Bodhisatta Exposes the Deceptive Ascetic

In a past life, the Bodhisatta was once a merchant traveling through various towns. In one of these towns, a landowner had great faith in an ascetic and built him a hermitage, providing him with excellent food for every meal. One day, the landowner decided to bury one hundred gold coins at the hermitage for safekeeping.However, the ascetic was not a genuine holy man. He dug up the coins for himself and the next day announced that he had remained in the same place for too long and it was time to move on. The landowner escorted him to the edge of the city before saying goodbye.But the ascetic, wanting to have a laugh and secretly mock the gullible landowner, stuck a piece of straw in his matted hair and turned back. When he met the landowner again, he told him that straw from his roof had gotten stuck in his hair and rushed back to return it to its rightful owner. The landowner was highly impressed by this display of supposed virtue.The Bodhisatta, who was traveling at that time and had stopped in the landowner’s town for the night, heard the pair’s exchange about the straw. He suspected that the ascetic had stolen something and approached the landowner to ask if he had left anything in the ascetic’s care. If so, he should confirm it was safe.When they discovered that the gold was missing, the landowner and the Bodhisatta chased down the ascetic, punching and kicking him until he confessed to the theft and returned the gold. The Bodhisatta ridiculed the ascetic for telling such an implausible story and warned him not to do anything like it again.

In the Lifetime of the Buddha

This tale has a significant connection to the Buddha’s later life. The rogue ascetic in the story was an earlier birth of one of the Buddha’s disciples who claimed to dedicate himself to seeking salvation but was known by other disciples to be dishonest.When the Buddha heard some of his disciples discussing the dishonest disciple, he told them this story to illustrate that this individual had also been deceitful in the past. This narrative served to remind the disciples that such behavior was not new and that the individual had a history of dishonesty.

Moral

The Kuhaka Jataka teaches us about the importance of honesty and the dangers of deception. The story emphasizes that true virtue cannot be feigned and that dishonesty will ultimately be exposed. The Bodhisatta’s actions serve as a model for how to uncover and address deceit, while the ascetic’s fate serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of dishonest behavior. This tale underscores the Buddhist principle of integrity and the need for genuine moral conduct rather than superficial displays of virtue.