Mittavinda Jātaka

This story was told by the Teacher while dwelling at Jetavana, concerning a wilful monk who, though fully trained in the conduct proper to one gone forth from home, refused to heed the counsel of his elders and declared that he would live only by his own judgment. The Teacher said to him, 'Monk, this is not the first time your stubbornness has led you to ruin,' and so saying, he told this story of the past, preserved in the Pali Canon as Jātaka No. 82 of the Ekanipāta, the Book of Ones, in the Varana Vagga (a chapter grouping within that book).

In the days of Kassapa Buddha, in the commercial city of Benares, there lived a merchant's son named Mittavindaka. Though his mother was a devout stream-winner (Sotāpanna) who urged him to give alms, observe the holy Uposatha, and listen to the Dhamma, the youth cared only for coin and carnal amusement. When at last he resolved to sail on a dangerous ocean trading expedition, his weeping mother fell at the threshold, pleading for his life, for he was her only son and their household wealth was already great. In violent fury, the boy struck his mother down, stepped over her body, and boarded the ship.

On the seventh day of the voyage, the vessel froze motionless upon the glassy waters as if held by iron chains. Lots were cast three times to identify the cause of the curse, and each time the lot fell upon Mittavindaka. Saying, 'Let not many perish for the sake of one,' the sailors set him upon a raft of bamboo and cast him adrift, and at once the ship sprang forward over the deep. Borne away by the ocean winds, and shielded for a time by the faint merit of his forced almsgiving, Mittavindaka came upon island after island, finding in each a more splendid palace — of crystal, then silver, then jewels, then gold — inhabited in turn by four, eight, sixteen, and thirty-two celestial maidens, with whom he dwelt in fleeting bliss before his hunger for still more drove him onward.

Yet his insatiable greed drove him ever onward. Leaving the weeping maidens behind, he came at last upon a walled city with four gates, which he took for a glorious capital to rule. In truth it was the Ussada Hell, where beings condemned by their own deeds endure their reckoning. There he came upon a suffering shade whose head was being sliced to ribbons by a razor-sharp wheel spinning with blinding speed, spurting gore. Due to the blinding distortion of his own heavy karmic fruit, the bloody razor-wheel appeared to Mittavindaka's eyes as a magnificent, dazzling crown of hundred-petaled red lotuses. 'Friend,' cried the greedy youth, 'give me that resplendent lotus crown!' The condemned soul sensed that his own measure of torment was at last spent. Gladly he cast the spinning razor-wheel upon Mittavindaka's head.

In that instant the crystal, silver, and jewelled palaces he had passed through flashed before him, and he knew the truth too late. Then the Bodhisatta, who had taken birth as the king of the Devas, spoke this verse: 'Having gone past the crystal, silver, and jewelled palaces, this wheel of stone has settled upon you, for you are not yet free from the bonds of life.' So saying, the Bodhisatta returned to his own heavenly abode. Mittavindaka bore that dreadful crown, suffering unabated torment until his evil karma was exhausted, and only then did he pass on to fare according to his deeds.

His lesson ended, the Teacher identified the birth: 'This wilful monk of today was the Mittavindaka of that time, and I myself was the king of the Devas.'

This Jātaka exemplifies Paññā, the perfection of wisdom, through its unsparing portrait of taṇhā, the craving that distorts perception itself until torment is mistaken for treasure. The very figure of Mittavindaka and the very razor-wheel reappear in Jātaka No. 369 of the Pañcanipāta, but that telling answers a different present-day transgression — a monk who rejects outright the fourteen duties of the Saṅgha — and there the Bodhisatta takes birth as a young deva who converses with Mittavindaka at length in verse before the wheel crushes him outright. In this older and simpler telling, by contrast, the Bodhisatta born as the king of the Devas speaks only a single verse of warning before returning to his own heaven, and Mittavindaka is left to bear the wheel until his evil karma is spent and he passes on to fare according to his deeds. The two tellings share one ancient root of narrative, yet each bears its own distinct witness, addressed to its own wayward listener.