Khadirangara Jataka No. 40

Jataka No. 40, the Khadirangara Jataka of the Ekanipata, opens with Anathapindika, the wealthy merchant devoted to the Buddha, who spent such enormous sums supporting the sangha that his own fortune gradually dwindled. A heretic spirit dwelling in his house, troubled by this generosity and fearing for her own future comfort, tried repeatedly to convince him to stop his giving before he impoverished them both entirely. When she failed to persuade him no matter how she argued, she was expelled from the house, finding no welcome left in a home built on such stubborn devotion. The Buddha told his monks that such tests of devotion were nothing new. The wise and good of a bygone age, he said, had once given gifts from the very heart of a lotus flower while Mara himself appeared in the sky with threats and terrifying illusions, and he told the following story to show them how.

In ancient Benares, long before any Buddha had yet appeared, the Bodhisatta served as Lord High Treasurer, celebrated throughout the whole land for his generosity and virtue. He maintained six alms-halls across the city where the poor, ascetics, and travelers could always find food at any hour, and his own gates stood open every single day without exception, rain or drought, prosperity or hardship.

One morning, a Paccekabuddha, a solitary buddha who had attained enlightenment on his own without teaching others, descended from his dwelling in the mountains after seven days spent in the deep cessation of perception. Emerging from that absorption, he came to the treasurer's door holding his bowl for his very first meal since entering it. The treasurer rejoiced at the sight and prepared a vessel of rich food to offer him with his own hands.

Mara, desperate to prevent this gift and to destroy the Paccekabuddha's chance to receive it, conjured a pit eighty cubits deep in the very center of the mansion, filled from end to end with blazing embers of khadira wood, roaring and radiating heat fierce enough to scorch a bird flying overhead. Standing suspended in the sky directly above the flames, Mara shouted out his threat: take one more step, and you will be roasted alive in this very fire.

The treasurer's servants fled in terror the moment they saw the pit open before them, abandoning their master entirely to whatever fate awaited him there. The Bodhisatta himself, unmoved, walked steadily toward the very edge of the flames. He looked down into the terrible chasm, then raised his eyes to the Paccekabuddha waiting calmly on its far side, and declared aloud, for Mara and his own household alike to hear: I will not do anything ignoble. Come, accept this offering.

With that, the Bodhisatta stepped forward directly into the flames, the vessel of food held steady in both hands, trusting his resolve more than his own eyes, which told him only that he was walking into certain destruction. In that same instant, a magnificent lotus rose up through the very heart of the fire, cradling his foot and showering him with golden pollen as he stood upon it, unburned and entirely at ease. With each further stride he took across the pit, another lotus bloomed beneath his feet in turn, carrying him safely across the entire sea of fire until he finally reached the Paccekabuddha on the other side and placed the offering, still untouched and warm, directly in his waiting bowl.

Having received the alms at last, the Paccekabuddha rose quietly into the sky and departed for his distant mountain dwelling once more, while Mara, utterly defeated and his terrible power entirely broken, vanished from sight without another word. At the conclusion of the discourse, the Buddha identified the birth plainly. He himself had been the Treasurer of Benares. Defeating Mara through nothing but an unwavering resolve to give, he placed alms in the bowl of the Paccekabuddha and proved, once and for all, that even the lord of the sensual worlds could not extinguish a generosity truly set upon the Dhamma.