Maha-Mangala Jataka

The Buddha told this story while dwelling at Jetavana. The monks had been discussing in the Hall of Truth how the Buddha, in his wisdom, had once settled a dispute over omens that no one else in heaven or on earth could resolve. Hearing of their conversation, the Buddha told them that this was not the first time he had answered this very question. He had done so once before, in a distant past life, and he told the story to show how. The account is preserved in the Pali Canon's Jataka book of the Khuddaka Nikaya as the Maha-Mangala-Jataka, No. 453 of the collection.

The dispute had begun simply enough. In the royal rest-house at Rajagaha, a man rose from the gathered company and walked out, remarking as he left that this was a day of good omen. His words set off an argument among those still seated about what an omen truly was, and the argument spread far beyond that single room.

Three positions soon hardened into factions. One group insisted that the omen lay in sight, in waking to see a white bull, a pregnant woman, a full jar, or similar favorable things. A second group insisted that the omen lay in sound, in hearing certain auspicious words upon rising. A third insisted that the omen lay in touch, in handling earth, grass, cow-dung, or other such objects at the right moment. None of the three factions could persuade the others, and the dispute did not stay confined to human society. It spread upward through the ranks of the earth deities, and from them higher still, until, the account says, not even the gods as far as the Brahma heavens could settle what an omen actually was.

Seeing that no one else could resolve so widespread a confusion, Sakka, lord of the gods, understood that only the Buddha could settle it. He came to the Buddha and laid the whole dispute before him, asking him to say, once and for all, what a true omen was.

The Buddha answered Sakka in twelve stanzas, setting out what the tradition calls the thirty-eight great omens, a list preserved in full in the commentarial tradition rather than enumerated here. As he recited them, the account says that countless gods, numbered in the tens of thousands of millions, attained to the fruits of the path through hearing them. Having answered Sakka in the present, the Buddha then told the monks that he had faced this identical question once before, long ago, and had answered it then in much the same way.

In that earlier age, the Buddha said, he had been born in a wealthy brahmin family in a certain town and was named Rakkhita-Kumara. Rakkhita grew up to renounce the household life and became a hermit, living in the Himalaya region with a company of five hundred disciples who had gathered around him for his wisdom.

While Rakkhita lived in his forest retreat, the very same dispute over sight-omens, sound-omens, and touch-omens broke out among the people of Benares, dividing the city just as it would later divide Rajagaha. The king and his subjects searched for anyone who could settle the question and found no one among themselves able to do so.

Unable to find an answer at home, the people of Benares turned to a company of ascetics they knew of in the Himalaya. These were Rakkhita's own five hundred disciples, and the people put the question to them directly. The disciples, not trusting their own understanding of so difficult a matter, did not attempt to answer on their own authority. They carried the question instead to their teacher, the hermit Rakkhita, who alone among them could speak to it with certainty.

Rakkhita's answer turned the whole question inside out. True blessing, he taught, had nothing to do with a bull glimpsed at dawn or a word overheard on waking. It lay instead in how a person lived. True blessing meant honoring the gods, one's ancestors, and all beings with kindness, and meeting insult with modesty and peace rather than anger. It meant keeping a clear mind that neither despises companions nor boasts of itself, and choosing virtuous friends whose speech can be trusted. It meant a harmonious household with a devoted wife and children raised well, and serving a righteous king faithfully. It meant giving generously, spreading joy to others, and keeping company with the pure and the wise. He closed his teaching with a verse that named these, and these alone, as the blessings the wise esteem, declaring plainly that in omens themselves there is no truth at all.

Having completed the past-life account, the Buddha identified the figures in it for the monks gathered before him. His own present company of followers, he said, had been the band of five hundred sages in that former age. Sariputta had been the senior pupil who first carried the people's question to the hermit. And the hermit Rakkhita himself, who had answered it, had been the Buddha in that earlier birth.

The Maha-Mangala-Jataka answers the same question twice, once through Sakka's visit at Jetavana and once through the people of Benares climbing to a hermitage in the Himalaya. Both times the answer is the same. A sight, a sound, or a touch encountered by chance cannot secure anyone's fortune, however widely such beliefs are shared or however long they are argued over. What the Jataka calls the true and great omens are nothing other than a life well lived: honoring those worthy of honor, keeping good company, speaking and acting with restraint, and caring faithfully for one's family and community. The dispute over lucky signs had divided a city and reached the heavens before anyone thought to ask whether virtue itself might be the only omen that never fails.