ONCE A WANDERING TROUPE Of circus
performers were invited to the palace to perform for the king and his court.
Among the troupe’s jugglers and acrobats was a charming young lady who danced
with grace and agility on the top of a long pole. One of the young men in the
audience, named Uggasena, fell in love with her and eventually married her.
Finally when it was time for the troupe to move on to another town, he and his
new wife decided to move on with them.
Uggasena, himself, though, did
not have any special talent that the troupe could use, and so was relegated to
moving and packing crates, driving carts, and other menial tasks. This
displeased his wife.
After some time, they had a son.
One day, Uggasena could not help but overhear the lullaby his wife was singing
to their child: “You poor child, your father can only carry boxes and drive
carts. Your father is truly worthless”.
Thinking that his wife’s
arrogance was due to her skill as an acrobat, he decided to become one himself.
He asked his father-in-law to train him, and not long after, he was ready to
perform. On the day of his performance, he climbed up his pole with facility,
and once on top, did somersaults that left the audience gasping in horror but
utterly delighted.
While he was performing, the
Buddha happened to pass by and saw that Ugassena was ripe for arahatship. So he
drew the audience’s attention away from Ugassena by his will power and left him
stranded on top of his pole with no applause. “My wife will laugh in my
face,” Uggasena thought, “if she finds out that the
audience lost interest in my act even before I was half way through it?” Feeling
distraught, he just sat on his pole and sulked.
The Buddha then called up to him
and said, “A wise man should work diligently toward abandoning all forms of
attachment and thus be free from having to be born again”.
Uggasena reflected on the
Buddha’s words and attained arahatship while still sitting on top of his pole.
Morale of The Story
“Give up the past, give up the
future, give up the present. Having reached the end of existences, with a mind
freed from all conditioned things, you will not again undergo birth and decay.”
{Verse 348}
Source : Ye Thu Aung
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