Attachment To Senses Is Folly
The Story of Patipujika Kumari
Chapter 4: Flowers • Verse 5
The Story of Patipujika Kumari
Chapter 4: Flowers • Verse 5
The Destroyer brings under his sway the person of distracted mind who, insatiate in sense desires, only plucks the flowers (of pleasure).
While residing at the Jetavana Monastery, the Buddha spoke this verse with reference to Patipujika Kumari.
Patipujika Kumari was a lady of Savatthi who married at sixteen and had four sons. Virtuous and generous, she loved to offer food and other requisites to the monks, often visiting the monastery to clean the premises and fill the water pots.
She also possessed the knowledge of remembering past births, through which she recalled that in a previous existence she had been one of the many wives of Malabhari in the deva world of Tavatimsa, and that she had passed away from there while out picking flowers in the garden with the others. From then on, whenever she performed a meritorious act, she prayed to be reborn in Tavatimsa as Malabhari's wife once more.
One day, Patipujika fell ill and passed away that same evening. As she had wished, she was reborn in Tavatimsa as a wife of Malabhari. Since a hundred years in the human world equals only one day in Tavatimsa, Malabhari and his other wives were still in the garden enjoying themselves and had barely noticed her absence.
When she rejoined them, Malabhari asked where she had been all morning, and she told him of her passing from Tavatimsa, her rebirth and marriage in the human world, the birth of her four sons, and her death and return to Tavatimsa.
When the monks learned that Patipujika had died, they were stricken with grief and told the Buddha that she who had offered them alms that very morning had passed away by evening. The Buddha replied that the life of beings is very brief, and that before they have satisfied their desire for sensual pleasures, they are overtaken by death.
The Story of Patipujika Kumari
Chapter 4: Flowers • Verse 5
The Destroyer brings under his sway the person of distracted mind who, insatiate in sense desires, only plucks the flowers (of pleasure).
While residing at the Jetavana Monastery, the Buddha spoke this verse with reference to Patipujika Kumari.
Patipujika Kumari was a lady of Savatthi who married at sixteen and had four sons. Virtuous and generous, she loved to offer food and other requisites to the monks, often visiting the monastery to clean the premises and fill the water pots.
She also possessed the knowledge of remembering past births, through which she recalled that in a previous existence she had been one of the many wives of Malabhari in the deva world of Tavatimsa, and that she had passed away from there while out picking flowers in the garden with the others. From then on, whenever she performed a meritorious act, she prayed to be reborn in Tavatimsa as Malabhari's wife once more.
One day, Patipujika fell ill and passed away that same evening. As she had wished, she was reborn in Tavatimsa as a wife of Malabhari. Since a hundred years in the human world equals only one day in Tavatimsa, Malabhari and his other wives were still in the garden enjoying themselves and had barely noticed her absence.
When she rejoined them, Malabhari asked where she had been all morning, and she told him of her passing from Tavatimsa, her rebirth and marriage in the human world, the birth of her four sons, and her death and return to Tavatimsa.
When the monks learned that Patipujika had died, they were stricken with grief and told the Buddha that she who had offered them alms that very morning had passed away by evening. The Buddha replied that the life of beings is very brief, and that before they have satisfied their desire for sensual pleasures, they are overtaken by death.