The Samiddhi Jātaka

The Buddha told this story while staying in Tapoda Park near Rājagaha, and the Jātaka Atthakatha (the classical commentary on the Jataka tales) records it as Jātaka No. 167, the Samiddhi Jātaka. It concerns the Elder (senior monk) Samiddhi, whose name means Goodluck. The story begins on an ordinary morning that was the end of a long night of effort.

Samiddhi had spent the whole night wrestling in the spirit, deep in meditative effort. At sunrise he bathed. Then he stood with his under garment on and the other in his hand, letting the water dry from his body. His skin was golden, and he looked like a golden statue of exquisite workmanship, the very picture of beauty. That, the tradition says, is why he was called Goodluck.

A daughter of the gods saw the Elder's surpassing beauty and fell in love with him. She spoke to him directly. "You are young, Brother, and fresh, a mere stripling with black hair, you have youth, you are lovely and pleasant to the eyes. Why should a man like you turn religious without a little enjoyment? Take your pleasure first, and then you shall become religious and do what the hermits do."

Samiddhi did not argue about pleasure. He answered with a plain fact. "Nymph, at some time or other I must die, and the time of my death I know not. That time is hid from me. Therefore in the freshness of my youth I will follow the solitary life, and make an end of pain."

The goddess found that she was getting no encouragement, and she vanished at once.

The Elder went to the Master and told him what had happened. The Buddha said that Samiddhi was not the first to be tempted by a nymph. In olden days, as now, nymphs had tempted ascetics. At the Elder's request, the Master told an old-world tale.

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, the Bodhisatta became a brahmin's son in a village of Kāsi. When he came of age he attained perfection in all his studies. Then he embraced the religious life and lived in the Himalaya, close to a natural lake, cultivating the faculties and the attainments.

He too had wrestled in the spirit all night. At sunrise he bathed, and with one bark garment on and the other in his hand, he stood letting the water dry off his body. At that moment a daughter of the gods saw his perfect beauty and fell in love with him.

She tried to tempt him with the first verse. Begging brother, do you know what joy the world can show? Now is the time, there is no other: pleasure first, and then, begging brother.

The Bodhisatta heard the nymph out and then declared his set purpose in the second verse. The time is hidden, he said, and he did not know when the time would come for him to go. Now was the time, and there was no other. So he was a begging brother now.

When the nymph heard the Bodhisatta's words, she vanished at once.

After the discourse the Master identified the birth. "The nymph is the same in both stories," he said, "and the hermit at that time was I myself."

The center of this Jātaka is one idea: the hour of death is hidden, so the hour for practice is now. The commentary adds a second couplet that lists what is hidden in the world: life, sickness, death, the putting off of the flesh, and rebirth.

The story does not paint the goddess as a villain, and it does not paint the monk as grim. It shows a young man in good health being offered a postponement that sounds sensible. The reply is the Buddha's own. Youth is not a guarantee, and putting off the path for later assumes a later that no one has been promised.

For a devotee this works as a morning teaching. The same sunrise that made the ascetic look so fine was an hour in which he had already done the work. Practice that is begun while the body is strong and the day is young is what the verse calls the right time.