Jataka 423
Indriya Jātaka
The Power of Sense Desire
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
This story actually has two Jātaka Tales, one within the other. One of the stories is about sexual desire, and the other is about the desire for food. Sexual desire is the most powerful sense desire, while desire for food is the most common.
However, I think this story perpetuates a myth about the pursuit of the path, and that is that giving up sense desire is painful and something to be endured. By the time one’s meditation practice advances to a certain point, the practitioner loses sexual desire and—largely—the desire for food as well. The joy, peace, contentment, happiness, and bliss of meditation far surpasses that of sense desire. Sexual desire actually feels gross, and it is common for meditators to skip their single, daily meal while enjoying the bliss of meditation.
“Who through desire.” The Master told this story while he was living at Jetavana. It is about the temptation of a monk by his former wife. The story is that a young man of a good family from Sāvatthi heard the Master’s preaching. And thinking it impossible to lead the holy life—perfectly complete and pure—as a householder, he determined to become a monk under the saving doctrine and so make an end of misery. So he gave up his house and property to his wife and children, and he asked the Master to ordain him. The Master did so.
However, because he was the junior monk in his alms rounds with his teachers and instructors, and as there were many monks, he got little respect in laymen’s houses or in the communal dining hall. He would only be able to sit on a stool or a bench at the end of the row of novices. His food was tossed to him hastily on a ladle. He got gruel made of broken lumps of rice, solid food that was stale or decaying, or sprouts that were dried and burned, and this was not enough to sustain him.
He took what he had to the wife he had left. She took his bowl, saluted him, emptied it, and gave him instead well-cooked gruel and rice with sauce and curry. The monk was captivated by the love of such food, and he could not leave his wife. And so she thought she would test his affection for her.
One day she had a countryman bathed with white clay. He set down in her house with some others of his people for whom she had sent. She gave them all something to eat and drink. They sat eating and enjoying it. At the door to the house she had some bulls harnessed to wheels and a cart set ready. She sat in a back room cooking cakes. Her husband came and stood at the door. Seeing him, one old servant told his mistress that there was an elder at the door. “Salute him and bid him to pass on.” But even though he did so repeatedly, the monk remained there, and so he told his mistress.
She went to the door, and lifting up the curtain to see, she cried, “This is the father of my sons.” She went out and saluted him. Taking his bowl and bidding him to enter, she gave him food. Once he had eaten, she saluted him again and said, “Sir, you are a saint now. We have been staying in this house all this time. But there can be no proper householder’s life without a master, so we will find another house and go far into the country. Be diligent in your good works, and forgive me if I am doing wrong.”
For a time her husband was as if his heart would break. Then he said, “I cannot leave you; do not go. I will return to my worldly life. Bring a layman’s clothes to me at the monastery. I will give up my bowl and robes and come back to you.”
Figure: The temptation
She agreed. The brother went to his monastery, and—giving up his bowl and robes to his teachers and instructors—he explained the situation in answer to their questions. He said that he could not leave his wife and was going back to worldly life. But they took him to the Master against his will. They told him that he was backsliding and wanted to go back to worldly life. The Master said, “Is this story true?” “It is, Lord.” “Who is causing you to backslide?” “My wife.” “Brother, that woman is the cause of trouble to you. In the past you also fell from the four stages of mystic meditation (the four jhānas) and became very miserable. Then you were delivered through me from your misery and regained the power of meditation you had lost.” And then he told this story from the past.
Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as the son of the King’s family priest and his brahmin wife. On the day of his birth there was a blazing of weapons all over the city, and so they called him young Jotipāla. When he grew up, he learned all the arts at Takkasilā University, and he showed his skill in them to the King. But he gave up his position in the court, and without telling anyone, he went out by the back door. He went to a forest, and he became a recluse in the Kaviṭṭhaka hermitage called Sakkadattiya. There he attained perfection in meditation.
As he lived there, many hundreds of sages waited on him. He was attended by a great company, and he had seven chief disciples. One of them was the sage Sālissara. He left the Kaviṭṭhaka hermitage for the Suraṭṭha country. There he lived on the banks of the river Sātodikā with many thousands of sages in his company. Another sage was Meṇḍissara who lived with many thousands of sages near the town of Lambacūḷaka in the country of King Pajaka. The sage Pabbata lived with many thousands of sages in a certain forest country. The sage Kāḷadevala lived with many thousands of sages in a certain wooded mountain in Avantī and the Deccan. The sage Kisavaccha lived alone near the city of Kumbhavatī in the park of King Daṇḍaki.
The recluse Anusissa was the attendant to the Bodhisatta. He lived with him. Nārada, the younger brother of Kāḷadevala, lived alone in a cave in the mountainous country of Arañjara in the Central Region.
