Mahāsudassana Jātaka

The Mahasudassana Jataka, numbered 95 in the Pali collection and told in the Jataka Atthakatha, was spoken by the Buddha as he lay on his deathbed. It answers Ananda's words, asking that the Master not die in so small a town. The Buddha had reflected that Sariputta, born in the village of Nala, had passed away in the month of Kattika at the full moon. In the same month, at the waning moon, the great Moggallana had also died.

With his two chief disciples gone, the Buddha thought that he too would pass away at Kusinara. He came there on his alms-pilgrimage and lay down on the northern bench between the twin sal trees (tall flowering trees held sacred in Buddhist tradition), never to rise again. The Elder Ananda then said that the Blessed One should not die in this rough little town in the jungle. Surely Rajagaha or some other great city should be the place of his passing.

The Master told Ananda not to call this a sorry little town. He said that in the days of King Sudassana's universal rule, he himself had lived in this very place. It was then a mighty city encompassed by jewelled walls and twelve leagues around. At the Elder's request he told the story of the past, and he also spoke the Mahasudassana Sutta.

The Jataka takes up the story at its closing scene. Queen Subhadda saw that her lord, having come down from the Palace of Truth, lay on his right side on the couch prepared for him in the palm grove. The couch was made of gold and jewels, and it was the couch from which he would not rise again. She spoke to him gently of his realm, saying that eighty-four thousand cities, chief of which was the royal city of Kusavati, owned his sovereignty.

Sudassana asked her not to speak like that. He asked her instead to urge him to keep his heart set on this town and not to yearn for the others. When she asked why, he told her plainly that he would die that day. Weeping, with tears streaming from her eyes, the queen managed to speak the words he had asked her to say.

Then the queen broke into weeping and lament. The other women of the harem, eighty-four thousand in number, also wept and wailed. Not one of the courtiers could hold back, and all joined in a single cry of sorrow. The whole household had come to understand that its great king was leaving.

The Bodhisatta said a single word, asking for peace, and their lament was stilled. Then he turned to the queen and told her not to weep or wail. Down to a tiny seed of sesamum, he said, there is no compound thing that is permanent. All are transient, and all must break up. For the queen's sake he spoke a stanza. It says that component things are transient, that growth and decay are their nature, that they arise and are dissolved again, and that the best state is when they have sunk to rest.

In this way the great Sudassana led his discourse up to Nirvana as its goal. To the rest of the multitude he gave a plain exhortation: be charitable, keep the precepts, and observe the fast days. The destiny he won was rebirth in the realm of the devas. He gave comfort, not by denying grief, but by showing where it leads.

His lesson ended, the Master identified the birth. The mother of Rahula was the Queen Subhadda of those days, and Rahula was the king's eldest son. The disciples of the Buddha were the courtiers, and the Buddha himself was the great Sudassana. A note in the translation points readers to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta and the Mahasudassana Sutta for the development of this Jataka.

The Jataka answers Ananda's worry with a quiet reversal. A small, dusty town was once a capital of eighty-four thousand cities, and a great monarch once lay dying there. Greatness and smallness, the story suggests, are conditions that rise and fall like everything else. The Buddha does not ask Ananda to admire the old splendour. He asks him to see that even such splendour passed, and that the stanza spoken in its last hour is still true. A place is made worthy not by its size but by what is realised there.