Palasa Jataka

As the Buddha lay on his deathbed at Kusinara, his attendant Ananda withdrew in grief, fearing that twenty-five years of faithful service had somehow come to nothing. The Buddha called him back and told him that no good deed, however small, is ever wasted. To prove it, he recounted an old memory from a previous life, preserved in the Pali Canon as Jataka No. 307, the Palasa Jataka.

In the city of Benares, during the reign of King Brahmadatta, there lived a brahmin so poor that he had no means to perform the elaborate sacrifices his neighbors offered to the gods. Seeing other householders worship various deities for prosperity, he resolved to choose a deity of his own, though he owned nothing grand to offer.

The brahmin found a great Palasa tree, a Judas tree standing on raised ground outside the city, and decided to make it the object of his worship. Each day he swept the gravel clean around its base, sprinkled the ground with water, and hung a scented wreath of five sprays upon its branches. He brought flowers, perfume, and incense, lit a lamp beneath it each evening, and bowed before it with sincere humility, asking for nothing but offering everything he had.

The spirit who dwelled in that tree was none other than the Bodhisatta, the Buddha-to-be in that former existence. Watching the brahmin's faithful service day after day, the spirit decided to test the sincerity behind it. Taking the form of an elderly brahmin, he appeared before the worshipper and asked pointedly: why would a man endowed with reason bow before an insensate tree that could neither hear him nor answer his prayers?

The poor brahmin did not waver. He replied that ancient and venerable trees are often the dwelling places of spirits, protectors who watch over those who honor them, and that it was fitting to revere such a guardian rather than dismiss the tree as mere wood. His answer showed no cunning calculation, only an honest and consistent faith that had been building for a long time.

Moved by the depth and constancy of this devotion, the disguised elder cast off his borrowed appearance and revealed himself in his true radiant form as the tree spirit. He told the brahmin that such patient, uncomplaining worship, offered without any guarantee of reward, deserved to be answered, and that the time had come for his years of quiet service to bear fruit.

The spirit spoke in verse, directing the brahmin's attention to a nearby fig tree that had once stood where ancient offerings and sacrifices were made. Beneath that fig tree, he said, lay a buried treasure that had waited undisturbed for a very long time. It was this hidden wealth that would now reward the brahmin's constancy.

Rather than instruct the brahmin to dig through the earth himself, which would have been a slow and uncertain labor, the compassionate spirit chose to spare him that hardship entirely. He told the brahmin to simply return home, promising that the treasure would be delivered and set down in a place of the brahmin's own household, ready for him to use.

The brahmin went home exactly as instructed and found the treasure waiting for him, just as the spirit had promised. From that day forward he was able to live free of want. The spirit urged him to use the wealth wisely: to enjoy it throughout his life, to give alms generously to those still in need, and to keep the moral precepts that had guided his devotion from the beginning.

At the close of the story, the Buddha revealed to Ananda who these figures of the distant past had been. The poor brahmin who had faithfully tended the Palasa tree was Ananda himself in that earlier life, and the tree spirit who rewarded his devotion was the Buddha, the Bodhisatta, in his own former existence.

By telling this story in his final hours, the Buddha gave Ananda, and every reader since, a lasting assurance: patient service rendered without complaint or calculation is never lost. Jataka No. 307 does not celebrate wealth for its own sake but shows how sincerity sustained over time ripens into its own reward, whether that reward arrives in this very life or, as with Ananda, is confirmed only at the end of a long and faithful service.