Alambusā Jātaka

The Buddha told Jātaka No. 523, as the Jātaka Atthakatha records it, while staying at Jetavana. A monk had become discontented because of the wife he had left behind. The commentary says the setting of the tale is given in full in the Indriya Jātaka. The Buddha asked the monk whether it was true that he had been unsettled, and by whom.

The monk admitted that his former wife was the cause. The Buddha told him she had done him harm before. Long ago she made him fall from meditation and lie three years in a lost and distracted state. When he recovered his senses he cried out in sorrow. Then the Buddha told an old story.

When Brahmadatta reigned at Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a brahmin family of Kāsi. He learned all the liberal arts and then took up the ascetic life, living on wild fruit and roots in a forest. A doe came to the place where he had passed water, and she ate grass and drank water mingled with his seed. She became so fond of him that she conceived.

In due course the doe gave birth to a boy, and the Bodhisatta cared for him with a father's affection. He named the boy Isisiṅga. When the lad was old enough, the Bodhisatta admitted him to the ascetic life.

When the Bodhisatta grew old, he took his son to a grove and gave him a warning. In the Himalaya country, he said, there are women as fair as flowers. They bring complete ruin on anyone who falls into their power. The young ascetic was told never to come under their influence.

Soon afterward, the Bodhisatta was reborn in the Brahma world, a heavenly plane higher than Sakka's own realm. Isisiṅga stayed behind in the Himalayas and lived there as a strict ascetic. He practised absorption and restrained all his senses.

The power of Isisiṅga's virtue shook the abode of Sakka, king of the gods. Sakka looked into the cause and feared that this ascetic might take his position. He decided to send a heavenly nymph to break the ascetic's virtue.

He searched through the whole heavenly world, among twenty-five million handmaids. Only one, the nymph Alambusā, was equal to the task. He summoned her and ordered her to destroy the sage's virtue.

In the verses of this Jātaka, Sakka tells Alambusā to go and draw near the hermit and overcome him. Alambusā asks why Sakka has chosen her alone. She points out that the gardens of Nandana, Sakka's heavenly pleasure garden, hold many other nymphs and says it is the turn of one of them.

Sakka answers that none can compare with her skill. She agrees to go but admits that she is afraid. Many a fool, she says, has gone to hell for wronging a saint. Even so, she obeys, and at dawn she appears before Isisiṅga while he is sweeping out his hut.

Isisiṅga, who had never known such a visitor, asked who she was. His words are long and admiring, and they show his state of mind. Alambusā stayed quiet and listened. She saw from his long speech how disturbed he had become. She then invited him to take her into his hermitage.

When she turned and began to move away, the sage hurried after her and caught her. The text relates this plainly, without detail. His virtue fell before her charm.

Alambusā thought of Sakka's hall, and he sent a golden car for them. The sage lay in her company for what the verses call many days, though three full years passed over his head. They passed as if they were a single moment.

At last he woke. He saw green trees on every side, an altar close by, and groves ringing with the cuckoo. He wept bitterly. No offering was being made, no hymn raised, no sacrifice performed. He asked who had led him astray in this lonely forest, like a ship loaded with treasure that is swallowed by the sea.

Alambusā reasoned that if she kept silent, he would curse her. So she stood before him in plain sight and told him the truth. She had been sent by Sakka, and she had been too careless to see that her thought of him had spoiled his bliss.

Isisiṅga remembered his father's warning. He grieved that he had ruined himself by disobeying it. In four verses he repeated his father's words about women who are as lovely as lotus flowers and said he had let that counsel pass unheeded. He cursed his old way of living and resolved to do as he was told from now on.

Isisiṅga gave up sensual desire and entered once more into deep meditation. When Alambusā saw the strength of his virtue and understood that he had regained his state of ecstasy, she was frightened. She bowed to his feet and begged his forgiveness. She told him that heaven itself had trembled at his name.

The sage let her go. He told her that he forgave her and blessed her, Sakka and the gods. Alambusā bowed, circled him to the right with joined hands and left in the same golden car. Sakka, pleased, said he would grant any boon, and she asked never to be sent again to tempt a saint.

The Buddha ended his lesson by revealing the Truths. At the close of the teaching the discontented monk was established in the fruit of the first path. Then he identified the birth. Alambusā was the monk's wife from his former life, Isisiṅga was the backsliding monk, and the great sage who had been his father was the Buddha himself.

Jātaka No. 523 is not mainly about a temptress. It is about how a long, steady practice can seem secure, and yet be lost in a moment of inattention. Isisiṅga did not fall because he was wicked. He fell because he had never met what his father warned about, and had not prepared himself for it.

The story is also hopeful. When Isisiṅga woke, he did not stay in regret. He recalled his father's counsel, gave up desire and returned to meditation. The Buddha used this to tell the restless monk that a lost path can be found again. What counts is that one wakes, remembers the teaching, and takes it up once more.