Kosambi Jātaka

At one time, the Blessed One was dwelling in the Ghositārāma monastery near Kosambī. In that monastery resided two highly respected elders: one a renowned master of the monastic discipline (Vinayadhara) and the other an eloquent expounder of the Dhamma (Dhammakathika), each surrounded by hundreds of devoted disciples. One day, the Dhamma-expounder went to the lavatory and, having rinsed his mouth, left a little water standing in the vessel. The Vinaya master entered afterward, saw the water, and asked whether his companion had left it there. When the preacher admitted that he had, the Vinaya master asked, "Do you not know this is an offense?" The preacher replied that he had not known, and offered at once to atone for it. Hearing this, the Vinaya master first said that an act done unknowingly and heedlessly was no offense at all — yet he then went to his own pupils and told them, "This Sutta-reciter has fallen into an offense and does not even recognize it as one."

Word of this reached the preacher's disciples, who confronted the Vinaya master's students: "Your teacher first called it no offense, and now calls it one — he is a liar." Retaliation and heated argument spread rapidly through the cloisters. Seizing his opportunity, the Vinaya master convened a formal ecclesiastical assembly and carried out an act of suspension (ukkhepanīyakamma) against the preacher for refusing to acknowledge his fault. At once the entire Sangha split into two bitter camps. Lay supporters who provided for the monks divided into factions. Even the order of nuns took sides — and, so the account says, so did the guardian deities and spirits who honored the Dhamma, down to the gods of the Brahmā-world, until the uproar was said to reach the farthest heavens. The once-peaceful city of Kosambī became a storm of recrimination.

Hearing of this disastrous discord, the Buddha came in person. He showed both parties their fault — the misery that excommunication brings to those who impose it, and the misery that concealing an offense brings to those who shield it — then withdrew. The two factions kept quarreling even during the communal recitation of the monastic code. So he ordained that they should sit down together, one from each side in alternation, so that no clique could gather apart. Hearing that the quarrel still raged, he returned a third time and said, "Enough, O bhikkhus! Do not quarrel, do not dispute, do not divide the Sangha!" Yet so intoxicated were they by self-righteous pride that one monk of the offending side replied, "Let the Blessed Lord of Truth dwell at ease, enjoying the bliss he has attained; we shall make ourselves notorious by this quarrel without troubling him."

Admonishing them once more, the Master recalled an ancient example of forbearance between men who held the power of the sword: "Once, Brahmadatta, king of Kāsi at Benares, robbed Dīghīti, king of Kosala, of his kingdom and put him to death; yet afterward, when Prince Dīghāvu held Brahmadatta's own life in his hands, he spared him, and the two became close friends. If such patience was possible between sceptred kings, how much more should you, who have entered so well-taught a path, learn to be forgiving and tender of heart toward one another?" The Jātaka itself gives only this brief allusion to Dīghāvu's forbearance. The fuller telling — how the prince raised his sword over his father's slayer and remembered his parents' dying counsel — belongs to its own canonical account, preserved as the Dīghītikosala-Jātaka (No. 371 of the Pañcanipāta).

Seeing that even this did not move them, the Buddha spoke nine verses on discord and its remedy — among the most quoted lines in the whole Pali canon. Those who do not realize that all beings here must perish go on quarreling; those who truly grasp this let their disputes subside at once. Old grievances nursed and rehearsed only feed the quarrel, while those who release them live again at peace. "Not hatred, but love alone, makes hatred cease — this is an eternal law" (na hi verena verāni sammantīdha kudācanaṃ, averena ca sammanti, esa dhammo sanantano). Better, the verses conclude, to walk alone like a lone elephant in the forest than to keep company with fools who will not be reconciled.

Finding the monks still unreconciled, the Buddha quietly took up his bowl and robe and departed Kosambī alone. He stopped first at the village of Bālakaloṇakāragāma, where he spoke to the elder Bhagu on the blessings of solitude, and then at the dwelling of three young noblemen, to whom he spoke of the sweetness of concord. From there he withdrew for three months into the Pārileyyaka forest, where, tradition holds, a noble elephant and a monkey tended him in gentle solitude, before journeying on directly to Sāvatthī. Meanwhile, the lay people of Kosambī, reasoning that the quarrelsome monks had driven the Blessed One away, resolved to withhold both salutation and alms from them until they made peace. Humbled by this quiet discipline, the Kosambī monks at last traveled to Sāvatthī and begged the Buddha's forgiveness, restoring the unity of the Sangha.

This story is preserved in the Pali Canon's Khuddaka Nikāya, in the Jātaka book's Navaka-nipāta (Book of Nines), Gijjha-vagga, as the Kosambī-Jātaka, No. 428. It immediately follows the Gijjha-Jātaka (No. 427) that opens the same vagga. Its frame narrative draws on the historical account of the Kosambī schism recorded in the Vinaya Piṭaka's Mahāvagga (X.1–10). Its closing verse on hatred and love is also preserved as Dhammapada verses 3–5. In the traditional birth-identification that closes the tale, the Buddha names King Suddhodana and Queen Mahāmāyā — his own parents in this final life — as the past-life parents of Prince Dīghāvu. He identifies himself as Dīghāvu: the Bodhisatta who first learned, and later taught, that enmity is never put to rest by enmity.