Cūḷasuka Jātaka

The Culasuka Jataka of the Pali Canon, numbered 430 among the Buddha's birth stories, was told at Jetavana after the Buddha and his monks had spent a rains retreat, the traditional three-month monsoon retreat kept by monks, at Veranja during a time when alms were scarce throughout the town. For three months the Buddha lived on little more than water and coarse root flour, showing no sign of complaint or discontent through the whole of it. When the monks marveled afterward at how completely at ease he had remained through such a lean season, the Buddha told them that he had cultivated this same contentment once before, long ago, even in the body of an animal, and related this story of the past.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta ruled in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a small parrot who had grown up inside the hollow of a great silk-cotton tree beside a tributary of the Ganges. For years the tree had sheltered him from hawks and storms alike, and fed him on its blossoms and seeds through every season of his young life.

In time the great tree grew old. Insects hollowed its heartwood, its leaves withered to dust, and its bare branches offered neither shade nor fruit to anything that still lived among them. One by one, the other birds that had nested there left for richer groves across the water, until the little parrot alone remained, unwilling to abandon the tree that had once sheltered him simply because it could no longer give him anything in return.

Each day the parrot flew down to drink and bathe in the river, then returned to his old hollow, where he lived on whatever dry wood dust the insects had left behind rather than follow the others to easier branches. He did this not in the hope of any reward, but simply because the tree had once been good to him, and he saw no reason that its present poverty should change what he owed it.

The quality of this devotion reached the notice of Sakka, King of the Gods, who came down in disguise to see for himself whether the parrot's loyalty was genuine wisdom or mere stubborn attachment. Taking the form of a goose, Sakka settled on a nearby branch and asked the parrot why he lingered in so ruined a home when countless green and fruitful trees waited just across the stream.

The parrot answered Sakka with nine verses, explaining that he had once rejoiced freely in the tree's blossoms and seeds. To enjoy a friend's good fortune and then abandon it the moment misfortune came, he said, was the mark of an unworthy heart. True virtue, he said, was shown not in fair-weather praise but in staying close through hardship, and he declared that even if the trunk fell to the ground that very day, his place would still be found beside it.

Moved by what he heard, Sakka set aside his disguise and revealed himself in his true radiance. Drawing water from the river of the gods, he poured it over the tree's dried roots, and the tree sprang back to life at once, its bark renewed, its branches thick with fresh leaves, and its boughs heavy with blossoms once again.

Having finished the story, the Buddha revealed who its characters had been. Sakka of that former life was his own disciple Anuruddha, and the Buddha himself had been the little parrot who would not leave a friend simply because fortune had turned against it.

What this story offered the monks who had shared the Buddha's hard season at Veranja was a measure for their own contentment to grow toward. The parrot's loyalty was never a transaction, paid out while the tree gave freely and withdrawn the moment it stopped. It was simply what gratitude looks like when nothing is left to gain by it. The monks who had just endured their own lean season on root flour without complaint had already begun, in their own small way, to live out the same steadiness the Buddha now traced back to a parrot who refused to leave a dying tree.