A Jain Parable: The Man in the Well

(Haribhadra, ‘samaradityakatha,’ II, 55-88 paraphrased by M. Eliade in Primitives to Zen)

 

A certain man, much oppressed by the woes of poverty,

Left his own home, and set out for another country.

He passed through the land, with its villages, cities, and harbors,

And after a few days he lost his way.

 

And he came to a forest, thick with trees … and full of wild beasts.

There, while he was stumbling over the rugged paths, … a pray to

thirst and hunger, he saw a mad elephant, fiercely trumpeting, charging

him with upraised trunk. At the same time there appeared before him a most evil demoness, holding a sharp sword, dreadful in face and form, and laughing with loud and shrill laughter. Seeing them he trembled in all his limbs with deathly fear, and looked in all directions. There, to the east of him, he saw a great banyan tree…

 

And he ran quickly, and reached the mighty tree.

But his spirits fell, for it was so high that even the birds could not fly over it,

Until, looking round, he saw nearby an old well covered with grass.

Afraid of death, craving to live if only a moment longer,

He flung himself into the well at the foot of the banyan tree.

A clump of reeds grew from its deep wall, and to this he clung,

While below him he saw terrible snakes, enraged at the sound of his falling;

And at the very bottom, known from the hiss of its breath,

was a black and mighty python

With mouth agape, its body thick as the trunk of a heavenly elephant,

with terrible red eyes.

He thought, ‘My life will only last as long as these reeds hold fast,’

And he raised his head; and there, on the clump of reeds, he saw two large mice,

One white, one black, their sharp teeth ever gnawing at the roots of the reed-clump.

Then up came the wild elephant, and enraged the more at not catching him,

Charged time and again at the trunk of the banyan tree.

At the shock of his charge a honey comb on a large branch

Which hung over the old well, shook loose and fell.

The man’s whole body was stung by a swarm of angry bees,

But, just by chance, a drop of honey fell on his head,

Rolled down his brow, and somehow reached his lips,

And gave him a moment’s sweetness. He longed for other drops,

And he thought nothing of the python, the snakes, the elephant,

the mice, the well or the bees,

In this excited craving for yet more drops of honey.

This parables is powerful to clear the minds of those on the way to freedom.

Now hear its sure interpretation.

The man is the soul, his wandering in the forest the four types of existence.

The wild elephant is death, the demoness old age.

The banyan tree is salvation, where there is no fear of death, the elephant,

But which no sensual man can climb.

The well is human life, the snakes are passions,

Which so overcome a man that he does not know what he should do.

The tuft of reed is man’s allotted span,

during which the soul exists embodied;

The mice which steadily gnaw it are the dark and bright fortnights.

The stinging bees are manifold diseases,

Which torment a man until he has not a moment’s joy.

The awful python is hell, seizing the man bemused by sensual pleasure,

Fallen in which the soul suffers pains by the thousand.

The drops of honey are trivial pleasures, terrible at the last.

How can a wise man want them, in the midst of such peril and hardship?