Somadatta Jātaka

The Master told this story at Jetavana about a certain old monk. It is Somadatta Jātaka, No. 410 in the Pali Jātaka collection of the Khuddaka Nikāya, which preserves its verses with the commentary that tells the tale. The old monk had ordained a novice, who waited on him but soon died of a serious illness. The old man went about weeping and wailing for the boy.

Seeing him, the monks began to talk in the Hall of Truth, the monastery's assembly hall. They said that this old monk was weeping and wailing for a novice's death, and that he must surely have neglected the meditation on death. The Master came and heard the subject of their talk. He told them it was not the first time this man had wept for such a loss, and he related an old tale.

Once, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was Sakka, king of the gods. In Benares there lived a wealthy brahmin who left the world and became an ascetic in the Himalayas. There he lived by gathering roots and fruits from the forest. He had given up house, wife, and children to follow the religious life.

One day, searching the forest for wild fruits, the ascetic found a young elephant. He took it to his hermitage and treated it as his own son, calling it Somadatta. He tended it with food of grass and leaves. The elephant grew up to be a great animal, and the two lived together in the hermitage.

One day the elephant took in too much food and fell sick of a surfeit, having eaten far more than he could digest. The ascetic led him into the hermitage and went out to gather wild fruits. Before he returned, the young elephant died. The story does not dwell on the death itself, and says only that the ascetic found nothing amiss until he came back.

Returning with his fruits, the ascetic thought that on other days his child came to meet him, but not today, and wondered what was the matter. So he lamented and spoke the first stanza, saying that in the wood the elephant would meet him, but today he could not see him anywhere. Then he saw the elephant lying at the end of the covered walk. Taking him round the neck, he spoke the second stanza, saying that his elephant lay dead, cut down like a tender shoot.

At that moment Sakka was surveying the world and saw the ascetic. He thought that this man had left wife and child for the religious life, and now he was lamenting a young elephant that he had called his son. Sakka resolved to rouse him and make him think. He came to the hermitage, stood in the air, and spoke the third stanza, saying that sorrow for the dead does not become a lone ascetic who is free from the ties of home.

The ascetic heard him and replied in the fourth stanza. He said that when a man has lived with a creature as a companion, grief for a lost playmate finds relief in tears. It is a human answer, and Sakka did not dismiss it. He answered with two stanzas. Those who wish to weep may lament the dead, he said, but it is vain to weep, as the wise have said. If tears could prevail against the grave, all of us would unite to save our dearest ones.

Hearing Sakka's words, the ascetic took thought and was comforted. He dried his tears and spoke the remaining stanzas in praise of Sakka. He said that Sakka had quenched his pain as water puts out a flame fed by ghee. He said that sorrow's shaft had wounded his heart, and Sakka had healed the wound and restored his life. With the barb extracted, he was full of joy and peace. After admonishing the ascetic, Sakka went back to his own place.

The Master, after the lesson, identified the birth. The young elephant was the novice, the ascetic was the old monk, and Sakka was the Buddha himself. The sorrow of the old monk in the present was thus the same sorrow as in the past, and the same teacher came to meet it.

The tale does not condemn the ascetic for loving his foster-child, and it does not say he failed in his practice. It only points out that grief cannot bring back the dead, and that the wise who see this are freed from the arrow of sorrow. The Master did not scold the old monk. He gave him, through a story, the kind of company Sakka gave the hermit: a voice that names the pain honestly and then shows the way out of it.