The Happy Monk

Long ago, when Brahma-datta was king in Benares, the Bodisat was born as a rich Brahman in the northwest country. Seeing how much harm comes from chasing worldly pleasures, and how much good comes from a holy life, he gave up the world, went to the Himalayas and lived as a hermit, mastering the Eight Attainments of deep meditation. More and more followers gathered round him, until five hundred hermits lived under his care.

When the rainy season came, he left the Himalayas with his band of hermits and traveled through towns and villages until he reached Benares. There he stayed in the royal park as the king’s guest. When the four months of rain were over, he went to say goodbye, but the king begged him to stay. “You are old, sir. Why go back to the Himalayas? Send your followers there, but stay here yourself.”

So the Bodisat put the five hundred hermits in the care of his senior pupil and sent them off. “Go and live with them in the Himalayas,” he said. “I will stay here.”

This senior pupil had once been a king. He had given up a great kingdom for the holy life, and through long training in meditation he had gained the eight kinds of spiritual insight.

One day, while he was living in the Himalayas with the other hermits, he felt a longing to see his teacher. “Stay here quietly,” he told the others. “I’m going to pay my respects to our teacher, and I’ll be back soon.”

He went to his teacher, bowed, greeted him warmly, spread a mat on the ground and lay down beside him.

Just then the king also came to the park to visit the teacher. He bowed and sat down respectfully to one side. The pupil saw the king, but he did not get up. He simply lay there as he was and burst out joyfully, “Oh, happiness! Oh, happiness!”

The king was offended that the hermit had not risen when he saw him, and he said to the Bodisat, “Sir, this hermit must have had a fine time of it. Look at him lying there at his ease, singing a song!”

“Great king,” said the Bodisat, “this hermit was a king like you. He is thinking, ‘When I lived in the world as a king, with all my royal splendor and guarded by many armed men, I never knew joy like this.’ That is why he cries out. He is speaking of the joy of meditation and the happiness of the holy life.” Then, to teach the king what is right, the Bodisat spoke this verse:

He who needs no one to guard him,
and has no one he must guard,
he is the one who lives at ease, O king,
untroubled by longing or desire.

The king listened and was content. He took his leave and went home to his palace, and the pupil, too, said goodbye and went back to the Himalayas. But the Bodisat stayed on in the park, living in meditation until he died, and then he was born in the Brahma heaven.

About this story

This is the Sukhavihari Jataka, No. 10 in T. W. Rhys Davids’s Buddhist Birth Stories (1880), which he titles “The Happy Life.” The tale turns on the joyful shout “Oh, Happiness! Oh, Happiness!” and on the verse about the one who needs no guards.

The Buddha tells it at the Anupiya Mango-grove about the monk Bhaddiya, a former king who used to cry out the same words as he wandered in the forest, free of the worries of a palace. At the end the Buddha names the happy pupil as Bhaddiya and the teacher as himself. The story of the present is not retold here.

Read the original: Buddhist Birth Stories (Project Gutenberg)

Best for ages 6–8 — a short tale about what really makes a person happy.

A closer reading

The visiting king interprets the pupil’s posture through court etiquette: not rising appears disrespectful. The teacher supplies a different context, revealing that the relaxed man once carried the same royal anxieties. One visible behavior can have more than one explanation.

The verse reverses a familiar sign of privilege. Guards ordinarily display importance, but here they also represent fear and obligations. The story presents the pupil’s happiness through its Buddhist ideal of renunciation; it need not imply that everyone who needs protection or cares for others is incapable of joy.

Try this with the story

Describe the resting pupil first as the visiting king sees him, then as the teacher explains him. Keep the visible facts the same and change only the interpretation. Discuss what information makes the second account more understanding.

Questions to ask

• Why does the king read the pupil’s behavior as disrespect?
• How does knowing the pupil was once a king change the scene?
• What do guards symbolize differently for the king and the former king?

Related stories

• The Gray Hair — a king who gives up his throne for a peaceful life
• The King’s White Elephant — a Jataka about kings and contentment
• The Two Stags — another short early Jataka with a lesson in a verse