Dubbalakaṭṭha-Jātaka

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Source: Converted from Archaic translation by Robert Chalmers
JATAKA No. 105

DUBBALAKATTHA-JATAKA

"Fear'st you the wind."--This story was told by the Master while at Jetavana monastery, about a Brother(Monk) who lived in a perpetual state of nervous alarm. We learn that he came of a good family in Shravasti city, and was led to give up the world by hearing the Truth preached, and that he was always in fear of his life both by night and by day. The sough of the wind, the rustle of a fan, or the cry of bird or beast would inspire him with such abject terror that he would shriek and dash away. He never thought that death was sure to come upon him; though, had he practised meditation on the certainty of death, he would not have feared it. For only they that do not so meditate fear death. Now his constant fear of dying became known to the Brethren(Monks), and one day they met in the Hall of Truth and fell to discussing his fearfulness and the correctness of every Brother's taking death as a theme for meditation. Entering the Hall, the Master asked, and was told, what they were discussing. So he sent for that Brother and asked him whether it was true he lived in fear of death. The Brother confessed that he did. "Be not angry, Brethren," said the Master, "with this Brother. The fear of death that fills his breast, now was no less strong in past times." So saying he told this story of the past.

Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisattva was a Tree-fairy near the Himalayas. And in those days the king put his state elephant in the elephant-trainers' hands to be trained in to stand firm. And they tied the elephant up fast to a post, and with prods in their hands set about training the animal. Unable to bear the pain while he was being made to do their asking, the elephant broke the post down, put the trainers to flight, and made off to the Himalayas. And the men, being unable to catch it, had to come back empty-handed. The elephant lived in the Himalayas in constant fear of death. A breath of wind sufficed to fill him with fear and to start him off at full speed, shaking his trunk to and fro. And it was with him as though he was still tied to the post to be trained. All happiness of mind and body gone, he wandered up and down in constant dread. Seeing this, the Tree-fairy stood in the fork of his tree and uttered this stanza:-

Fear you the wind that ceaselessly The rotten branches did rip always? Such fear will waste you quite away!

Such were the Tree-fairy's cheering words. And the elephant from then on feared no more. --- His lesson ended, the Master taught the Four Truths (at the close of which the Brother entered the Paths), and identified the Birth by saying, "This Brother(Monk) was the elephant of those days and I the Tree-fairy."