Sensual Pleasure: Shower of Gold Coins

Wisdom Quarterly translations with Aimwell.org

While meditating one day, Ānanda sat reflecting:

“The Teacher has told us about these seven previous buddhas, their: mothers and fathers, lifespans, enlightenment trees, disciples, chief disciples, and chief supporters. But he has not told us how these buddhas spent the Lunar Observance Day [Uposatha or "sabbath" in Christian terms]. I wonder if their way of observing it was the same or different?”

So he approached the Buddha [Gautama] and asked.

The Buddha replied that long ago (when lifespans were much, much longer) the Buddha Vipassī observed it every seven years, that the Buddha Sikhī and Buddha Vessabhū observed it every six years, that the Buddha Kakusandha and Buddha Komāgamana observed it every year, and the Buddha Kassapa every six months. However, each of them recited the same three verses in admonition:

Sensual Pleasures

(Dhammapada XVI, 186-187)

1. Not by a shower of gold coins does one find contentment in sensual pleasures.
2. A little sweet but painful are sensual pleasures, so knowing this the wise person delights not even in heavenly pleasures.
3. Instead, a disciple of a fully Enlightened One delights in the destruction of craving.

A Shower of Gold Coins
As the father of a certain monk lay dying, he longed to see his son. But he was unable to contact him.

He left 100 gold coins with his younger son for his monastic son. When the monk learned that his father had died and left him this money, he said that he had no need for it.

However, after some time he became discontented with monasticism and wandering in search of alms.

He decided to disrobe and live on that inheritance. The other monks told his preceptor about this decision, and his preceptor told the Buddha.

The Buddha summoned the monk and asked him to fetch 100 pots. Then he told him to set aside 50 for food and drink, 24 for a pair of bullocks, another 24 for seed, one for a spade, a machete, an axe, and so on.

Counting in this way, it became clear that 100 would not be enough. The Buddha then told the monk that a 100 gold coins was very little compared to his desires and that he could not hope to satisfy all them with relatively so few coins.

He added that in the past, universal monarchs ("world rulers" or chakravartins) with fabulous wealth and power had been unable to satisfy their desires and died with their wishes as yet unfulfilled.

Then on being asked to relate the story of the past, the Buddha recounted the Mandhātu Jātaka (Jat 258). At the conclusion of this rebirth tale, the monk attained stream-entry, the first stage of enlightenment. More>>

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