The king who weighed his own flesh against a frightened dove

A king already known for his giving

In the city of Aritthapura, in the kingdom of the Sibis, ruled a king whose name in our tongue is simply Sibi — for the king and the kingdom shared the name, as if the people had named themselves after him. He was the Bodhisattva: the being who across many lives was perfecting the qualities that would, in a final birth, become a Buddha.

Sibi had built almshouses at the four gates of the city and a fifth at his own palace gate. Daily, six hundred thousand pieces of gold passed from his treasury into the hands of the poor, the sick, the wandering ascetics, the travelling brahmins, the orphaned. He gave food. He gave cloth. He gave land. He gave with both hands and seemed to grow lighter in the giving rather than heavier.

But one morning he sat on his terrace and was uneasy. The sun was rising over the rice fields. The almshouses were already busy. He looked at his own hands and thought: I have given many things. But I have given only what is outside myself. I have not yet given what is mine. If a beggar came today and asked not for gold but for my eyes, would I give them? If he asked for my flesh, would I cut?

He closed his eyes. He vowed inwardly: यदि कश्चिद् याचेत मांसम् अपि, दद्यां प्रसन्नचित्तेन। (yadi kashchid yacheta mamsam api, dadyam prasanna-chittena — "If anyone should ask even for my flesh, I shall give it with a glad mind.")

The vow was heard. Vows of that kind are always heard.

The dove falling out of the sky

Far above the kingdom, in the heaven of the Thirty-Three, the king of the gods Indra (whom the Pali tradition calls Sakka) was watching. He turned to Vishvakarman, the architect of the gods, and said: "There is a king on earth named Sibi who claims to give without limit. Let us test him. You will become a dove. I shall become a hawk. We shall see if he gives even when the giving costs him his body."

Vishvakarman became a small grey-white dove with frightened black eyes. Indra became a hawk with talons of polished bronze.

It was midday in Aritthapura. King Sibi was sitting in the open audience-hall on his low throne. The dove plunged out of the sky as if shot, came skimming through the pillars, and dropped into the king's lap. It pressed itself against his chest, trembling so hard the silk of his robe trembled with it.

The king laid one hand over the small body. "You are safe here," he said quietly. "Whoever pursues you, you have come to me. The right of refuge is older than the right of any hunter."

A shadow fell across the hall. The hawk landed on the lintel of the doorway. Its bronze talons gripped the stone. It tilted its head and spoke — for in the Jatakas, animals speak when they must.

"Great king," said the hawk, "give me my dove. I have hunted it lawfully. It is my food. By the dharma of hawks, the small bird is the prey of the larger. You owe me my meal."

Sibi looked at the hawk. Then at the dove against his chest. Then at the hawk again.

"Hawk," he said, "the dove came to me for refuge. By the dharma of kings, refuge once given cannot be revoked. शरणागत-वत्सलः — sharanagata-vatsalah — one who is tender to those who have come for refuge — that is the title of a king. I cannot give you this dove."

The hawk laughed — a thin metallic sound. "Then you starve me. Is starvation also dharma? Is the death of one creature a smaller death than the death of another? The dove's life is no more sacred than mine. If you save its life by killing me, where is your virtue?"

The court was silent. The brahmins, the ministers, the queens behind the screen — all listening.

Sibi was still. Then he said: "I will give you a meal that is neither dove nor any other creature's flesh. I will give you my own."

The scale

He called for a great pair of scales. They brought it: two bronze pans suspended from a beam, the kind merchants used to weigh gold and frankincense. They set it in the courtyard.

Sibi placed the dove gently on one pan. The dove stood there shivering.

"Bring a knife," said the king.

His ministers fell at his feet. His chief queen rushed in. The brahmins begged him to stop, to send the hawk away with cattle, with goats, with anything but his own flesh. The king listened to them all and shook his head.

"I made a vow this morning," he said. "Vows are not made for the easy days."

