Puṭa-Dūsaka Jātaka

The Putadusaka Jataka of the Pali Canon, recorded in the Jataka commentary at volume II, page 390 of the Pali Text Society edition (cited as J.ii 390), tells how the Teacher told this story at Jetavana about a gardener's little son of Savatthi. A certain householder of Savatthi, wishing to honor a company of monks, invited them into his pleasure garden. Walking among the trees, the monks came upon the gardener plucking large leaves and casting them on the ground one by one, to be folded afterward into pottles, small cone-shaped leaf baskets, for carrying flowers and fruit.

The gardener's small son, playing nearby, picked up each leaf as it fell and, before it could be gathered, tore it to shreds in his hands. The monks, troubled by the boy's senseless mischief, reported it to the Teacher on their return, uncertain what to make of behavior that served no purpose they could identify.

The Teacher said this was not the first time the child had behaved so. In days gone by, he explained, the boy had done exactly the same thing as a monkey, and with that single observation he told the gathered monks this story of the past.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a householder's family. One day he went to the royal pleasure garden to see its groves and ponds. There he saw a gardener plucking large leaves and dropping them on the ground to be made into pottles, just as the monks would later witness in Savatthi.

A single monkey lived in that garden, and as each leaf fell, before the gardener could pick it up, the monkey snatched it and tore it into pieces. The Bodhisatta watched this happen again and again, each leaf meeting the exact same fate the moment it touched the ground, with no apparent gain to the monkey from any of it.

Curious rather than angry, the Bodhisatta asked the monkey why he destroyed the leaves in this particular way, expecting perhaps some reason, however small, that might explain the behavior. The monkey answered plainly that he could not help it; this was simply his nature, to pull apart whatever he found within reach.

Seeing that the creature acted not from any purpose but from an ingrained and incorrigible habit of destructiveness, the Bodhisatta understood that no kindness or reasoning would change him. Rather than waste further effort trying to correct what could not be corrected, he drove the monkey out of the garden entirely.

When the Teacher had finished this story, he identified the birth plainly: the gardener's son of today was the leaf-destroying monkey of those days, and he himself had been the householder who found him out. The same incorrigible habit that had once torn apart leaves for no purpose at all was still present, unchanged across lifetimes, in a small boy tearing apart leaves in a garden in Savatthi.

What this story offered the troubled monks was never a solution for the boy's mischief. The very point of the tale was that some habits persist across lifetimes regardless of how many times they are corrected or driven away. It offered instead a way of recognizing such behavior for what it actually was. It was not a puzzle to be solved through better reasoning, but a settled pattern that had already proven, in a previous life, immune to exactly that kind of appeal.

Some stories praise patient persistence in the face of difficult behavior, but this one draws a different, equally important lesson from the same situation. Having asked his honest question and received an honest answer, the Bodhisatta did not keep arguing with the monkey or searching for some clever way to make him stop. A creature who freely admits that destructiveness is simply its nature has already told you everything you need to know. Removing such a creature from a position where its habits can do ongoing harm is sometimes the only response that respects both the creature's own honesty and the garden's need to survive it.