Tila-Mutthi Jataka

This jataka of the Pali Canon, Jataka No. 252, found in the commentary at J.ii (282), a scholarly citation locating it within the Jātaka commentary, was told by the Buddha at Jetavana concerning an irascible monk who flared up at the slightest provocation and could not restrain his temper even after entering the peaceful Dhamma. The Buddha had the monk brought before him, said that this was not the first time he had been so, and recalled an old story from Takkasila, a city renowned across the ancient world for its academy of learning.

In that former life, the Bodhisatta was the renowned teacher of the great academy at Takkasila. Brahmadatta, king of Benares, sent his own son, also named Brahmadatta, away to study there at the age of sixteen, giving him a pair of single-soled sandals, a sunshade of leaves, and a thousand pieces of money, so that the boy would learn endurance and humility rather than the easy comforts of a palace. The prince laid his purse of a thousand pieces at the teacher's feet as his fee and was received as one of the teacher's own eldest sons.

One day, while bathing with his teacher, the prince noticed an old woman's parched white sesame seeds and, giving in to simple greed, ate a handful. She said nothing. The next day he did the same, and she was silent again. On the third day she cried out that the great teacher was letting his pupils rob her and would eat her out of house and home.

The teacher offered to make good her loss, but she asked only that it not happen again. He then had two lads hold the prince by the hands and struck him three times across the back with a bamboo stick, warning him never to do so again. A student who would take a handful of sesame today, the teacher knew, might in time turn to larger thefts.

The prince glared at his teacher with bloodshot eyes. He hid his grievance and resolved in his heart to kill him. When his studies were done, he asked the teacher to come to him once he had become king of Benares, and he drew from him a warm promise to do so.

The prince returned to Benares and showed his learning, and his father, glad to see him fit to rule, made him king while he himself still lived. Remembering his old grudge, the new king sent for the teacher. The Bodhisatta judged that the young king was still too hot-tempered to be reasoned with, and he waited. When the king's reign was half over, he judged the time right and presented himself at the palace gate, announcing himself as the teacher from Takkasila.

The king's anger rose again. He ordered that the teacher's life should end that very day, saying that the blows still pained him and that the old man had come only to die. In his two verses he recalled being beaten with a stick three times over a handful of sesame, and asked why the brahmin had come to him if he did not value his own life.

The Bodhisatta answered in a verse that when a person of good birth does what is ignoble, the one who restrains him with a stick gives true instruction and not hatred, and that the wise understand this. He explained that without that correction the prince would have begun with petty thefts of cakes and fruit, grown covetous, and gone on to burglary, highway robbery, and murder, until he was caught and put to death as an enemy of the public. He asked the king whether his present wealth and rank had not come from the teacher's discipline.

The courtiers declared that all the king's splendour belonged to his teacher. The king acknowledged the teacher's goodness and offered him the whole kingdom, but the teacher declined it. The king then brought the teacher's wife and family from Takkasila, honoured them greatly, and appointed the teacher his royal priest. He treated him like a father and followed his counsel, and after gifts and good deeds he was destined for a heavenly world.

After this discourse the Buddha taught the Truths. The monk of the quick temper attained the fruit of the third path, that of the non-returner, and many others entered the first, second, or third path. The Buddha identified the angry monk as the king, and himself as the teacher. A correction endured in anger, the story shows, can look, from enough distance and with enough honesty, exactly like the thing that once kept a person from becoming what he most feared.

Three strokes of a bamboo stick and a kingdom spared from a ruthless ruler sit oddly together only until the years between them are allowed to pass. Measured against each other at the moment they happened, the punishment seemed harsh and the theft trivial. Measured against the ruler the prince might otherwise have become, those same three strokes turned out to be the lightest price his future subjects could have paid for the king they received instead.