Indriya Jataka

Jataka No. 423 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha at Savatthi concerning a young monk of good family who, after ordination, received poor alms and was captivated by the rich food his former wife gave him. When she staged a scene pretending to leave, he begged her not to go and announced that he would return to lay life. His fellow monks brought him to the Buddha, who revealed that this was not the first time the same woman had caused his fall. He recalled an old story from a far earlier birth in which the pull had very nearly succeeded.

In that former life the Bodhisatta was Sarabhanga, also known as Jotipala, the son of the king's priest in Benares, who became an ascetic at the Kavitthaka hermitage. He was the teacher of a company of sages, with seven chief disciples, among them a gifted young ascetic named Narada, who lived alone in a cave in the Aranjara mountains and was the younger brother of the sage Kaladevala.

Near Narada's cave lay a crowded town beside a great river, and courtesans stood on the riverbanks tempting those who came to bathe. Narada caught sight of one of them, and the sight undid him completely: the meditative calm he had built over years dissolved the moment desire for her took hold of his mind.

Consumed by longing, Narada abandoned meditation and lay pining without food for seven days. Kaladevala sensed the cause and flew to the cave to tend him, but Narada turned him away with a lie. The other sages, Salissara, Mendissara, and Pabbata, came in turn and were turned away in the same manner.

Kaladevala then brought Sarabhanga himself. The Bodhisatta saw at once that Narada had fallen under the power of the senses, and Narada admitted it and paid him respect. Sitting beside his disciple with unhurried compassion, Sarabhanga answered not with reproach but with counsel.

Sarabhanga spoke in verse, in paraphrase: whoever obeys the senses' desires loses both worlds and wastes away; happiness and misery alternate, so seek a more lasting happiness; whoever endures hardship reaches the bliss where all troubles end; and do not abandon your virtuous past for sensual desire, gain, or suffering. Kaladevala, admonishing his brother, added that household life brings trouble and that one should be neither proud when wealth grows nor grieved when it is lost. To warn Narada, Sarabhanga also told of a strong young brahmin of Kasi who refused to farm, marry, or make merit and became a hunter in the Himalayas. Growing too weak to hunt, he withered into a ghostlike state, and he told King Sivi in three verses that his deeds had come back on him in this very life. The Buddha, after his Awakening, praised the verse of Devala: none is worse than one who bows to the senses.

Hearing his teacher, Narada was moved. He let the longing go and, through meditation, regained the Absorptions he had lost. Sarabhanga did not let him stay alone in the cave, but took him back to his own hermitage, so that the single glimpse at the riverbank cost him nothing in the end.

Kaladevala, Salissara, Mendissara, and Pabbata had each tried to reach Narada before Sarabhanga arrived, yet Narada turned each of them away with a lie. Sarabhanga succeeded where his fellow sages could not, because he saw clearly what had overpowered Narada and spoke from his own mastery over the very senses that now ruled him.

At the story's end, after teaching the Truths, the Buddha established the discontented monk in the fruition of the First Path and identified him with Narada. He identified Salissara with Sariputta, Mendissara with Kassapa, Pabbata with Anuruddha, Kaladevala with Kaccana, Kisavaccha with Moggallana, Anusissa with Ananda, and Sarabhanga with himself.