Bandhanāgāra-Jātaka

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Source: Adapted from Archaic Translation by W.H.D. Rouse
JATAKA No. 201

BANDHANAGARA-JATAKA

"Not iron chains," etc.--This story the Master told while staying in Jetavana monastery, about the prison-house.

At the time of this story we hear that a gang of burglars, highwaymen, and murderers had been caught and brought before the king of Kosala. The king ordered them to be made fast with chains, and ropes, and chains. Thirty country Brothers(Monks), desirous of seeing the Master, had paid him a visit and offered their salutations. Next day, as they were seeking alms, they passed the prison and noticed these rascals. In the evening, after their return from the day's rounds, they approached the Buddha: "Sir," they said, "to-day, as we were seeking alms, we saw in the prison-house a number of criminals bound fast in chains and shackles, being in great misery. They could not break these shackles, and run away. Is there any chain stronger than these?"

The Master replied, "Brethren(Monks), those are chains, it is true; but the chains which consist of a craving for wealth, corn, sons, wives and children are stronger than they are an hundred-times, no a thousand-times. Yet even those chains, hard to break as they are, have been broken by wise men of the olden time, who went to Himalaya and became hermits." Then he told them an old-world tale.

Once upon a time, while Brahmadatta ruled over Benares, the Bodhisattva was born into a poor man's family. When he grew up, his father died. He earned wages, and supported his mother. His mother, much against his will, brought a wife home for him, and soon after died. Now his wife conceived. Not knowing that she had conceived, he said to her, "Wife, you must earn your living; I will renounce the world." Then said she, "No, for I am with child. Wait and see the child that is born of me, and then go and become a hermit." To this he agreed. So when she was delivered, he said, "Now, wife, you are safely delivered, and I must turn hermit." "Wait," said she, "till the time when the child is weaned." And after that she conceived again.

"If I agree to her request," thought the Bodhisattva, "I shall never get away at all. I will flee without saying a word to her, and become a hermit." So he told her nothing, but rose up in the night, and fled away.

The city guards seized him. "I have a mother to support," said he--"let me go!" thus he made them let him go free, and after staying in a certain place, he passed out by the chief gate and made his way to the Himalayas, where he lived as a hermit; and caused the Supernatural Faculties and the Attainments to spring up within him, as he lived in the rapture of meditation. As he lived there, he exulted, saying--"The bond of wife and child, the bond of passion, so hard to break, is broken!" and he uttered these lines:-

"Not iron chains--so the wise have told--  Not ropes, or bars of wood, so fast can hold   As passion, and the love of child or wife,   Of precious gems and earrings of fine gold.

"These heavy chains--who is there can find  Release from such?--these are the ties that bind:   These if the wise can burst, then they are free,   Leaving all love and all desire behind!"

And the Bodhisattva, after uttering this aspiration, without breaking the charm of his ecstasy (trance) attained to Brahma's world.

When the Master had ended this discourse, he explained the truths:-at the conclusion of the Truths, some entered the First Path(Trance), some the Second(Trance), some the Third(Trance), and some the Fourth(Trance):-"In the story, Mahamaya (deceased birth mother of Buddha) was the mother, King Shuddhodana (father of Buddha & king of Kapilavastu) was the father, Rahul's mother (wife of Buddha) was the wife, Rahul (Buddha's son) himself the son, and I was the man who left his family and became an hermit."