Harita Jataka

Jataka No. 431 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha concerning a monk who had grown discontented and restless after being struck by the beauty of a woman he had seen. To show this monk that even a sage of great attainment could fall to the same weakness, and that the fall was never the end of the story, the Buddha recalled an old tale. It told of the ascetic Harita, also called Harittaca.

In that former life the Bodhisatta (the being who would in a future life become the Buddha) was born into a wealthy brahmin (priestly-caste) family of Benares, heir to a fortune of eighty crores (a crore being ten million, so an immense sum), yet he recognized early that wealth and pleasure were as fleeting as bubbles on a stream. He gave his entire inheritance away in alms and withdrew to the Himalayas, where years of relentless practice brought him the five higher powers (supernormal abilities such as clairvoyance, said to arise from deep meditation) and the eight meditative attainments (the successive stages of absorption cultivated in meditation). Five hundred hermits gathered around him as their teacher.

After many years in the wilderness, Harita traveled to Benares for salt and seasoning, and King Brahmadatta, struck by his serene bearing, invited him to live permanently in the royal park with meals provided from the palace itself. Twelve peaceful years passed this way, until a rebellion on the kingdom's frontier called the king away to lead his own army. Before departing he asked his queen to see to the sage's needs with the same care she would show the king himself.

In the king's absence, what began as an ordinary arrangement between the queen and the ascetic became something neither of them had any right to continue. It became a secret affair, carried on behind the appearance of simple royal hospitality. Harita's hard-won powers, the very attainments that had let him soar above the cares of ordinary men, offered him no protection against a weakness he had never purified at its root. The affair continued in secret for as long as secrecy could be maintained.

What had been hidden within the palace eventually became the subject of open talk throughout Benares, until the ministers themselves could no longer keep it from reaching the king on his return from the frontier. When the king first heard the accusation, he refused to accept it without proof. He insisted that a sage of Harita's attainment could not have fallen so far, and that the rumor was more likely the fruit of jealousy than of truth.

Rather than condemning either the sage or his queen on rumor alone, the king went first to his queen, who did not deny what had happened between her and the ascetic. He then went to the hermitage, where he greeted Harita with the same reverence as always and asked him directly whether the whispers troubling the city held any truth.

Harita understood exactly what a single denial would preserve: his reputation, his royal patronage, and every honor the city still paid him. He understood just as clearly what a lie would cost him, the sacred truthfulness that had carried him through countless lifetimes and that no amount of shame could be worth breaking. Rather than defend himself, he told the king plainly and without excuse that the rumors were true, that passion had overcome his wisdom, and that he stood guilty exactly as accused.

Where another king might have answered such a confession with fury, Brahmadatta felt only awe at a man willing to lay his own shame bare rather than protect himself with a single convenient lie. He told Harita that such truthfulness was itself a greater power than anything meditation alone could grant. The king's response, honoring the confession rather than punishing the failing it revealed, struck Harita to the very marrow of his being.

Pierced by the deepest kind of spiritual urgency, Harita sat in meditation. He turned his mind toward the plain, unflattering truth of the body and its cravings until the fire of his own lust burned itself out from within. Within hours his meditative powers returned to him in full. He rose into the sky above the palace, delivered a final teaching on the danger of unguarded desire, and departed for the Himalaya, never again to dwell among the cities of men.