Nānā-Chanda Jātaka

Jataka No. 289 of the Pali Canon, the Nana-chanda Jataka (meaning diverse wishes, for the four unlike boons at its heart), was told by the Buddha at Jetavana monastery while explaining the doctrine of varied dispositions. It showed how the desires and aspirations of living beings differ according to each one's own spiritual maturity, no matter how similar their circumstances might otherwise appear.

In that former life, the Bodhisatta ruled as king of Benares, convinced that a monarch who wished to govern justly needed to know firsthand the joys and hardships of his own subjects. He regularly set aside his crown, dressed as a common traveler, and walked the city's lanes and marketplaces after midnight to see for himself how his people actually lived.

One night, as the disguised king passed through the city's eastern quarter, a band of robbers fleeing the city guards collided with him and, mistaking him for a spy, set upon him with clubs. Defending himself as best he could with nothing but his walking staff, the king backed into the doorway of a modest cottage belonging to a weaver's family.

Hearing the commotion, the weaver and his son rushed out with cudgels and drove the attackers off. They brought the bruised traveler inside, where the weaver's wife bathed his wounds and his daughter-in-law prepared a bowl of hot porridge to restore his strength. Asked what they wished for in return for such kindness, the family answered only that they labored honestly and wanted nothing beyond their daily bread, and the king thanked them and slipped away before dawn.

By midday, a royal chariot and guard arrived at the family's threshold. The four of them, terrified that they had somehow sheltered an outlaw, were brought trembling into the palace's great hall, where they found the very stranger they had rescued seated upon the throne beneath the royal parasol.

The Bodhisatta reassured the frightened family that they had saved their own king's life the night before, and in gratitude invited each of them to name whatever boon their heart truly desired. The weaver asked for a tax-free village with fertile soil where his family might never need to toil in want again. The mother asked for a herd of gentle milking cows so she might churn butter enough to feed the poor. The son asked for a swift, finely built chariot to race along the river meadows, and the daughter-in-law asked for golden ornaments set with gems so she might shine among the women of her own household.

The king granted every wish without hesitation, giving the weaver his tax-free estate, the mother her herd of cows, the son his chariot, and the young wife her jewels. Each of the four went home far richer than they had been the night before, yet no wiser about what any of them had actually asked for.

Watching the family depart overjoyed, the Bodhisatta turned to his courtiers and spoke on the sheer diversity of desire itself. The father had craved land, the mother cattle, the son speed and glory, the daughter adornment. Not one among the four had asked for wisdom or liberation, since each had simply asked for whatever already mirrored the shape of his or her own heart.

The Buddha closed the story by showing his listeners that the four rescuers' wishes, however different from one another, shared one thing in common. None of them reached beyond the boundary of what the world could already offer. He urged those who heard the story to set their own highest wish on the one thing none of the four had thought to ask for: the freedom of Nibbana (final liberation from suffering and rebirth), which lies beyond every boon a king's gratitude could ever grant. A land, a herd, a chariot, and a jewel each satisfied the particular hunger that had shaped the person asking for it. Yet every one of those hungers would return again in time. The single wish none of the four had thought to make was the only one that never would.