Blessing Sixteen:
Dhamma Practice
Dhamma Practice
E. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES
E.1 Ex. Kukku Jātaka (J.396)
On the occasion of giving a teaching to the king, the Buddha related the story of his previous birth as the counselor to King Brahmadatta who at that time was an unjust ruler. After waiting a long time for a tactful opportunity to correct the king’s ways, one day the two visited a building under construction in the royal park. The roofing is not complete and the rafters had just been laid in place. The king asked his counselor how the rafters could stay in place, and having found his opportunity, the counselor said that just as the peak of a roof will fall, unless tightly held by the rafters, a king will soon fall from power unless supported by subjects who have been won over by his righteousness. As a lemon must be eaten without its peel, so must taxes be gathered without violence. Like the lotus, unstained by the water in which it grows, is the virtuous man untainted by the world — therefore his majesty should give up his extortion of unfair taxes and various other injustice driven by bias and defilements of action.
E.2 Ex. Temiya the Mute (J.538)
The bodhisattva was born as Temiya, son of the king of Kasi and Candadevi his wife. As a baby he lay in the lap of the king as he pronounced death sentences on robbers brought before him. Temiya recollected past lives when he had done the same and suffered for 20,000 years in Ussada Hell as a result, therefore he feigned dumbness to avoid having to take the throne. Eventually, when he was sixteen his execution was ordered. As his grave was being dug, he confided his resolve to become an ascetic to Sunanda the gravedigger. Sunanda was impressed by his words and released the bodhisattva to become an ascetic. His parents were informed and upon visiting Temiya’s hermitage, they heard his preaching and all became ascetics too. Citizens of Kasi and three neighbouring kingdoms followed their example. Temiya’s parents were identified with the parents of the Buddha, Sunanda with Sariputta.
E.3 Ex. Mahādhammapāla Jātaka (J.447)
There is a story of when the Buddha went back to visit his father King Suddhodana. The King told him the story that someone had told him that his son had already died as the result of his practice of self-mortification. But the King had not believed him. He had more confidence in his own son than that. The Buddha told him that it was not the first lifetime that the King had had such confidence in him as a son.
In a previous lifetime when the Buddha had been studying in a town away from home with his teacher Disāpāmokkha, a young student died. The Buddha told his teacher that where he lived, no one younger than 100 could die. The teacher didn’t believe him, so took some goats bones and took them to the Buddha’s father saying that he had returned the bones of his son who had passed away in the course of his studies. At that time the Buddha’s father had not believed him either. Not even the children in that village would believe him. The reason why everybody in that village was so long lived was that for seven generations, everyone in the village had been practicing all of the Tenfold Path of Wholesomeness described above.
E.4 Ex. Rājovāda Jātaka (J.334)
Once the king of Benares, wishing to discover if he ruled justly, traveled about in disguise, and, in the course of his wanderings, came to the Himalayas, where the Bodhisatva lived as an ascetic. The ascetic gave him ripe figs, and, when asked why they were so sweet, explained that the king of the country was evidently a just ruler. The king returned to his kingdom and ruled unjustly for a while — returning again to the hermitage, he found that the figs had become bitter.
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