Visayha Jātaka

The Buddha told this story, Jataka No. 340 of the Catukkanipata as recorded in the Pali Canon, at Jetavana in Savatthi, concerning the lay supporter Anathapindika. His generosity to the Sangha had been so great that his wealth dwindled: his daily gifts were large, the debts owed to him were never called in, and a great sum he had buried by a riverbank was swept away by a flood. A heretical devata dwelling above the fourth gateway of his mansion, who resented the monks' coming and going, urged him at night to stop supporting the Buddha. Anathapindika sent her away. Taking Sakka's counsel, she at last recovered his lost fortune from those who owed it and begged his pardon, and the Buddha taught her the Dhamma. Anathapindika then spoke of how he had kept on giving despite her opposition, and the Buddha answered that the wise of old, too, had given alms even when Sakka himself stood in mid-air telling them not to. So he related the story of Visayha.

In ancient times, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a merchant family and became the treasurer Visayha, a man worth eighty crores. He kept the five precepts and delighted in giving. He built six almshouses, at the four city gates, in the middle of the city, and before his own door. Six hundred thousand people came every day to receive alms, and each was given the same food that Visayha himself ate.

The radiance of this ceaseless giving reached the heavens, and the throne of Sakka, king of the gods, grew hot beneath him. Looking down, Sakka saw the merchant's unbroken liberality and resolved to put a stop to his almsgiving.

By his divine power Sakka made the merchant's oil, honey, molasses, grain, servants, and workers vanish. When beggars came, Visayha told them to take money instead; but his wife searched the house and found nothing left except the clothes they wore. Seeing this, the Bodhisatta showed neither grief nor anger, and resolved that, poor as they now were, he would find some way to go on giving.

A grass-cutter had left his sickle, carrying-pole, and rope at the door, and Visayha's wife gave them to him. He took them up and went out to cut grass, resolving that he would still give. He tied the grass into two bundles, one for his household and one for alms, and sold the bundle that hung from his pole at the city gate for two small coins. Half of the money he gave to the beggars; when they kept calling out for more, he gave them the other half as well. He and his wife passed the day fasting. So it went for six days. On the seventh, weakened by hunger and struck by the heat of the sun as he gathered grass, he fainted and fell to the ground.

Sakka stood in the air above the fallen Bodhisatta and urged him to give up giving, saying that his open-handed alms had been the cause of his ruin and bidding him show restraint henceforth. Visayha rebuked the king of the gods: it was through almsgiving and virtue that Sakka himself had won his exalted place, so to forbid the very generosity that had brought about his own greatness was wrong. A noble house keeps its honour, he said, and a path walked by earlier travellers can be walked again; so long as he had any means of living he would go on giving.

Sakka then asked why he gave so. Visayha answered that he sought neither the station of Sakka nor that of Brahma. His giving was not a bargain for future reward but the practice of a heart aiming at omniscience, the supreme enlightenment of a Buddha for the sake of every suffering being.

Delighted by this answer, Sakka patted the Bodhisatta on the back. Joy filled Visayha, and by Sakka's power his prosperity was restored. Sakka bade him give one million two hundred thousand portions every day, filled his house with wealth, and returned to his heaven.

Concluding the teaching, the Buddha identified himself as Visayha the treasurer in that former birth, and Rahula's mother as the treasurer's wife. A bodhisattva's generosity does not bend to loss or to the counsel of the powerful, for its source was never the size of one's fortune but the resolve of one's heart.