Kañcanakkhandha Jātaka

The Buddha told Jātaka No. 56, as the Jātaka Atthakatha records it, at Sāvatthi. The story is about a young man of Sāvatthi who heard the Buddha preach and gave his heart to the Faith. He became a monk. His teachers and masters set about instructing him in the whole of the moral training.

They taught him the Ten Precepts, the Short, Medium and Long Moralities, graded bodies of monastic conduct, the restraint of the Pātimokkha, the code of monastic rules, restraint of the senses, a blameless way of living and the right use of the requisites. The young beginner thought that there was a tremendous amount of morality and that he would surely fail to keep all of it.

He reasoned that there was no point in being a monk if he could not keep the rules. His best course, he decided, was to go back to the world, marry and live a life of giving and other good works. He told his superiors that he wanted to return to lay life and hand back his bowl and robes.

They said that if that was his decision, he should at least take leave of the Buddha first. They brought him before the Master in the Hall of Truth. The Buddha asked why they were bringing the monk against his will.

The monks explained that the young man found the moral training beyond him and wanted to give back his robes and bowl. The Buddha asked why they had burdened him with so much. He said a person can do what he can, and no more. He told the monks not to make this mistake again and to leave the matter to him.

He then asked the young monk whether he could keep just three rules. The young man said yes. The Buddha told him to watch and guard the three avenues of speech, mind and body, to do no evil in word, thought or deed, and to go back and keep just these three.

The young man gladly said he would keep them. He went back with his teachers and guarded the three doors. He thought that his instructors had told him all the moral training, but because they were not the Buddha they had not made him understand even this much. The All-Enlightened One, as Lord of the Truth, had put so much morality into three rules and made it clear to him.

He gained insight and within a few days attained arahatship, the full liberation that is the Theravada goal of practice. When the monks in the Hall of Truth heard of it, they spoke in amazement of the Master's skill. The young monk who was leaving because he could not fulfil morality had been given three rules that held the whole of it.

The Buddha entered the Hall and learned what they were saying. He told them that even a heavy burden becomes light if taken piece by piece. In the same way, wise people of the past, finding a huge mass of gold too heavy to lift, had first broken it up and so carried away their treasure. Then he told them the story.

When Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a farmer in a village. One day he was ploughing in a field where a village had once stood. Long before, a wealthy merchant had died and left a huge bar of gold buried in that field. It was as thick as a man's thigh and four cubits long.

His plough struck the bar and stuck fast. Thinking it the spreading root of a tree, he dug it out. When he found what it really was, he began to clean the dirt from the gold.

At sunset, after the day's work, the farmer put away his plough and gear. He tried to shoulder the gold and carry it home. He could not even lift it.

He sat down in front of it and began to think of what he would do with it. He would keep so much to live on, so much to bury as a treasure, so much to trade with and so much to give in charity and other good works. With that plan in mind, he cut the bar into four.

Division made the burden easy to carry. He bore the four pieces of gold home. The story does not describe the cutting in detail or give any special feat. The point is plain: the whole was too heavy and the parts were not.

After a life of giving and other good works, the farmer passed away to fare according to his deeds. The text tells us nothing more about him.

When the lesson was finished, the Buddha recited a verse. It says that when gladness fills the heart and mind, and when righteousness is practised to win peace, the one who walks in this way will win the victory and utterly destroy all the fetters. By this the Buddha led his teaching up to arahatship as its crown.

The Buddha then showed the connection and identified the birth. He said that in those days he himself was the man who got the nugget of gold.

Jātaka No. 56 has two halves that speak to each other. In the present story, the young monk is crushed by the whole body of training and decides to leave. In the past story, the farmer is crushed by the whole bar of gold and decides to divide it. Both are heavy things that become carried when they are taken in parts.

The Buddha's three rules for the young monk were not a lesser teaching. They guarded the doors of speech, mind and body, and the young man reached arahatship in a few days. The story reminds the reader that a path does not have to be taken all at once. It has to be taken one carried piece at a time, with a mind glad to carry it.