Khurappa Jataka

Jataka No. 265 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha concerning a monk who had lost his energy for the struggle. The Buddha asked whether this was true, and the monk confirmed it. To recall him to what unflagging resolve looks like, the Buddha told the story of a forester who, when everyone else in a caravan fell to the ground in fear, alone stood and fought.

In that former life, in the reign of Brahmadatta at Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a forester's family. Grown up, he became the chief of a band of five hundred foresters and lived in a village at the edge of a forest, where he hired himself out as a guide to travelers who needed to cross it.

A merchant's son from Benares arrived with a caravan of five hundred wagons and offered the Bodhisatta a thousand pieces of money to guide them through the forest. The forester accepted the payment, and in his own mind dedicated his life to the safety of the caravan.

Deep in the forest, five hundred robbers appeared. The sudden threat broke the courage of the caravan, and its people dropped to the ground in fear, helpless before the band that stood over them.

Only the Bodhisatta did not fall. He shouted, leaped forward and fought, and with unwavering resolve drove off all the robbers, then led the merchant safely across the forest.

At the camp that followed, the merchant's son served the Bodhisatta fine food and asked him plainly how he had felt no fear when he faced arrows, swords and death so near.

The Bodhisatta answered in verse that, facing that danger, a vast and noble inspiration had risen in him, and that inspired, he overcame his enemies. He had already given up his life when he accepted the payment, he said, and a hero who clings to life cannot do a hero's work. It is that clinging, not any lack of weapons or strength, that makes people fall to the ground before a danger they might have met.

What made the Bodhisatta's stand so striking was not some unique strength that the caravan lacked. He alone had already resolved, when he took the merchant's money, that fear for his own life would not decide what he did when the moment came. The resolve was made before the attack, which is why it held when the attack arrived. The traditional commentary on his verses explains the key words: the inspiration he spoke of is satisfaction and gladness of heart, the noble one is the supreme one, and to have conquered the enemy is to have overcome him by first giving up one's own life. Whoever still desires to live, the commentary adds, cannot do a hero's duty, for the wish to survive is exactly what the moment of danger asks a person to loosen.

A whole caravan of five hundred wagons, with all its people, was helpless before the robbers, yet one man who had set fear aside turned the whole situation. A company's safety is never simply the sum of its numbers or its goods, and what changed the outcome was one person's settled courage and a duty fully accepted.

The Buddha closed the story by turning the comparison back onto the monk whose own energy had flagged. The same resolve that once let a single forester stand firm while the rest of the caravan fell to the ground, he showed, was available to anyone willing to set aside the clinging that fear comes from. He then taught the Four Noble Truths, and the discouraged monk became an Arahat. The Buddha identified the Bodhisatta of the tale as the chief forester.