Vānara Jātaka

Jataka No. 57 of the Pali Canon, known as the Vanarinda Jataka, was told by the Buddha concerning an attempt on his life by Devadatta, his jealous cousin and rival within the monastic order. It recalled a former life in which the very same cunning had once nearly cost a monkey his life on a stepping-stone in the middle of a river.

In ancient times, when Brahmadatta ruled Benares (the old city now known as Varanasi), the Bodhisatta was reborn in the animal kingdom as a robust, agile, and exceedingly intelligent monkey who dwelled on the forested bank of the sacred Ganges River. In the middle of the river lay an island covered with lush groves of sweet mangoes, breadfruits, rose-apples, and figs. Halfway between the mainland bank and the island stood a flat rock that protruded from the swirling currents. Every morning, the Bodhisatta would leap from the riverbank onto this rock, and from the rock to the island, feasting on ripe fruits all day before leaping back at dusk.

A great crocodile lived in the deep pools of the river with his mate. Seeing the monkey leaping back and forth daily, the female crocodile conceived a fierce craving to eat the heart of the monkey king. She begged her husband to fetch her that very heart or she would surely perish. The crocodile, wishing to comfort her, swam to the stepping-stone, climbed upon it, and flattened his scaly body completely to resemble the natural contours of the rock, waiting motionless for the monkey's evening jump.

At twilight, having eaten his fill, the Bodhisatta walked down to the island's shore to return home. Looking across the river at the stepping-stone, he noticed something unusual: the water level had neither risen nor fallen that day, yet the rock stood twice as high out of the water as it had that morning. Suspecting at once that an enemy lay waiting to kill him, the monkey called out to the rock as he always did in greeting.

Receiving no answer, he called out again, asking the rock why it remained silent today when it always answered his greeting before. The foolish crocodile, worried that his silence might betray him, thought that this rock must ordinarily speak to the monkey. He answered in its place in a muffled, gurgling voice, asking the monkey what he wanted.

The Bodhisatta laughed and asked who was speaking, and the crocodile, caught up in his own ruse, admitted plainly that he was a crocodile waiting to take the monkey's heart. The confession, meant to frighten the monkey into surrender, instead told him exactly what kind of danger he was actually facing.

The Bodhisatta feigned surrender, telling the crocodile that he had no escape since the river was too wide to swim. He asked the crocodile to open his mouth wide so he could leap directly into his jaws. The Bodhisatta knew something about crocodiles that the crocodile himself seemed to have forgotten in his eagerness: whenever they open their enormous jaws wide, their eyes involuntarily snap shut.

As the foolish beast stretched his jaws agape, his eyes closed tight in darkness exactly as the monkey had expected. Seizing that split second, the monkey leaped like lightning from the bank and planted his agile feet firmly upon the crocodile's hard skull. He vaulted high into the air and landed safely upon the mainland bank before the crocodile had any chance to react.

Opening his eyes and seeing the monkey laughing safely atop a high tree, the crocodile was awestruck by his adversary's genius rather than angry at having been outwitted. He declared that whoever possessed the monkey's four supreme virtues, truth, wisdom, courage, and self-sacrifice, could conquer any mortal enemy and cross over every peril life presented.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the scheming crocodile with Devadatta and the clever monkey with himself. The same hunger to destroy a rival through deception that had once driven a crocodile to disguise himself as a stone was the very same pattern Devadatta was still repeating against the Buddha in this present life.

What ultimately saved the monkey was never speed or strength, since he had no way to out-swim a crocodile in open water. It was the simple discipline of noticing when something familiar looked slightly wrong and refusing to dismiss that feeling as nothing. A rock sitting higher than the water level should have allowed was a small enough detail that a less attentive traveler might have crossed without a second glance. It was exactly that kind of small attention, practiced daily on an ordinary crossing, that gave the monkey the extra moment he needed to test the danger before it could close its jaws around him.