Vyaggha Jātaka

Jataka No. 272 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha concerning Kokalika's misguided attempt to reconcile with Sariputta and Moggallana after he had insulted them. It recalled a former life in which the very same impulsive foolishness had once destroyed an entire forest.

In the primeval wilderness bordering the kingdom of Varanasi, there flourished a majestic, untamed forest dense with towering shala trees, flowering ironwoods, and fragrant groves of campaka. In the most magnificent and ancient shala tree of this forest, the Bodhisatta, the Buddha-to-be in an earlier life, dwelt as a wise, benevolent tree spirit, revered as a teacher and elder by all the other spirits of the grove.

In that same woodland, a ferocious tiger and a mighty maned lion made their communal lair. Because these supreme predators hunted freely, no human beings, neither woodcutters, charcoal-burners, nor poachers, dared set foot within the borders of the forest. Sheltered by the fearsome reputation of the great beasts, the forest thrived undisturbed for centuries, its saplings growing into giants in complete safety.

However, the tiger and the lion were untidy carnivores. Having slain deer, wild boar, and water buffalo, they devoured what they wished and abandoned the remainder to rot in the sun amidst the fern glades. Soon foul vapors of decomposing flesh hung over the glades, offending the delicate senses of the woodland spirits who had to breathe that air every day.

Not far from the Bodhisatta's shala tree stood a sprawling banyan tree inhabited by a shallow, short-sighted tree spirit. Plagued by the heavy stench, this spirit approached the Bodhisatta in great irritation. He proposed that the two of them assume terrifying demonic forms after dark and chase the murderous beasts across the mountains into some neighboring province where their mess would no longer be anyone's problem.

The Bodhisatta shook his head and offered careful counsel instead, explaining that the stench was unpleasant, true enough, but that an invisible shield was protecting them all the same. Those predators were the fierce guardians of the woodland, and because men feared their fangs and claws, the axe and saw stayed far from every trunk in the forest. The forest protected the tigers, he explained, and the tigers protected the forest in return, so driving them away would mean banishing the very armor keeping everyone alive.

Yet the foolish banyan spirit refused to listen, scorning the Bodhisatta's wisdom as nothing more than cowardly over-caution. He waited until nightfall, and when the tiger and lion returned to their lair, assumed a colossal, flaming demon shape with blazing eyes, emitting ear-splitting shrieks that shook the mountains. Terrified by what seemed an angry forest goblin, the lion and tiger fled across the mountain ranges into a distant wilderness, never to return.

The foolish spirit danced in triumph, certain that the stench was gone and the woods were finally clean. But within three days, village woodcutters hovering on the forest's fringes noticed that no roar echoed across the hills and no fresh tracks marked the river shallows. Realizing that the legendary beasts had departed for good, the townspeople arrived in droves with iron axes, saws, and bullock teams.

Day and night, the forest resounded with the brutal thud of falling timber. The majestic shala groves were leveled, and ancient branches were chopped into firewood. The magnificent banyan itself was notched and felled to the earth, leaving the foolish spirit who had once lived within it homeless in the space of a single season.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the foolish banyan spirit with Kokalika, the lion with Sariputta, and the tiger with Moggallana. The same impulsive foolishness which had once destroyed an entire forest for the sake of a cleaner smell was the very same pattern driving Kokalika's clumsy attempt to repair a relationship he had already damaged through his own hasty insult.

As his own tree crashed into the dust, the foolish spirit ran weeping to the Bodhisatta. The Bodhisatta spoke a tragic, lasting verse: whoever tears down the thorns hedging his garden will soon watch the trampling ox devour his flowers. What this story preserved was never a simple lesson about tigers or trees. It was a warning about how easily an unpleasant but protective arrangement can be mistaken for a problem worth solving by force, when the true cost of removing it only becomes visible once it is already too late to reverse.