Phandana Jātaka

Jataka No. 475 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha during a quarrel between the Sakyans of Kapilavatthu and the Koliyas on the bank of the river Rohini. It recalled a former life in which two deluded parties had once destroyed one another through exactly the same pattern of mutual retaliation.

In ancient times, when King Brahmadatta reigned over the realm of Kasi in Baranasi, the Bodhisatta was reborn as a tree spirit inhabiting a mighty Phandana tree that stood on the slopes of the Himalayas. The tree was renowned for its resilient timber and for leaves that rustled even when the forest air was completely still. Beneath this tree, a lion made his lair, resting in its shade through the heat of the day.

One afternoon, while the lion lay deeply asleep, a gust of wind tore loose a dry bough from the high canopy, and it crashed down directly upon the lion's shoulder, causing him sharp pain. Roaring, the lion sprang to his feet and glared up at the branches. Rather than recognize the fall of the bough as an accident of wind and season, he nursed in his heart a bitter, personal grudge against the tree itself. He resolved that he would not rest until it was destroyed.

Some time later, a carpenter came up from Baranasi into those woods, searching for timber tough enough to make the rim of a chariot wheel. Seeing his chance, the lion approached the man and asked what he sought. When the carpenter answered that he needed the strongest, most resilient wood to be found, the lion led him straight to the foot of the Phandana tree and declared that no timber in the forest could equal it, urging him to cut it down at once.

The carpenter took up his axe and began felling the tree. The spirit of the Phandana, discovering that it was the lion's old grudge which had placed his home in danger, resolved on a revenge of his own. He took on a human shape and came before the carpenter, telling him that the timber was excellent indeed. He added that if the carpenter wished his wheel to be stronger still, he should take a strip of hide, four fingers wide, from the neck of a lion, and bind it about the rim.

Hearing this, the carpenter went at once and killed the lion who had led him to the tree, flaying his hide exactly as the spirit had advised. Then, having what he had come for, he turned back to the Phandana tree and finished what he had begun. He felled it to the ground and carried off both the lion's hide and the tree's timber for his wheel.

Only then, as the trunk lay broken upon the forest floor, did the tree spirit see what his own clever revenge had actually cost him. He had moved swiftly to punish the lion for his treachery, but his trick had done nothing to turn the carpenter from his original purpose. It had only quickened the lion's death without saving the tree, and the spirit found that he had lost his dwelling along with his enemy.

In that hour he uttered thirteen verses on the ruin that malice brings upon all who practice it. One who answers injury with injury, however cleverly, digs a pit that swallows the schemer as surely as the foe. Hatred, he said, is never quenched by hatred, nor does a clever retaliation end a quarrel; it only widens the grave that holds every party to it. The lion and the tree spirit, each wronged by the other and each seeking the other's ruin, perished together by their own enmity. The carpenter alone walked away whole, having profited from a feud that was none of his making.

Concluding the tale, the Teacher explained that he had told this story of two deluded combatants destroying one another to the quarreling Sakyans and Koliyans on the bank of the river Rohini. He hoped they too might see where mutual rancor leads, and might choose reconciliation over the same ruin that had claimed both the lion and the tree.

What this story preserved was never a lesson about trees or lions specifically, but a warning that cleverness applied to revenge solves nothing it claims to solve. The tree spirit was wise enough to see exactly how to punish the lion. Yet that same cleverness blinded him to the much simpler fact that the carpenter's axe would not stop simply because its first target had been dealt with. A grudge pursued with intelligence is still a grudge. The Buddha wanted two quarreling communities to recognize that their own cleverness in defending themselves offered no more real protection than the tree spirit's trick had offered him.