He took the knife. He cut a piece from his right thigh — a piece he judged would equal the dove's weight — and laid it in the second pan.

The pan with the dove went down. The pan with his flesh went up.

Sibi cut again. From his calf this time, a larger piece. He laid it on the pan. The dove side stayed lower.

He cut from his other thigh. From his arm. From his side. His blood ran down the courtyard stones in a slow steady line. The court watched in horror. The ministers wept. The hawk on the lintel watched without moving.

The dove, no larger than a clenched fist, somehow weighed more than every piece of flesh the king laid against it.

Finally Sibi understood. He set down the knife. He laid both hands on the empty pan and pulled himself up onto it — climbed onto the scale himself, his whole bleeding body, and sat in the pan facing the dove.

The two pans hung level.

The voice from above

Indra cast off his hawk-form. Vishvakarman cast off his dove-form. The two gods stood revealed in the courtyard, their light filling it. The blood on the stones glittered.

"King Sibi," said Indra. "I came to test you. I came to see whether your generosity was a thing of words. I see it is a thing of bone. Why did you not give the dove? Why did you not give a goat?"

Sibi answered, his voice steady though his body was opened in a dozen places: "The dove came to me for refuge. The goat did not. To give what is not asked, instead of what is asked, is to weigh the giver's comfort against the asker's need. That is not giving. That is bargaining."

Indra inclined his head. "What boon do you ask, king?"

Sibi smiled faintly. "न राज्यं न च देवत्वं न मोक्षम् अभिकाङ्क्षये। बुद्धत्वं प्रार्थयाम्येकं दुःखार्तानां विमुक्तये॥" (na rajyam na cha devatvam na moksham abhikankshaye / buddhatvam prarthayami ekam duhkhartanam vimuktaye — "I do not desire kingdom, nor godhood, nor my own liberation. I ask only for Buddhahood — for one purpose: the freeing of beings from suffering.")

Indra wept. Gods do not often weep. He laid his hands on the king's wounds. The flesh closed. The skin sealed. The body that had been opened on every side stood whole again — and not merely whole, but more radiant than before, as if the giving had not subtracted from the king but added to him.

"Live, King Sibi," said Indra. "Live and give. The day will come, in some far birth, when you sit beneath a tree at Bodh Gaya and a young brahmin offers you milk-rice. You will be a Buddha then. This day was a step on that road."

Indra and Vishvakarman returned to their heaven.

What the kingdom did with the story

The people of the Sibis carried the story for generations. They did not retell it as a tale of suffering. They retold it as a tale of prasannachitta — the glad mind. The king had given his flesh with a glad mind. The hawk had not coerced; the king had not been a victim. He had simply done, in the noon courtyard, what he had vowed in the morning on the terrace.

The Bodhisattva's teaching, drawn out by the Buddha when he told this birth-story to his disciples, was twofold.

The first teaching is that the perfection of giving (dana paramita) is not measured in what is given — it is measured in what the giver still considers "mine." A king who gives gold has not yet given. A king who gives the body has not yet given either, if he gives it grudgingly. A king who gives the body with a glad mind has begun to approach the perfection. And the perfection itself is reached only when the giver no longer experiences any "mine" at the moment of giving.

The second teaching is harder, and the story buries it in the moment of the scale. The dove outweighed every piece of flesh because the dove's life — as a refuge-seeker, as a thing entrusted to the king — was, on the moral scale, larger than any limb the king could cut. To make the scale balance, the king had to put his whole self in. Not the part. The whole. This is the secret of the dana paramita: half-measures register as half-measures. The full giving is registered as full only when there is no remainder.

The Buddha is said to have closed the story this way: "Disciples — that king was I, in that birth. The hawk was Sariputta. The dove was Ananda. The scale was the dharma itself."

A small dove fell into a king's lap one noon. The king did not push it away. The kingdom remembered, and the gods remembered, and we remember.