A Dhamma-Word Is Noble & Self-Conquest Is The Highest Victory
The Story of Nun Kundalakesi
Chapter 8: The Thousands • Verse 3
The Story of Nun Kundalakesi
Chapter 8: The Thousands • Verse 3
Better than reciting a hundred meaningless verses is the reciting of one verse of Dhamma, hearing which one attains peace.
While residing at the Jetavana Monastery, the Buddha spoke these verses with reference to Nun Kundalakesi.
A rich merchant of Rajagaha had an only daughter, about sixteen years old and exceedingly beautiful. Her parents lodged her in royal splendour on the top floor of a seven-storied mansion, with a single slave-woman to attend her.
One day, a young man of good family was caught committing robbery. With his hands bound behind his back, he was led to the place of execution and whipped at every crossroads.
Hearing the crowd's shouts, the merchant's daughter looked down from the mansion, saw him, and fell in love with him at once. She took to her bed and refused to eat, declaring that if she could not have that young man she would die.
Neither her mother nor her father could talk her out of it. So the father sent a thousand pieces of money to the king's officer who was escorting the robber, asking him to send the robber to him instead. The officer took the money, freed the robber, had another man executed in his place, and reported to the king that the robber was dead.
The merchant gave his daughter in marriage to the robber. Eager to win her husband's affection, she adorned herself with all her jewels and prepared his meals with her own hands.
After a few days, the robber began to plot how he might kill her, take her jewels, sell them, and spend his days eating in a tavern. He took to his bed and refused to eat.
When she asked what was wrong, he claimed that on the day he was led to execution, he had saved his life by vowing an offering to the deity of Robbers' Cliff, and that it was through that deity's power that he had won her. He was troubled, he said, about how to fulfil his vow.
She promised to see to the offering, and he asked for rich rice-porridge with honey and the five kinds of flowers. When everything was ready, he told her to leave her relatives behind and to put on her finest clothes and jewels, so that they could go merrily together.
But when they reached the cliff, he told her he had no use for the offering. He had brought her there under false pretences, to kill her, take her jewels, and escape.
Terrified, she reminded him that her jewels and her very person already belonged to him, and begged him again and again to take the jewels and spare her life. His only answer was that he would kill her.
She thought to herself that wisdom was not made to be cooked and eaten, but to help one look before one leaps, and that she would find a way to deal with him.
She reminded him that her parents had spent a thousand pieces of money to ransom him and had given him a home, and that she had been his benefactress ever since. In return, she asked for one favour: to pay homage to him one last time. He agreed, and took his stand near the edge of the cliff.
She walked around him three times, keeping him on her right, paid homage to him on all four sides, and told him that this was the last time they would see each other. She embraced him from the front and from behind.
Then, standing behind him as he waited off guard at the edge of the cliff, she put one hand on his shoulder and the other on the small of his back, and pushed him over. He fell into the abyss and was dashed to pieces at the bottom.
Afterwards she came to a hermitage of female ascetics, bowed respectfully, and asked to be received into their order, and they admitted her.
When she had mastered their thousand points of doctrine, her teachers told her to travel throughout Jambudipa and find someone who could match question and answer with her. Giving her a rose-apple branch, they told her that if a layman bested her she should become his servant, and if a monk did, she should join his order.
No one could match her. Her reputation grew so great that whenever people heard the cry, 'Here comes the Nun of the Rose-Apple!', they would run away.
Before entering a town or village for alms, she would heap up some sand at the gate, plant her rose-apple branch in it, and issue her challenge: let anyone who could match question and answer with her trample the branch underfoot. No one dared. When a branch withered, she found a fresh one.
In this way she came to Savatthi, planted her branch before the city gate, and went in for alms. Some boys gathered around the branch, waiting to see what would happen, and Venerable Sariputta told them to go ahead and trample it.
When the ascetic returned and learned that the elder had told them to do so, she challenged him to match question and answer with her, and he agreed.
She put to him all her thousand questions, and he answered every one correctly. Then he said he would ask her just one question: 'What is one?'
She felt she ought to know the answer, but she did not, and asked him what it was. Sariputta told her it was the Buddha's question, and that he would tell her the answer only if she entered their Sangha. She agreed.
