Basket of Conduct 16

Select any verse to keep it — saved passages go to your Dhamma Deck, the same one the app uses.

1. The Conduct Leading to Buddhahood
2. The Chapter on an Elephant
3. The Perfection of Ethics (6th)
4. Ruru the Deer King’s Conduct
5. “Then again when I was
6. the king of deer named Ruru,
7. in appearance I was like burnished gold,
8. focused on the highest ethics.
9. There was a pleasant, delightful region,
10. free of humans,
11. so I went there and stayed
12. on a lovely bank of the Ganges.
13. Then a man upstream,
14. harassed by creditors,
15. fell into the Ganges, thinking,
16. ‘I live or I die!’
17. Day and night in the Ganges
18. he was swept along the stream,
19. crying out pitifully,
20. along the middle of the Ganges.
21. When I heard the sound
22. of his pitiful crying,
23. I stood on the Ganges bank
24. and asked, ‘What man are you?’
25. When asked he explained
26. to me his own deed:
27. ‘I was so scared of my creditors,
28. I jumped in the great river!’
29. Taking pity on him,
30. surrendering my own life,
31. I entered and dragged him out
32. in the darkness of the night.
33. When I knew he had recovered,
34. I said to him,
35. ‘I ask of you one favor:
36. tell no-one about me.’
37. But once he had returned to the city,
38. for the sake of money he told when asked.
39. Taking the king,
40. he drew close to me.
41. All that I had done
42. was related to the king.
43. When the king heard this,
44. he fitted his arrow, thinking,
45. ‘Right here I shall kill
46. this ignoble betrayer of a friend.’
47. I protected him,
48. substituting myself:
49. ‘Let him be, great king.
50. I shall carry out your pleasure.’
51. I guarded my ethics,
52. not my life.
53. For then I was ethical,
54. because it was solely for awakening.”