The Knowledge Of The Wicked Splits His Head
The Story of Satthikuta-Peta
Chapter 5: Fools • Verse 13
The Story of Satthikuta-Peta
Chapter 5: Fools • Verse 13
To his own ruin the fool gains knowledge, for it cleaves his head and destroys his innate goodness.
While residing at the Veluvana Monastery, the Buddha spoke this verse with reference to a ghost named Satthikuta.
Long ago in Benares there lived a cripple who was an expert at slinging stones. He would sit under a banyan tree at the city gate and cut its leaves into shapes with his stones. When the city's boys asked him to make an elephant or a horse, he would make whatever animal they wanted, and they rewarded him with food.
One day, the king came by on his way to the pleasure garden. The boys hid the cripple among the banyan's shoots and ran away. It was noon when the king stopped and went in among the roots of the tree, and his body was dappled with chequered shade.
Looking up, the king saw leaves cut into the shapes of elephants and horses and asked whose work it was. Told it was the cripple's, he sent for him and, pleased with his skill, gave him the eightfold gift and four large villages to the north, east, south, and west of the city.
Seeing the cripple's new prosperity, another man thought that if a cripple could win such fortune with this art, he should learn it too, and so he did.
At that time, a solitary Buddha named Sunetta lived in a hut of leaves and grass near the city. Seeing him enter the city gate for alms, the man thought that, since this ascetic had neither mother nor father, he could strike him without any penalty, and decided to test his skill on him.
He aimed a stone at the solitary Buddha's right ear and let fly. The stone entered the right ear and came out of the left. In intense pain and unable to continue his alms-round, the solitary Buddha returned through the air to his hut and passed into Nibbana.
When the people learned that this wicked man had struck the solitary Buddha, they seized him, beat him, and killed him on the spot.
He was reborn in Avici Hell, where he suffered until the earth had risen by a league. Then, because the fruit of his evil deed was not yet exhausted, he was reborn on the summit of Vulture Peak as a sledge-hammer ghost.
The Story of Satthikuta-Peta
Chapter 5: Fools • Verse 13
To his own ruin the fool gains knowledge, for it cleaves his head and destroys his innate goodness.
While residing at the Veluvana Monastery, the Buddha spoke this verse with reference to a ghost named Satthikuta.
Long ago in Benares there lived a cripple who was an expert at slinging stones. He would sit under a banyan tree at the city gate and cut its leaves into shapes with his stones. When the city's boys asked him to make an elephant or a horse, he would make whatever animal they wanted, and they rewarded him with food.
One day, the king came by on his way to the pleasure garden. The boys hid the cripple among the banyan's shoots and ran away. It was noon when the king stopped and went in among the roots of the tree, and his body was dappled with chequered shade.
Looking up, the king saw leaves cut into the shapes of elephants and horses and asked whose work it was. Told it was the cripple's, he sent for him and, pleased with his skill, gave him the eightfold gift and four large villages to the north, east, south, and west of the city.
Seeing the cripple's new prosperity, another man thought that if a cripple could win such fortune with this art, he should learn it too, and so he did.
At that time, a solitary Buddha named Sunetta lived in a hut of leaves and grass near the city. Seeing him enter the city gate for alms, the man thought that, since this ascetic had neither mother nor father, he could strike him without any penalty, and decided to test his skill on him.
He aimed a stone at the solitary Buddha's right ear and let fly. The stone entered the right ear and came out of the left. In intense pain and unable to continue his alms-round, the solitary Buddha returned through the air to his hut and passed into Nibbana.
When the people learned that this wicked man had struck the solitary Buddha, they seized him, beat him, and killed him on the spot.
He was reborn in Avici Hell, where he suffered until the earth had risen by a league. Then, because the fruit of his evil deed was not yet exhausted, he was reborn on the summit of Vulture Peak as a sledge-hammer ghost.