents. In this birth the Great Being became a holy young student. Then his parents told him they would find a wife for him.
“I have no desire for a married life,” said the Bodhisatta. “When you are dead, I will adopt the holy life of a recluse.”
But when they begged him to reconsider, he had a golden image made. He said, “If you can find me a maiden who looks like this, I will take her to be my wife.”
His parents sent forth some emissaries with a large escort. They told the emissaries to place the golden image in a covered carriage and go and search through the plains of India until they found just such a young brahmin girl. They were to give this golden image in exchange for her and bring the girl back with them.
Now at this time a certain holy man was passing from the Brahma world and was reborn as a young girl in a town in the kingdom of Kāsi. She lived in the household of a brahmin worth eighty crores. Her name was “Sammillabhāsinī.” At the age of 16 she was a fair and gracious maiden, like to an Apsara (a celestial singer and dancer). She was endowed with all the marks of feminine beauty. And since she was never tempted by the power of sensual passion, she was perfectly pure.
So the men took the golden image and wandered about until they reached this village. The inhabitants, on seeing the image, asked, “Why is Sammillabhāsinī, the daughter of such and such a brahmin, represented in this statue?” When they heard this, the messengers went to find the brahmin family, and they chose Sammillabhāsinī for the prince’s bride. And just as the Bodhisatta had done, she sent a message to her parents, saying, “When you are dead, I shall adopt the holy life. I have no desire for the circumstance of marriage.” They said to her, “What are you thinking, maiden?” And accepting the golden image, they sent off their daughter with a great retinue.
The marriage ceremony took place against the wishes of both the Bodhisatta and Sammillabhāsinī. And even though they shared the same room and the same bed, they did not regard one another with the eye of sensual passion. Rather the lived together like two holy men or two female saints.
By and bye the father and mother of the Bodhisatta died. He performed their funeral rites, and then he called Sammillabhāsinī to him and said to her, “My dear, my family property amounts to eighty crores, and yours, too, is worth another eighty crores. Take all this and enter upon household life. I will become a recluse.”
“Sir,” she answered, “if you become a recluse, I will become one, too. I cannot abandon you.”
“Come then,” he said. They gave away all their wealth in almsgiving, and throwing up their worldly fortune as it were a lump of phlegm, they traveled to the Himālaya country. Both of them adopted the holy life. After living there for a long time on wild fruits and roots, they at length came down from the Himālayas to procure salt and vinegar. Gradually they found their way to Benares, and they lived there in the royal grounds.
While they were living there, this young and delicate female recluse, from eating insipid rice of a mixed quality, was attacked by dysentery. And not being able to get any medicine, she grew very weak. One day the Bodhisatta picked her up and carried her to the gate of the city. There he laid her on a bench in a certain hall, and then he went into the city for alms.
He had just barely left when she passed away. The people, beholding the great beauty of this female recluse, gathered around her, weeping and lamenting. The Bodhisatta, after going on his alms round, heard about her death. He said, “That which is conditioned has dissolved. All impermanent existences are of this kind.” With these words he sat down on the bench where she lay, and eating the mixture of food, he rinsed out his mouth. The people that stood by gathered around him and said, “Reverend sir, what was this female recluse to you?”
“When I was a layman,” he replied, “she was my wife.”
“Holy sir,” they said, “while we weep and lament and cannot control our feelings, why do you not weep?”
The Bodhisatta said, “While she was alive, she belonged to me in a certain way. Nothing belongs to her that has gone to another world. She has passed into the power of others. Why, therefore, should I weep?” And teaching the people the Dharma, he recited these stanzas:
Why should I shed tears for thee,
Fair Sammillabhāsinī?
Passed to deaths majority
You are henceforth lost to me.
Wherefore should frail man lament
What to him is only lent?
He too draws his mortal breath
Forfeit every hour to death.
Be he standing, sitting still,
Moving, resting, what he will,
In the twinkling of an eye,
In a moment death is nigh.
Life I count a thing unstable,
Loss of friends inevitable.
Cherish all that are alive,
Sorrow not should you survive.
Figure: Why, therefore, should I weep?
Thus did the Great Being teach the Dharma, illustrating by these four stanzas the impermanence of things. The people performed funeral rites over the female recluse. The Bodhisatta returned to the Himālayas. And entering on the higher knowledge arising from deep meditation, he was destined to rebirth in the Brahma world.
The Master, having ended his lesson, taught the Four Noble Truths. At the conclusion of the teaching, the landowner attained to fruition of the First Path. Then the Master identified the birth: “At that time the mother of Rāhula was Sammillabhāsinī, and I was the recluse.”
