Atthassadvara Jataka No. 84

Jataka No. 84, the Atthassadvara Jataka of the Ekanipata, the first book of the Jatakatthavannana, opens in the time of the Buddha at Jetavana, where a wealthy man's precocious young son came to his father anxious about his own spiritual welfare and asked what paths might lead to it. The father, though wealthy and respected, found himself unable to answer a question that cut deeper than any matter of business or household he had faced before. Rather than guess, he brought the boy before the Buddha himself, who recognized in him the very same question asked long ago, in a different lifetime, and told this Jataka to his assembled monks to explain why the question had returned.

In ancient Varanasi, when King Brahmadatta held the sceptre, the Bodhisatta was a wealthy Treasurer endowed with immense learning. He was respected throughout the realm for his profound mastery of ethical science and mundane practical affairs. He had an extraordinarily precocious young son, barely seven years of age, whose mind burned with a natural thirst for spiritual understanding.

One morning, as the Bodhisatta sat enjoying the sunrise upon his roof terrace, the little boy bowed low, pressed his palms together, and asked with bright innocence: "Father, people in this world continually strive after what they call welfare, attha, yet they quarrel, stumble, and end in sorrow. Tell me, what are the true open gateways through which a person enters into genuine, unfailing prosperity both in this world and in the world beyond?"

Pleased by the noble depth of his son's inquiry, the Bodhisatta took the child upon his knee and expounded the six sovereign conditions that constitute the portals of true welfare. "Listen well, my son. First is Arogya, sound bodily health and freedom from pestilence, without which no noble action can be undertaken. Second is Sila, irreproachable moral conduct, which brings peace of conscience and the esteem of the wise.

Third is Buddhanumata, venerating and obeying the counsel of righteous elders, teachers, and parents who have walked the path before us. Fourth is Suta, broad learning and deep mastery of useful arts, scriptures, and practical knowledge.

Fifth is Dhamma-anuvatti, living steadfastly in truth, honesty, and justice in all commercial and personal dealings. And sixth is Alolupa, freedom from greed, contentment with rightful gains, and non-attachment to fleeting sensations."

The Jatakatthavannana preserves the Bodhisatta's teaching in verse as well as prose, condensing the six into a single memorable stanza, easier for a listener to carry away than the fuller prose explanation that came before it: seek health, the supreme good; be virtuous; hearken to elders; from the scriptures learn; conform to truth; and burst attachment's bonds, for chiefly these six paths to welfare lead. Commentators note that the verse form was likely meant for memorization and recitation long after the full prose teaching had been forgotten in its particulars. This is a common pattern across the Jatakatthavannana's verses.

The Bodhisatta concluded: "These are the six portals of welfare. He who walks through them day by day will never experience ruin, but will dwell in honor among mortals and ascend to the realms of light." The boy treasured his father's words, practiced the six virtues throughout his life, and became an exemplary pillar of righteousness across the land, never once having to relearn through hardship what his father had already freely given him as a child. The same inheritance, the Buddha implies, had carried forward across the boy's two lifetimes, waiting only for a second father wise enough to recognize and pass it on once more.

At the conclusion of the discourse at Jetavana, the Buddha identified the birth: the anxious boy who had come asking his contemporary father about spiritual welfare was that same wise seven-year-old reborn, and the Buddha himself declared, "I myself was the Lord Treasurer," closing the circle between the ancient father's teaching and the present-day son's question that had prompted the telling of the tale. What had seemed, to the contemporary father, like a question beyond his own wisdom to answer turned out to be different. His own former self, across an immeasurable span of lifetimes, had already answered it once before.