21.6 The Story about the Vajjian Bhikkhu

Dhp 302

Burlingame: The Vajjian Prince Who Became a Monk

Compare: SN 9.9; Thag-a 62

A Vajjian prince ordained, but hearing music and festivities coming from Vesālī, he was dissatisfied and asked: ‘Who is worse off than we monastics?’ The Buddha taught him the various kinds of suffering there are in births and deaths with some verses.

Keywords: Discontent, Festivals, Devatās

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“The going-forth is hard,” [30.182] this Dhamma teaching was given by the Teacher while he was in residence at Mahāvana near Vesālī with reference to a certain Vajjian prince who became a bhikkhu.

The story concerning him is as follows: A certain Vajjian prince who had gone forth took up his residence at Vesālī in a certain forest-grove. It so happened that at that time there was a festival in progress at Vesālī which lasted through the night. When this bhikkhu heard the noise and tumult of the beating of drums and the playing of musical instruments at Vesālī, he wept and lamented, and uttered on that occasion the following verse:

We live in wilderness alone,
just like wood rejected in the forest,
on a kind of night like this who
is known to be worse off than us?

It appears that this bhikkhu had formerly been a prince in the kingdom of the Vajjians, and that when his turn came to rule, he renounced his kingdom and went forth. {3.461} On the night of full moon of the month Kattika in November, the entire city of Vesālī was decked with flags and banners, making it coterminous with the realms of the Four Great Kings, and the festival began.

As the festival continued through the night, he listened to the noise of the beating of drums and the striking of other musical instruments and the sound of the playing of lutes. When the 7,707 princes of Vesālī, and a like number of young princes and commanders-in-chief, all dressed and adorned in festive array, entered the street for the purpose of taking part in the festivities, he himself walked through his great cloister sixty cubits long, beheld the moon poised in mid-heaven, stopped near the seat at the end of the cloister and surveyed his own person, for lack of festive garments and adornments resembling a log of wood thrown away in the forest. And then and there he thought to himself: “Is there any one worse off than us?”

Under ordinary circumstances he possessed the merits and virtues of a forest-dweller, but on this occasion he was oppressed with discontent, and therefore spoke thus. Thereupon the Devatā who inhabited [30.183] that forest-grove formed the resolution: “I will stir up this bhikkhu,” and uttered in reply the following verse:

Alone you live in wilderness,
like wood rejected in forest,
many are those that envy you,
like hell-beings those going to heaven.

The discontented bhikkhu heard this verse, and on the following day approached the Teacher, saluted him, and sat down respectfully on one side. Aware of what had happened, {3.462} and desiring to make plain the hardships of the household life, the Teacher summed up the five kinds of suffering in the following verse:

302. Duppabbajjaṁ durabhiramaṁ, durāvāsā gharā dukhā,
dukkhosamānasaṁvāso, dukkhānupatitaddhagū,
tasmā na caddhagū siyā, na ca dukkhānupatito siyā.

The going-forth is hard, it is
hard to find real delight therein,
but it is also hard to dwell
in households that are suffering;
always dwelling together with
those different is suffering;
travellers in the round of births
are affected by suffering;
therefore don’t be a traveller,
don’t be oppressed by suffering.

At the end of the teaching that bhikkhu, seeing the five kinds of suffering, dispassionately breaking through the five lower and the five higher fetters, was established in Arahatship.