Alinacitta Jataka

The Master told this story at Jetavana concerning a young monk of Savatthi who had given up his striving. After ordaining and learning both Patimokkhas, he went to a border village of Kosala to practise meditative absorption in the forest. After three months of effort he had gained nothing, and concluding that he was too attached to worldly comforts, he gave up, returned to Jetavana, and was brought before the Buddha. The Master asked whether he had truly lost heart, and the monk admitted it. The Buddha then told him of a time long past. This is Jataka No. 156 of the Pali Canon.

In the days when Brahmadatta ruled Benares, five hundred carpenters worked in a forest near a river, cutting timber and floating it downstream to build houses. One day a white elephant trod on an acacia splinter, which festered in his foot. The carpenters removed it and healed the wound. In gratitude the elephant helped them in their work, and they fed him generously.

Later the old elephant brought his young white son to the carpenters, entrusted the youngster to their service, and went away. The young elephant worked faithfully and never fouled the water when he bathed.

One day a half-dried lump of the young elephant's dung drifted down the river and lodged near the royal bathing place. The king's elephants refused to enter the water, and the search led to the carpenters' elephant. The king came up the river by raft to take him. The elephant first asked that the carpenters be rewarded for their care, and the king gave them generous wealth. Then the elephant went with the king and became his royal elephant, and the king grew so prosperous that he came to rule all of Jambudipa.

When the king died, the queen was with child. Fearing the news would break the elephant's heart, the ministers kept the death a secret. The king of Kosala besieged Benares, and the queen's astrologers foretold that she would bear a son in seven days. The besiegers agreed to wait that long.

The prince was born and was named Alinacitta, for he had been born to win the hearts of the people. As the besieged army began to lose ground, the courtiers told the elephant the truth and laid the infant at his feet.

The elephant lifted the child onto his head, then placed him in his mother's arms and rushed out to fight. He routed the Kosalan army, seized the Kosalan king by his topknot, and set him down before the infant prince. He did not let the others kill the captive, and released him with a warning never to despise the young ruler. The prince was consecrated at the age of seven, ruled justly, and after his death went to heaven.

The Master spoke two verses: the first says that a great army, glad to rely on Prince Alinacitta, took the discontented Kosalan king alive; the second urges a monk who is well supported, energetic, and cultivating wholesome qualities to reach safety and gradually end every fetter. The commentary explains the wholesome qualities as the thirty-seven factors of awakening and the support as good spiritual friends. Then the Buddha identified the characters: Queen Mahamaya was the mother, the discontented monk was the elephant who won the kingdom for the child, Sariputta was the father elephant, and the Buddha himself was the young prince. Having heard the teaching, the monk became an arahant.

What the story offers a discouraged practitioner is a picture of effort that does not shrink back. The elephant's loyalty, handed from father to son, turns up in a hopeless hour and wins the day, and the Buddha places the monk himself in the elephant's role. A season of fruitless striving, the tale suggests, is not a verdict; with good friends and renewed energy the same person may yet reach the end of the fetters.