Cullabodhi Jātaka

The Buddha told Jātaka No. 443, as the Jātaka Atthakatha records it, at Jetavana. The story concerns a monk who had gone forth but could not control his passions. He was quick to resentment and easily angered. The Buddha called him and told him that wise people of old, who were not even followers of the Buddha, had mastered anger. Then he told of a former birth.

When Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born to a wealthy brahmin family and named Bodhikumāra. He studied, and his parents arranged his marriage to a young woman of a suitable family. Neither of them wished to marry. The Atthakatha says that they were so pure that they never shared a bed. They kept their home together, and each longed for the holy life.

When their parents died, the couple gave up their inheritance and went forth together. They lived in the Himālaya for ten years on wild fruits. Then they came down to the human world to find salt and seasonings, and in time they reached Benares, where they took lodging in the royal park.

The king of Benares came to the park and saw the ascetic woman. He was struck by her beauty and fell in love, trembling with desire. He asked the Bodhisatta what she was to him. The Bodhisatta answered that she had once been his wife. The king then asked in verse what the ascetic would do if someone seized her and carried her off. The Bodhisatta replied, also in verse, that anger, once it arises, must be crushed while small, as rain settles dust.

The king would not be turned. He had her taken to the palace, though she cried out against it. In the palace he honoured her, but she would not accept his honours. She spoke instead in praise of the solitary life.

Meanwhile the Bodhisatta sat in the park mending his cloak. Anger had arisen in him, as the Atthakatha admits, but he quenched it at once, while it was small, by calling up thoughts of loving-kindness.

The king came back and found him there. The king said that his silence must be anger held in. The Bodhisatta answered that he had indeed felt it begin and had put it out.

The king asked what exactly the ascetic had quenched. The Bodhisatta answered in a series of verses that describe anger and its harm.

Anger, he said, blinds the mind. It makes a person unable to see what is true. It pleases only one's enemies. The Atthakatha compares it to a fire that grows when fed with fuel. In the minds of fools, he said, it burns on until it has consumed them. The wise put it out early. Like the waxing moon in the bright half of the month, the person who quiets anger grows in honour.

The king listened and was pleased. He ordered a courtier to lead the ascetic lady back to the park and promised the couple his protection. They lived on there in peace. After she died, the Bodhisatta went back to the Himālaya, developed the higher knowledges and attainments, and was reborn in the Brahma world.

The Buddha taught the Truths. The monk who could not hold his temper became established in the fruit of the Third Path, that of the non-returner. The Buddha then identified the birth. Rāhula's mother was the ascetic lady, Ānanda was the king, and the Buddha himself was the ascetic.

Jātaka No. 443 is about anger as it appears when it is most justified. A wife is taken by force, and a husband sits and sews. The story does not say that the Bodhisatta felt nothing. It says that he felt anger, and put it out.

That is the teaching for the monk at Jetavana, and for any reader. The sage is not a person who never feels anger. He is one who notices it early and meets it with loving-kindness before it can grow.