Gijjha Jataka

At Jetavana, the Buddha spoke in praise of a monk who regularly gave a portion of his own alms-food to support his aging mother. Some of the brothers murmured that a monk should not spend almsgiving on family ties. The Buddha defended him. To show that such devotion to a parent was ancient and praiseworthy, he told a story preserved in the Pali Canon as Jataka No. 399, the Gijjha Jataka — one of his own past-life birth stories.

In that former age, when King Brahmadatta ruled in Varanasi, the Bodhisatta — the Buddha himself, in this past life — was born as a vulture on Gijjhakuta, Vulture Peak. In a cave on the mountainside he tended his father and mother, both of whom had grown old and lost their sight entirely. Vultures are gifted with eyesight that can pick out a carcass from leagues away. Using this gift, the Bodhisatta flew out daily across the plains and forests below. He brought back flesh, offal, and water, so that his blind and helpless parents would never go without.

One day, scanning the country near Varanasi, he noticed meat set out on a charnel ground close to the city. He glided down to take his share. He did not know that a skilled fowler named Channa had hidden a horsehair snare beneath the scattered twigs and grass around the bait. Channa knew well that vultures would eventually come to feed there.

The moment the Bodhisatta stepped forward to the meat, the noose closed tight around his legs with an iron grip. He struggled with all his strength, but the snare held. There was no way to work himself free before Channa arrived to claim his catch.

As Channa approached with his club raised to finish the capture, he found the trapped vulture weeping — not out of fear for his own life, but out of grief for those he had left behind. Speaking in clear human words, the vulture cried out that his own approaching death was no cause for sorrow. His true sorrow was for his blind, helpless parents waiting in their mountain cave. No one would be left to bring them water from the mountain streams, or meat for their trembling beaks. They would slowly starve, listening in vain for the sound of his returning wings.

Channa had expected a dying bird to beg for its own life, not to weep for parents it would never see again. He was astonished that a creature men dismissed as an unclean scavenger of the dead could hold such pure, selfless devotion. He lowered his club without striking.

Kneeling by the snare, Channa admitted that men spoke of vultures as foul omens and nothing more. Yet here was a devotion to aging parents that would put many human sons to shame. Moved past any thought of profit from his catch, he cut the horsehair cord with his knife. He gently worked the tightened loop from the vulture's bruised legs and let him go entirely free.

Before he took to the air again, the grateful Bodhisatta did not simply fly off. He turned to Channa and spoke further, urging the fowler to abandon the cruel trade of snaring living creatures for his livelihood. He explained that compassion shown toward any living being yields merit far greater than anything a snare could ever bring him.

With Channa's blessing, and his own wings unharmed, the Bodhisatta flew swiftly back across the plains to Gijjhakuta. He carried food and water to the cave where his blind parents waited. They had feared the worst from his long absence, so their son's return was a joy that more than matched the terror of the snare he had barely escaped.

At the end of the story, the Buddha identified every figure from that distant life for the murmuring monks. The fowler who released the vulture was Channa. The blind, helpless parents were close kinfolk of royal birth in a later life. And the devoted vulture king, who could not be moved to beg for his own safety, was the Bodhisatta — the Buddha himself.

The Buddha closed by reminding the monks that the brother who fed his own mother from his almsgiving walked the same path as the vulture king of Gijjhakuta. Caring for the parents who once cared for you is never a distraction from the holy life. It is one of that life's clearest and most ancient expressions, honored across the Bodhisatta's own long succession of births.