Varaṇa Jātaka

The Teacher told this story while dwelling at Jetavana, concerning the elder Tissa, a householder's son. Thirty young men of Savatthi, friends since childhood, had gone forth together, trained for five years, and then taken up a meditation subject to practice in solitude. Tissa, weak-willed and overly fond of good food, turned back partway along the road and never reached the forest dwelling with the others. The remaining monks pressed on, attained arahantship there during the Rains, and returned to pay their respects to the Teacher before asking leave to go back to that same forest spot.

That night, stung by his earlier failure and determined to begin his own practice at once, Tissa sat upright beside his plank-bed rather than lying down to rest, toppled over soon after the middle watch, and broke his thigh-bone, so that the other monks had to stay behind to nurse him instead of departing as planned. When the Teacher learned why his students had been delayed, he said this was not the first time Tissa's own impatience had cost a whole company dear, and told the following story from a former life to show how old the pattern already was.

This jataka of the Pali Canon tells of a time when the Bodhisatta was the renowned teacher of a great academy at Takkasila, where five hundred young men from across the land lived under his instruction in both scripture and worldly skill.

Among these five hundred was one youth whose laziness was well known throughout the academy, a young man who found an excuse for every chore but somehow never missed a meal when food was served.

Each day the five hundred students went out into the forest to gather firewood for their teacher's household. The Bodhisatta sent them off as usual, and the lazy student went with the rest.

The lazy student wandered only a short distance before he saw a great varana tree that he took to be dead. Telling himself he would sleep first and climb it afterwards to break off dry wood, he lay down and began to snore.

His companions finished gathering their wood, kicked him awake as they passed, and set off for home. Still groggy, and desperate not to arrive empty-handed, he climbed the varana tree and began pulling at its living boughs.

A bough he was hauling on snapped back and struck him in the eye. Clapping one hand over the injured eye, he went on breaking off green branches with the other, bundled them up, and tossed the damp green wood on top of the dry faggots his companions had stacked.

A country family had invited the teacher and his students to a brahmin feast the next day, and the teacher had told them to eat their rice-gruel early and set out. The next morning a maid reached for firewood from the top of the stack, exactly where the lazy student had left his green boughs. The fire would not catch, and the sun was already up before the gruel was ready, so the party could not leave on time.

When the teacher learned why the gruel was late, the whole sequence came to light. A nap had been taken instead of work. A panic had reached for the wrong wood. An eye had been wounded by a bough that need never have been anywhere near his face. A cooking fire had been spoiled before it ever had the chance to properly start.

Before the assembled students, the Bodhisatta blamed the whole trouble on one fool and spoke a verse that gave the story its lasting shape. Whoever puts off what ought to be done in good time will later regret it, just as this youth regretted breaking the varana bough.

A single afternoon's postponement had cost one young man his eye and delayed the whole company's departure for the feast, a price far steeper than the single armful of dry wood that would have prevented the entire chain of consequences from ever beginning.

Every student who had gathered wood that morning faced the very same forest, the very same heat, and the very same chore. Yet only one of them paid for his own share of the work with an injured eye and a late start for the feast. What separated him from the other four hundred and ninety-nine was never the task itself. It was the moment he finally chose to begin it. The story's lasting point was that this single difference in timing had mattered more than every other circumstance put together.

When the Teacher had finished telling the story, he revealed who each figure in it had been. The lazy pupil who tore the green boughs and injured his own eye, he said, was this same Tissa in an earlier life; the other four hundred and ninety-nine students who gathered their wood in good time were the very monks now listening to him; and the teacher of the Takkasila academy, who traced the failure back to a single morning's delay, was the Teacher himself. Tissa, who had broken his own thigh through the same unseasonable haste in this life, took the lesson to heart once again.