67. The Pious Naga

In one of his lives, the great Bodhisattva was born as Prince Duyyodhana of Rajagaha. When he came of age, his father chose to set aside the throne and take up the life of an ascetic in the forest, leaving his son to rule as the new king. That same forest, as it happened, was frequented by a pious Naga king named Sankhapala, who visited the retired king regularly, drawn by his wisdom and eager to hear his teachings.

One day, Duyyodhana travelled into the forest to visit his father, and there, in the quiet of the hermitage, he met the wise Naga king for the first time. Something in Sankhapala's calm, disciplined way of living struck a deep chord in the young king, and he found himself wishing, even then, that he might one day follow a similar path himself.

Many years passed, and when Duyyodhana's own life eventually came to an end, he was reborn into the Naga kingdom itself, taking on the very name of the wise being who had once inspired him – Sankhapala – and adopting the disciplined life of an ascetic exactly as his old teacher had.

One day, deep in meditation, the new Sankhapala was suddenly set upon by a group of cruel men, who pierced his body and bound him tightly with ropes, subjecting him to prolonged and deliberate torture. Despite the pain inflicted on him, Sankhapala showed not the faintest trace of anger toward his tormentors, holding fast to the composure he had cultivated through years of discipline.

It happened that a pious traveller named Alara passed by the scene, and, moved by the ascetic's suffering and struck by his remarkable calm even in agony, stepped in without hesitation and freed him from the hands of the men who had captured him – a rescue that came, in the end, because Sankhapala's quiet endurance had touched a passing stranger's conscience.

Moral: A calm and forgiving heart, even under cruel torment, can move a stranger to step in and offer rescue where none was expected.

68. Overconfidence Destroys

In one of his lives, the Bodhisattva was born as a golden goose, roaming the skies each day in search of food and returning, as a matter of habit, to rest upon the branches of a particular palasa tree along his route. Over time, a genuine friendship developed between the goose and the tree spirit who dwelled within its trunk, the two of them sharing many quiet conversations during the goose's regular visits.

One day, a passing bird happened to drop a small banyan seed into a crack in the palasa tree's bark, and before long, a tiny sapling began to sprout from the crevice. The golden goose, noticing the young sapling on one of his visits, understood at once the danger it posed and urged his friend to act. “My dear friend,” he said, “you must destroy this sapling now, while it is still small, before it grows strong enough to destroy you.”

But the tree spirit only laughed off the warning, entirely unconcerned. “What harm could such a tiny sapling possibly do to me?” he replied breezily. “You worry too much, my friend.”

The goose said nothing more, though the warning weighed on him each time he returned. Season after season, the young banyan sapling continued to grow, its roots thickening, its branches spreading wider and higher, until at last it had grown into a massive tree in its own right – one whose weight and reach the palasa tree could no longer bear. In time, the fully grown banyan crushed the palasa tree entirely beneath its own strength, and the once-confident tree spirit met his end exactly as his friend had warned him he might, undone by a danger he had dismissed as too small to matter.

Moral: A small, easily managed danger, dismissed out of overconfidence, can grow until it is far too late to stop – heed a friend's warning before it becomes unavoidable.

69. The Merchant and the Vultures

In one of his lives, the Bodhisattva was born as a vulture named Gijjakuta, living among a small flock of fellow vultures who often took shelter together during storms. One evening, a sudden and heavy downpour forced Gijjakuta and his companions to seek refuge in a deep roadside ditch, where they huddled together, cold and exposed, as night fell around them.

A kind-hearted merchant travelling that same road happened upon the shivering vultures sheltering in the ditch, and, taking pity on their plight, stopped to help – building them a small fire to warm themselves by and sharing what food he carried, staying with them through the worst of the storm until it finally passed.

The vultures never forgot this small act of unexpected kindness. Once the storm had cleared and they had returned to their usual haunts, they resolved among themselves to find some way of repaying the merchant's generosity, however modest their means. Over the following weeks, the birds began collecting bits of jewellery and other valuable trinkets they came across, carrying each piece carefully to the merchant's garden and leaving it there as a quiet gift of gratitude.

