Godha Jataka No. 325

Jataka No. 325, the Godha Jataka, opens at Jetavana, where the Buddha told this story concerning a dishonest Brother among his own monks. When the other monks reported the man's deceitful conduct, the Buddha remarked that deception had marked this same soul in lifetimes long past as well, and told them the following tale to show them exactly how.

In the very distant past, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta (the Buddha-to-be, in this former birth) was born into the animal realm as a young lizard, a godha, of unusual size and intelligence, renowned widely among his own kind. He dwelt safely in a secure earthen mound at the edge of a dense forest, where a fraudulent ascetic had quietly built a humble leaf hut nearby. For many years the hermit lived on forest fruits and appeared the very picture of sanctity, speaking rarely and only of renunciation and discipline. The young lizard, believing him a genuine seeker of truth, visited the hermitage regularly to pay respectful homage, bringing him small gifts of gratitude and never once suspecting the hollowness that lay behind the ascetic's calm exterior.

The deception that had always lain beneath the hermit's robes finally found its opportunity. Villagers, visiting as patrons, prepared a rich dish of lizard meat one day and offered it to him as alms. Tasting its flavor for the first time in his life, the ascetic became instantly obsessed with the delicacy. He began plotting how he might capture and cook the very lizard who trusted and venerated him daily, without the slightest suspicion of what had changed. He concealed a heavy wooden club beneath his bark garment and sat silently near the entrance of the burrow at the usual hour, composing his face into the same serene stillness he had always used, until that very day, to seem genuinely holy.

When the Bodhisatta emerged slowly from his mound, he noticed the ascetic's restless eyes and unnatural tension, quite unlike his usual composed bearing. Sniffing carefully at the breeze, he detected the unmistakable scent of cooked lizard flesh still clinging to the hermit's hands and breath. Understanding at once what had changed and exactly what danger now faced him, the Bodhisatta halted at a careful, deliberate distance and spoke aloud, denouncing the very hypocrisy he had trusted and revered for so many years: matted locks and a robe of skin, he said, serve only to cloak some secret sin, for outward asceticism cannot cleanse a heart that has already turned to slaughter. The two traded several verses back and forth. The ascetic, seeing his plan exposed, tried mockingly inviting him closer with offers of seasoning for his flesh, as though the Bodhisatta might still be lured by flattery. The Bodhisatta refused to approach a single step nearer, answering each invitation with a fresh verse naming exactly what had been hidden beneath the hermit's robes all along.

Realizing his deception had failed and his meal had slipped away entirely, the enraged ascetic abandoned all pretense of calm and hurled his hidden club with all his strength. It grazed only the very tip of the Bodhisatta's tail as he darted safely into his burrow. He emerged unharmed but for that single graze, leaving the exposed hermit standing alone outside his own hut with nothing left to show for either his years of false piety or his final burst of open violence.

At the conclusion of the discourse at Jetavana, the Buddha identified the birth: the dishonest Brother troubling the monastic community in the present was that same fraudulent ascetic from ages past, and the Buddha himself declared that he had been the young lizard, trusting at first, but discerning enough to notice the single scent that revealed a hidden heart before it could do him harm. The pattern the Buddha pointed to was not merely coincidence but character, the same capacity for concealment surfacing again across two very different disguises, a forest hermit's robes in one life and a monk's own robes in the next, each worn to hide the same unchanged appetite underneath.