The elder sent word to the nuns and had her admitted. After her ordination she took the name Kundalakesi, and within a few days she became an Arahat endowed with supernormal powers.
The Story of Nun Kundalakesi
Chapter 8: The Thousands • Verse 3
Better than reciting a hundred meaningless verses is the reciting of one verse of Dhamma, hearing which one attains peace.
While residing at the Jetavana Monastery, the Buddha spoke these verses with reference to Nun Kundalakesi.
A rich merchant of Rajagaha had an only daughter, about sixteen years old and exceedingly beautiful. Her parents lodged her in royal splendour on the top floor of a seven-storied mansion, with a single slave-woman to attend her.
One day, a young man of good family was caught committing robbery. With his hands bound behind his back, he was led to the place of execution and whipped at every crossroads.
Hearing the crowd's shouts, the merchant's daughter looked down from the mansion, saw him, and fell in love with him at once. She took to her bed and refused to eat, declaring that if she could not have that young man she would die.
Neither her mother nor her father could talk her out of it. So the father sent a thousand pieces of money to the king's officer who was escorting the robber, asking him to send the robber to him instead. The officer took the money, freed the robber, had another man executed in his place, and reported to the king that the robber was dead.
The merchant gave his daughter in marriage to the robber. Eager to win her husband's affection, she adorned herself with all her jewels and prepared his meals with her own hands.
After a few days, the robber began to plot how he might kill her, take her jewels, sell them, and spend his days eating in a tavern. He took to his bed and refused to eat.
When she asked what was wrong, he claimed that on the day he was led to execution, he had saved his life by vowing an offering to the deity of Robbers' Cliff, and that it was through that deity's power that he had won her. He was troubled, he said, about how to fulfil his vow.
She promised to see to the offering, and he asked for rich rice-porridge with honey and the five kinds of flowers. When everything was ready, he told her to leave her relatives behind and to put on her finest clothes and jewels, so that they could go merrily together.
But when they reached the cliff, he told her he had no use for the offering. He had brought her there under false pretences, to kill her, take her jewels, and escape.
Terrified, she reminded him that her jewels and her very person already belonged to him, and begged him again and again to take the jewels and spare her life. His only answer was that he would kill her.
She thought to herself that wisdom was not made to be cooked and eaten, but to help one look before one leaps, and that she would find a way to deal with him.
She reminded him that her parents had spent a thousand pieces of money to ransom him and had given him a home, and that she had been his benefactress ever since. In return, she asked for one favour: to pay homage to him one last time. He agreed, and took his stand near the edge of the cliff.
She walked around him three times, keeping him on her right, paid homage to him on all four sides, and told him that this was the last time they would see each other. She embraced him from the front and from behind.
Then, standing behind him as he waited off guard at the edge of the cliff, she put one hand on his shoulder and the other on the small of his back, and pushed him over. He fell into the abyss and was dashed to pieces at the bottom.
Afterwards she came to a hermitage of female ascetics, bowed respectfully, and asked to be received into their order, and they admitted her.
When she had mastered their thousand points of doctrine, her teachers told her to travel throughout Jambudipa and find someone who could match question and answer with her. Giving her a rose-apple branch, they told her that if a layman bested her she should become his servant, and if a monk did, she should join his order.
No one could match her. Her reputation grew so great that whenever people heard the cry, 'Here comes the Nun of the Rose-Apple!', they would run away.
Before entering a town or village for alms, she would heap up some sand at the gate, plant her rose-apple branch in it, and issue her challenge: let anyone who could match question and answer with her trample the branch underfoot. No one dared. When a branch withered, she found a fresh one.
In this way she came to Savatthi, planted her branch before the city gate, and went in for alms. Some boys gathered around the branch, waiting to see what would happen, and Venerable Sariputta told them to go ahead and trample it.
When the ascetic returned and learned that the elder had told them to do so, she challenged him to match question and answer with her, and he agreed.
She put to him all her thousand questions, and he answered every one correctly. Then he said he would ask her just one question: 'What is one?'
She felt she ought to know the answer, but she did not, and asked him what it was. Sariputta told her it was the Buddha's question, and that he would tell her the answer only if she entered their Sangha. She agreed.
The elder sent word to the nuns and had her admitted. After her ordination she took the name Kundalakesi, and within a few days she became an Arahat endowed with supernormal powers.