No fear feel I, nor any sorrow either,
In this wide, lonesome wood, so dear to Sages.
My heart is filled with bursting joy,
For soon I'll win the highest boon.
As the princes strolled about in the solitary
thicket they saw a tigress, surrounded by five cubs, seven days old. Hunger
and thirst had exhausted the tigress, and her body was quite weak. On seeing
her, Mahapranada called out: "The poor animal suffers from having given
birth to the seven cubs only a week ago! If she finds nothing to eat, she
will either eat her own young, or die from hunger!" Mahasattva replied:
"How can this poor exhausted creature find food?" Mahapranada said: "Tigers
live on fresh meat and warm blood." Mahadeva said: "She is quite exhausted,
overcome by hunger and thirst, scarcely alive and very weak. In this state
she cannot possibly catch any prey. And who would sacrifice himself to
preserve her life?" Mahapranada said: "Yes, self-sacrifice is so difficult!"
Mahasattva replied: "It is difficult for people like us, who are so fond
of our lives and bodies, and who have so little intelli-gence. It is not
at all difficult, however, for others, who are true men, intent on benefiting
their fellow-creatures, and who long to sacrifice themselves. Holy men
are born of pity and compassion. Whatever the bodies they may get, in heaven
or on earth, a hundred times will they undo them, joyful in their hearts,
so that the lives of others may be saved."
Greatly agitated, the three brothers carefully
watched the tigress for some time, and then went towards her. But Maha-sattva
thought to himself: "Now the time has come for me to sacrifice myself!
For a long time 1 have served this putrid body and given it beds and clothes,
food and drink, and convey-ances of all kinds. Yet it is doomed to perish
and fall down, and in the end it will break up and he destroyed. How much
better to leave this ungrateful body of one's own accord in good time!
It cannot subsist for ever, because it is like urine which must come out.
To-day I will use it for a sublime deed. Then it will act for me as a boat
which helps me to cross the ocean of birth and death. When I have renounced
this futile body, a mere ulcer, tied to countless becomings, burdened with
urine and excrement, unsubstantial like foam, full of hundreds of parasites
- then I shall win the perfectly pure Dharma-body, endowed with hundreds
of virtues, full of such qualities as trance and wisdom, immaculate, free
from all Substrata, changeless and without sorrow." So, his heart filled
with boundless compassion, Mahasattva asked his brothers to leave him alone
for a while, went to the lair of the tigress, hung his cloak on a bamboo,
and made the following vow:
"For the weal of the world I wish to win enlightenment,
incomparably wonderful. From deep compassion I now give away my body, so
hard to quit, unshaken in my mind. That enlightenment 1 shall now gain,
in which nothing hurts and nothing harms, and which the Jina's sons have
praised. Thus shall I cross to the Beyond of the fearful ocean of becoming
which fills the triple world!"
The friendly prince then threw himself down in
front of the tigress. But she did nothing to him. The Bodhisauva noticed
that she was too weak to move. As a merciful man he had taken no sword
with him. He therefore cut his throat with a sharp piece of bamboo, and
fell down near the tigress. She noticed the Bodhisattva's body all covered
with blood, and in no time ate up all the flesh and blood, leaving only
the bones.
"It was I, Ananda, who at that time and on that
occasion was that prince Mahasattva."