Araka Jātaka

The Buddha told Jātaka No. 169, as the Jātaka Atthakatha records it, at Jetavana. The commentary says he told it in connection with the Scripture on Loving-kindness. He began by speaking directly to the monks about what that practice can give them.

He said that loving-kindness, practised with all one's devotion, developed, made a vehicle of progress, made one's constant aim and well begun, may be expected to bring eleven blessings. Then he named them one by one, and the list is worth reading slowly.

A person who practises loving-kindness sleeps happily and wakes happily. He sees no bad dreams. He is dear to other people, and the spirits guard him. Fire, poison and sword do not come near him.

His mind becomes quickly absorbed in concentration, and his face grows calm. He dies without bewilderment. And if he gains nothing higher, he goes to the Brahma world, a high heavenly plane reached through meditation. The Buddha added that these eleven blessings come when loving-kindness is practised with renunciation of one's own wishes.

The Buddha then said how a monk should live out this teaching. He should show kindness to all creatures, whether he is formally told to or not. He should be a friend to those who are friendly, a friend to those who are not, and a friend to those who are indifferent. He should offer sympathy in joy and in sorrow, and keep an even mind.

By doing this, the Buddha said, a monk will go to the Brahma world even without having attained the paths or fruits. He added that wise people of old, by cultivating loving-kindness for seven years, dwelt in the Brahma heaven for seven ages, each age having one period to wax and one to wane. Then he told a story of the past.

Once, in a former age, the Bodhisatta was born into a brahmin family. When he grew up, he gave up his desires and embraced the religious life. He attained the four Excellences, which are loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. His name was Araka.

He became a teacher and lived in the Himalaya region with a large body of followers. The text gives no details about the hermitage or where exactly it stood. What it does give is the teacher's message, and that is the point of the story.

Araka addressed his band of sages and told them how a recluse ought to live. A recluse must show loving-kindness. He must be sympathetic in both joy and sorrow, and full of equanimity. This thought of loving-kindness, he said, when brought about by resolve, prepares one for the Brahma heaven.

He then explained the blessing of loving-kindness in verse. One verse speaks of a heart that feels boundless pity for all things that have birth, in the heaven above, in the realms below and on the middle earth. The next says that a heart filled with infinite pity and infinite charity has nothing narrow or confined in it.

These verses explain what makes the practice different from ordinary goodwill. Araka's love is not given to a few, and it is not limited by what the other person deserves. It reaches every being in every realm. Where such a heart is full, nothing narrow remains.

This is what the Buddha had called being a friend to the friendly, the unfriendly and the indifferent. The verses were taught by a teacher to his followers, and so they are a practical instruction as well as an expression of feeling. A person is meant to cultivate this attitude steadily until it becomes the shape of the mind.

The Jātaka Atthakatha says that Araka taught his pupils this way, on the practice of loving-kindness and its blessings. Without a moment's interruption of his meditative absorption, he was born in the Brahma heaven. For seven ages, each with its time to wax and wane, he did not come back to this world.

This detail matches the Buddha's earlier statement about the wise people of old who cultivated loving-kindness for seven years. The Buddha does not here present Araka's life as long or dramatic. He presents it as a steady course of practice followed by a quiet, fortunate rebirth.

Readers of the Pali canon will recall that a separate discourse, the Araka Sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya, also remembers a teacher named Araka. It describes how short and fragile human life is, comparing it to a dewdrop on a blade of grass. That discourse is a different text from this Jātaka, with its own teaching, and it should not be confused with it. The story in No. 169 concerns the practice of loving-kindness.

When his discourse was finished, the Buddha identified the birth. The band of sages of that time were now the Buddha's own followers, and the Buddha himself was the teacher Araka.

Jātaka No. 169 is short, but it states plainly what many people want from spiritual practice: a heart that does not harm and cannot be harmed by hatred. The Buddha did not present loving-kindness as an abstract ideal. He listed its fruits in this life, such as sound sleep, calm, and the affection of others. He also pointed to its fruit beyond death.

The story gives no hardship, no villain and no miracle. It simply shows a teacher who said what he practised and a group of listeners who took it up. That is the quiet strength of this Jātaka. It reminds the reader that the first thing to cultivate is a mind with no ill will toward anyone, and that this can be done anywhere.