But when the king of that land learned of jewellery mysteriously appearing in a merchant's garden, he grew suspicious and had Gijjakuta captured on suspicion of theft. The merchant, too, was summoned before the throne to explain the strange occurrence, and once the full truth came to light – that the vultures had simply been repaying a debt of kindness in the only way they knew how – the king released Gijjakuta at once, and asked only that the merchant see to it that the gathered treasures were returned to their rightful owners.

Moral: Gratitude, once earned through kindness, is rarely forgotten – even creatures with little means to repay a favour will find some way to do so.

70. The Magical Spell

In one of his lives, the Bodhisattva was born as a sprite dwelling among a thick clump of hedges, and close by, in the trunk of a towering mahogany tree, lived another sprite with whom he had formed a close and lasting friendship over the years. The two spent many quiet hours together, watching over their small corner of the forest.

One day, the king's royal carpenter arrived in search of strong, sturdy timber for a new set of furniture destined for the palace. His eyes fell at once on the great mahogany tree. “This will serve the purpose perfectly,” he murmured to himself, and began preparing his saw to fell it.

The hedge sprite, watching from nearby, understood immediately that his dear friend's life was now in grave danger. “I must find some way to stop this carpenter,” he thought urgently, and, drawing on his own small store of magic, he transformed himself into a chameleon and crept close to the working carpenter, casting a clever illusion over the tree so that its healthy wood suddenly appeared thoroughly rotten and useless to the naked eye.

Fooled entirely by the disguise, the carpenter examined the tree, shook his head in disappointment, and muttered, “This tree is worthless after all,” before gathering his tools and leaving in search of better timber elsewhere. The moment the danger had passed, the hedge sprite hurried down from his perch and embraced his mahogany tree friend, overjoyed at having saved his life through nothing more than quick thinking and a small, well-timed illusion.

Moral: True friendship finds a way to protect what it loves, even when the danger comes from someone far more powerful than oneself.

71. The Righteous King

The ruler of a once deeply prosperous kingdom was, in that life, the Bodhisattva himself – but as time went on, his once-flourishing realm began to suffer under a mounting wave of hardship: disease spread through the villages, deaths came earlier than they should have, and devastating floods swept through the countryside again and again. Deeply troubled by his people's suffering, the king summoned an urgent council of his ministers and head priests to seek their counsel.

“Your Majesty,” one minister ventured cautiously, “perhaps the gods themselves have grown displeased with us.” The head priest, nodding gravely, added his own solution to the problem. “In that case, we must hold a grand ritual and offer a sacrifice of one hundred lambs, to appease their anger and restore their favour.”

The suggestion met with immediate enthusiasm from nearly everyone in the room – everyone, that is, except the king himself. “I will not bring prosperity back to my kingdom through the slaughter of innocent animals,” he declared firmly, his voice cutting through the murmurs of agreement around him.

“But Your Majesty,” a minister pressed, clearly uneasy at the king's refusal, “as our ruler, is it not your duty to do whatever is necessary to secure your people's happiness and safety?”

“I will not spill innocent blood merely to purchase happiness,” the king answered without hesitation, “for that would be nothing less than committing a grave sin in the name of relief. If the gods are indeed unhappy, then I shall seek to appease them only through peace, through love, and through righteous rule – nothing else.”

True to his word, the king held firm to this decision despite the pressure surrounding him, refusing every call for the sacrifice. And, remarkably, within only a few days of his declaration, the diseases that had plagued his people began to subside, the untimely deaths grew rarer, and the floods that had ravaged his lands finally receded – peace and prosperity gradually returning to the kingdom exactly as the righteous king had believed they would.

Moral: True righteousness sometimes means standing entirely alone against popular pressure – and a ruler's steady moral courage can restore what fear and superstition never could.

72. Good to All

In one of his lives, the Bodhisattva was born as Brahmadatta, king of Benaras, ruling at a time when a neighbouring kingdom was governed by another well-known and respected ruler named Mallika. Both kings, as it happened, shared a similar habit of disguising themselves from time to time to walk unrecognised through the streets of their own cities, checking quietly for themselves that justice and fairness truly prevailed among their people.

By pure chance, on one such night, both disguised kings found themselves travelling narrow streets that met at the very same intersection, their chariots arriving nose to nose with neither driver willing to yield the right of way to the other. What began as a simple traffic dispute between two chariot drivers quickly escalated into a heated argument, each driver loudly extolling the greatness of his own master and insisting that the other should be the one to give way.