Now not far from Arañjara there is a very populous town. In the town there is a great river in which many men bathe. And along its banks there sit many beautiful courtesans tempting the men. The recluse Nārada saw one of them, and being enamored of her, he forsook his meditations. And pining away without food, he lay paralyzed by the bonds of love for seven days. His brother Kāḷadevala—by reflection—knew the cause for this. He went flying through the air into the cave. Nārada saw him and asked why he had come. “I knew you were ill, and I have come to tend you.” Nārada disputed this with a lie. “You are talking nonsense, falsehood, and vanity.” But Kāḷadevala refused to leave him, and he brought Sālissara, Meṇḍissara, and Pabbatissara. He disputed them all in the same way. So Kāḷadevala went flying through the air to fetch their master Sarabhaṅga. When the Master arrived, he saw that Nārada had fallen into the power of sensual desire, and he asked if this were so. Nārada rose at the words, saluted, and confessed. The Master said, “Nārada, those who fall into the power of sense desire waste away in misery in this life, and in their next existence, they are born in hell.” And so he spoke the first stanza:
Who through desire obeys the senses’ sway,
Loses both worlds and pines his life away.
Hearing him, Nārada answered, “Teacher, the pursuing sensual desires is happiness. Why do you call such happiness misery?” Sarabhaṅga said, “Listen, then,” and he spoke the second stanza:
Happiness and misery ever on each other’s footsteps press,
You have seen their alternation; seek a truer happiness.
Nārada said, “Teacher, such misery is hard to bear. I cannot endure it.” The Great Being said, “Nārada, the misery that comes has to be endured,” and he spoke the third stanza:
He who endures in troublous time with troubles to contend
Is strong to reach that final bliss where all our troubles end.
But Nārada answered, “Teacher, the happiness of love’s desire is the greatest happiness. I cannot abandon it.” The Great Being said, “Virtue is not to be abandoned for any cause,” and he spoke the fourth stanza:
For love of lust, for hopes of gain, for miseries, great and small,
Do not undo your saintly past, and so from virtue fall.
Sarabhaṅga—having shown the Dharma in four stanzas—admonished his younger brother Kāḷadevala in the fifth stanza:
Know the worldly life is trouble, victual should be freely lent.
No delight in gathering riches, no distress when they are spent.
The sixth stanza is one spoken by the Master in his Perfect Wisdom concerning Devala's admonition of Nārada:
So far Black Devala most wisely spoke,
“None worse than he who bows to senses' yoke.”
Then Sarabhaṅga spoke in warning, “Nārada, listen to this. He who will not do what is proper to be done, must weep and lament like the young man who went to the forest.” And then he told this story from the past.
Once upon a time in a certain town of Kāsi, there was a certain young brahmin. He was beautiful, strong, and stout as an elephant. His thoughts were, “Why should I support my parents by working on a farm, or to have a wife and children, or do good works of charity and so forth? I won’t support anyone or do any good works. But I will go into the forest and sustain myself by killing deer.”
So with the five kinds of weapons (sword, spear, battle-axe, bow, and mace) he went to the Himālaya. There he killed and ate many deer. In the Himālaya region he found a great mountain pass. It was surrounded by mountains on the banks of the river Vidhavā. And there he lived on the flesh of the slain deer, which he cooked on hot coals.
He thought, “I will not always be strong. When I grow weak I will not be able to range the forest. I will drive many kinds of wild animals into this pass, close it off with a fence, and then I will kill and eat them at my pleasure without roaming the forest.” And so he did this.
As time passed by, that very thing came to pass. The experience of all the world fell away from him. He lost control over his hands and feet. He could not move freely about here and there. He could not find his food or drink. His body withered. He became the ghost of a man. He had wrinkles furrowing his body like the earth in a hot season. Ill-favored and ill-knit, he became miserable.
As time passed, in a similar manner, the King of Sivi wanted to eat flesh roasted on coals in the forest. So he turned over his kingdom to his ministers, and with the five kinds of weapons, he went to the forest and ate the flesh of the deer he killed. In time he came to that mountain pass where he saw that man. Although fearful, he summoned up the courage to ask who he was. “Lord, I am the ghost of a man, reaping the fruit of the deeds I have done. Who are you?” “The King of Sivi.” “Why have you come here?” “To eat the flesh of deer.” He said, “Great King, I have become the ghost of a man because I came here with that same objective.” And telling the whole story at length. he explained his misfortune to the King. Then he spoke the remaining stanzas:
King, ’tis with me as if I’d been with foes in bitter strife,
Labor, and skill in handicraft, a peaceful home, a wife,
All have been lost to me. My works bear fruit in this my life.
Worsted a thousandfold I am, kinless and without stay,
Strayed from the law of righteousness, like ghost I’m fallen away.
This state is mine because I caused, instead of joy, distress,
Bound as it were with flaming fire, I have no happiness.
With that he added, “O King, through lust for happiness I caused misery to others and have even in this life become the ghost of a man. Do not commit evil deeds. Go to your own city and do good deeds of charity and the like.” The King did so and completed the path to heaven.
The monk was roused by the teacher Sarabhaṅga’s account of this case. He became troubled, and after saluting and gaining his teacher’s pardon, by the proper practice he regained the power of meditation he had lost. Sarabhaṅga refused to leave him there, and took him back with him to his own hermitage.
After the lesson, the Master taught the Four Noble Truths. After the teaching the backsliding monk was established in the fruition of the First Path (stream-entry). Then the Master identified the birth: “At that time Nārada was the backsliding monk, Sālissara was Sāriputta, Meṇḍissara was Kassapa, Pabbata was Anuruddha, Kāḷadevala was Kaccāna, Anusissa was Ānanda, Kisavaccha was Moggallāna, and I was Sarabhaṅga.”
