Udañcanī Jātaka

Jataka No. 106 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha under the same circumstances that gave rise to the Culla Narada Kassapa Jataka. It recalled a former life in which a young ascetic's brief taste of worldly desire had very nearly cost him the peace his own father had spent years helping him build.

In ancient times, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Varanasi, the Bodhisatta was born into a distinguished family. After the untimely death of his beloved wife, he renounced the world and took his infant son with him into the remote wilderness of the Himalayas. Living in a quiet leaf-hut surrounded by flowering trees, the Bodhisatta practiced the holy life, attained deep meditative absorption, and raised his boy in complete innocence of worldly attachments, vices, and women.

The son grew into a handsome, strong youth, adept in forest lore and dutiful toward his father, having spent his entire life without ever once laying eyes on a woman. One afternoon, while the Bodhisatta was deep in the forest digging edible tubers and gathering wild fruits, a band of border marauders raided a nearby hill settlement. A cunning, beautiful young woman who had escaped them fled into the forest and stumbled upon the hermitage clearing.

Seeing the youth alone at the door of the leaf-hut, she engaged him in conversation with alluring glances, sweet smiles, and soft words. The boy, who had never seen a female form in his life, was entirely defenseless against what she offered, and enchanted by her touch, he succumbed to passion and forgot his meditative vows almost as quickly as they had been given.

The woman coaxed him with a simple question: why wither away in this gloomy jungle when the city offered music, wine, and endless delights waiting just for the two of them? Entranced by a vision of life he had never once imagined, the youth abandoned his father's hermitage without a second thought and followed her into the capital.

Once they settled in the city, the illusion vanished almost immediately. The woman's sweet demeanor turned tyrannical and cruel. She ordered him about from dawn until midnight, demanding that he fetch heavy bundles of firewood, draw gallons of water from distant wells, cook, clean, and earn money in the marketplace without a moment to himself.

Whenever he hesitated from sheer exhaustion, she cursed him and threatened to cast him out into the streets. The wretched youth felt exactly like a wooden water-bucket, constantly dropped into dark, cold water, hauled up to pour out its burden, and plunged down again without a moment's rest, over and over, with no end to the cycle in sight.

Deeply disillusioned and weeping for his lost innocence, the youth finally recognized his own madness for what it was. Early one morning, while his tormentor still slept, he slipped through the city gates and ran back toward the Himalayas as fast as his exhausted legs could carry him.

Falling at the feet of the Bodhisatta, the youth sobbed and related the entire ordeal without hiding any part of his own foolishness. He held nothing back from the father whose years of careful teaching he had so quickly abandoned for a stranger's smile.

The compassionate Bodhisatta lifted his son with gentle hands and recited a verse of warning. He compared a flatterer's honeyed tongue to a deep well that plunges the fool downward like a water-drawer, draining his vital essence again and again until he finally breaks under the weight of it.

Instructed by his father in the true nature of this sensory delusion, the youth washed away his defilements (the mental impurities that had clouded his mind) and renewed his meditation. He gradually regained the radiant peace he had so nearly traded away for a promise that turned out to be nothing more than endless, unrewarded labor.