As the two drivers traded boasts back and forth, a curious detail emerged from their competing praises – it became clear that King Mallika was known for being good to the good among his people, but harsh and unforgiving toward those he judged to be bad, while King Brahmadatta, by contrast, extended genuine kindness equally to everyone, the good and the flawed alike, without distinction.

Recognising the deeper wisdom in this difference, Mallika's own chariot driver, upon hearing it laid out so plainly, conceded the point without further argument. He acknowledged that Brahmadatta's unconditional goodness represented a higher and more admirable standard of rule than his own master's more selective kindness, and, with genuine respect, made way for Brahmadatta's chariot to pass through the intersection first.

Moral: Fairness that extends equally to everyone, without exception, is a rarer and more admirable quality than kindness reserved only for those who have earned it.

73. Wrong Friends

In one of his lives, the Bodhisattva was born as the respected leader of a colony of iguanas, living together with his extended family in a burrow deep within the forest. His young son, still eager and untested in the ways of the world, had struck up an unlikely friendship with a chameleon – a bond his father viewed with growing unease from the very beginning. “I would advise against such closeness with the chameleon,” the Bodhisattva warned his son more than once. “He may yet bring trouble upon our family.” But the young iguana, delighted by his new friend, brushed off his father's concerns and continued the friendship regardless.

Though he could not persuade his son to abandon the friendship, the Bodhisattva took the quiet precaution of preparing a secret escape route from their burrow, just in case his instincts about the chameleon proved correct. His caution turned out to be well founded. In time, the chameleon grew tired of the iguanas' company altogether, and, in a callous act of betrayal, revealed the location of their nesting grounds to a human trapper passing through the area.

The trapper wasted no time acting on the information, setting a ring of fire around the iguanas' burrow that spread quickly and caught most of the colony as they scrambled desperately to escape the flames. But the Bodhisattva, having prepared for exactly this possibility, led his own family safely out through the hidden route he had quietly built beforehand, and they escaped the disaster entirely unharmed.

Once they had reached safety, far from the devastation left behind, the young iguana – shaken and finally understanding the wisdom behind his father's earlier warnings – turned to him with genuine remorse. He asked for his father's forgiveness and promised, from that day forward, never again to dismiss his father's judgment so carelessly.

Moral: A parent's caution about unsuitable company, however unwelcome it seems at the time, is often rooted in a wisdom worth heeding – and preparing quietly for danger can save a family when trouble finally arrives.

74. Great Gift

In one of his lives, the Bodhisattva was born as a kind-hearted prince who came, quite fittingly, to be known throughout his kingdom as Great Gift. One day, travelling to a nearby village, he witnessed for himself the deep poverty and suffering endured by many of his father's subjects, and, moved by genuine compassion, distributed whatever riches he had brought with him on the spot. But even his considerable generosity could not stretch far enough to lift an entire village out of poverty on its own.

Determined to find a more lasting solution, Prince Great Gift resolved to seek out the legendary Wish-fulfilling Gem, said to be kept safely on a distant place known as Jewel Island, and he set out on a long and difficult voyage to reach it, driven by nothing more than his desire to see his people's suffering finally ended.

When at last he arrived on Jewel Island, he found the reception far from warm. The inhabitants, wary of outsiders, regarded the young prince with suspicion and offered him no welcome at all, treating him instead as an unwanted stranger with no claim on anything the island held. Undeterred, and refusing to let their coldness discourage him, Great Gift did not press his case or demand anything from them. Instead, he quietly offered his services to the island's own king, helping to guard the very castle where the precious Wish-fulfilling Gem was kept, day after day, without complaint or expectation of reward.

In time, the island king came to notice the prince's consistent goodness, patience, and quiet dedication, and, genuinely moved by the character Great Gift had shown through simple, sustained service rather than any grand gesture, chose to gift him the Wish-fulfilling Gem of his own free will. Prince Great Gift carried the precious gem back home at last, and through its power, brought lasting prosperity to his people – wealth enough, at last, to meet every need that had once driven him to undertake such a long and uncertain journey.

Moral: Genuine kindness, offered patiently even to those who do not welcome it at first, can ultimately achieve what force or wealth alone never could.