Haliddiraga Jataka

Jataka No. 435 of the Pali Canon tells a story the ancient commentators themselves noted as closely resembling the Culla Narada Jataka. Both tell of a young forest ascetic nearly drawn from his hermitage by a woman's charm before his father's counsel restores him to the path.

In that former life the Bodhisatta (the being who would in a future life become the Buddha), born into a wealthy brahmin (priestly-caste) family of the north, renounced the world after the death of his wife. He withdrew with his young son into the Himalayan forest, raising the boy in a hermitage so remote that he grew to manhood never once having seen a human settlement or a woman's face.

One day, while the Bodhisatta was away gathering fruit, a beautiful and cunning woman came upon the hermitage. Border raiders had attacked a town and carried her off among their captives; she had tricked the robbers into letting her step away and had fled into the forest. She found the young ascetic alone, and, knowing that an ascetic who broke his vows would fall under her control, she set out to lure him toward human settlements.

Having never encountered a woman in his entire life, the youth had no defence against her words, which urged that virtue practised among people was worth more than purity in a lonely forest. Desire rose in him with a force his forest upbringing had never taught him to recognize, let alone resist. When she proposed that he leave the lonely hermitage behind and follow her to the villages, he agreed, saying only that he must first ask his father's leave. Fearing the father's staff, she slipped away ahead of him and left a trail for him to follow.

The Bodhisatta returned from the ridges to find his son sitting idle by the hut's door, the wood and water unfetched and his eyes fixed on nothing. He understood in that single glance exactly what had happened in his absence. Setting down his own basket, he sat beside the boy and asked, with nothing but tenderness, what had so unsettled him.

The youth admitted that a woman had come to the hermitage and that he meant to follow her. Virtue, he said, seemed to him more fruitful among people than in a lonely forest, and he asked his father what kind of people he ought to keep company with.

The Bodhisatta answered his son not with anger but with counsel. Choose a companion who earns your trust and affection, he said, one who is reliable and patient and who never offends in thought, word, or deed, and hold to that friend. Avoid fickle people, who are like restless monkeys. Keep clear of wrongdoing as one keeps clear of an angry snake, or as a charioteer keeps off a rough road, for sorrow follows those who go along with fools. Do not take a fool for a companion, because the fool's companion falls prey to grief.

The youth replied that he would not find wise people like his father in the towns, and so he dreaded going and wished to stay near him. The father then instructed him in fixing the mind on a meditation object.

Hearing his father's words, the youth saw clearly for the first time what he had so nearly walked into. He set aside his plan to leave and returned to his meditation, resuming the forest life he had so nearly abandoned over a single morning's infatuation. He soon developed the higher knowledges and the meditative attainments, and father and son were both destined for rebirth in the Brahma world. At the end of the telling the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths and identified the birth: the young ascetic was the monk who longed for lay life, the maiden was the same woman of the present story, and the father was himself. The discontented monk then attained the fruit of the first path, stream-entry.