Basket of Conduct 20

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 (10th)
4. Saṅkhapāla’s Conduct
5. “Then again when I was
6. Saṅkhapāla, a dragon of great psychic power,
7. deadly-fanged, lethally venomous,
8. two-tongued, lord of serpents.
9. At a crossroad on a highway
10. crowded with many people,
11. I resolved on the four factors,
12. and made my home there.
13. ‘My outer skin and inner, flesh,
14. sinews and bones:
15. whoever has use for these,
16. they are already given, please take them.’
17. Seeing me, the Bhojans,
18. those violent and pitiless hunters,
19. came to me there
20. with sticks and hammers in their hands.
21. Having pierced my nose,
22. tail, and spine,
23. and fastened me to a pole,
24. the Bhojans carried me away.
25. The earth from sea to sea,
26. with its forests and mountains—
27. had I wished, right there
28. I could have burnt it up with a blast from my nose.
29. Though pierced with stakes,
30. and stabbed with knives,
31. I did not get upset with the Bhojans:
32. this is my perfection of ethics.”