..续本文上一页. "O king, I am not Illisa," he announced. "I am Sakka!"
The king”s courtiers quickly splashed water on Illisa”s face to revive him. As soon as he had recovered his wits, the treasurer staggered to his feet and bowed before Sakka.
"Illisa!" Sakka shouted. "That wealth was mine, not yours. I was your father. In my lifetime I was bountiful towards the poor and rejoiced in doing good. Because of my charity, I was reborn in this great grandeur. But you, foolish man, are not walking in my footsteps. You have become a terrible miser. In order to hoard my riches, you burned my alms houses to the ground and drove away the poor. You are getting no enjoyment from your wealth; nor is it benefiting any other human being. Your treasury is like a pool haunted by demons, from which no one may satisfy his thirst.
"If you rebuild my alms houses, however, and show charity to the poor, you will gain great merit. If you do not, I will take away everything you have, and I will split your head with my thunderbolt."
When Illisa heard this threat, he shook with fear and cried out, "From now on I will be bountiful! I swear it!"
Accepting this promise, Sakka established his son in the precepts, preached the Dhamma to him, and returned to the realm of the devas.
True to his word, Illisa became diligent in charity and performed many good works. He even attained rebirth in heaven.
"You see, bhikkhus," the Buddha said, "this is not the first time that Moggallana has converted this miserly treasurer. At that time, the treasurer was Illisa; Moggallana was Sakka, king of the devas; Ananda was the king; and I myself was the barber."
Kalakanni Jataka: What”s in a Name
(Jat 83)
The Buddha told this story while at Jetavana, about one of Anathapindika”s friends, a man named "Curse." The two had played together as children and had gone to the same school. As the years passed, however, the friend became extremely poor and could not make a living for himself no matter what he did. In desperation, he approached Anathapindika, who welcomed him kindly and employed him to look after his property and to manage all of his business for him. From that time on, it was a common thing to hear someone shouting, "Curse!" each time a member of the household spoke to him.
One day some of Anathapindika”s friends and acquaintances came and said, "Treasurer, don”t let this sort of thing go on in your house! It”s enough to scare an ogre to hear such inauspicious speech as ”Come here, Curse,” ”Sit down, Curse,” or ”Have your dinner, Curse.” The man is a miserable wretch, dogged by misfortune. He”s not your social equal. Why do you have anything to do with him
"
"Nonsense," replied Anathapindika, firmly rejecting their advice. "A name only denotes a man. The wise do not measure a man by his name. It is useless to be superstitious about mere sounds. I will never abandon the friend with whom I made mud-pies as a child, simply because of his name."
Not long after that, Anathapindika went with many of his servants to visit a village of which he was headman. He left his old friend in charge. Hearing of his departure, a band of robbers decided to break into the house. That night, they armed themselves to the teeth and surrounded it.
Curse had suspected that burglars might try something so he stayed awake. As soon as he knew that the robbers were outside, he ran about noisily as though he were rousing the entire household. He shouted for one person to sound the conch and for another to beat the drum. Soon it seemed that the house contained a whole army of servants.
When the robbers heard the din, they said to one another, "The house is not as empty as we thought it would be. The master must still be at home after all." They threw down their clubs and other weapons and fled.
In th…
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