Siamese Legend of the Durian, Petai & Jering

This is a Siamese legend told to me by a Thai friend.

As a number of Siamese tales go, it revolves around the personality of Buddha. I am not sure whether it constitutes one of the Jatakas but the story unfolds as follows:

The Theravada Buddhist monk lives a strict life without any attachment to worldly possession, including ownership (and thus procurement and preparation) of food. Hence they have to seek alms (food) from lay Buddhists.

This would not be practical for such monks in a country like Malaysia where the lay Buddhists are the minority. This is apart from the fact that daily provision of food to Buddhist monks is a protocol practised mainly by Theravadans. Malaysian Buddhists are generally Mahayanans, belonging to the other principal School of Buddhism (subscribed to by Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc).

The mainly Theravada Buddhist Thais (and Myanmar-ians, Cambodians, Laotians, Sri Lankans) would perform tambun to Buddhist monks in various forms – food, drink, clothing, etc. In the Thai language, tambun means ‘act of charity’; I believe the Pali (language during time and region of Buddha) word is danna.

When a monk is thus provided food (through tambun), he could not and would not refuse any donations on the basis of quality, quantity or preference.

Now, on to the story - In one of his reincarnations (prior to his Enlightenment) Buddha was such a monk seeking food in a remote area next to a jungle. There, a leper had been banished from the village to live alone in a shack in the jungle, eking out a harsh and meagre living from Mother Nature.

When he saw the monk approaching his shack, he decided to tambun his entire lunch (just rice but basically his whole meal for that day) to the perambulating cleric. Because he had no utensils, he used his fingers to scoop out his own meal into the alms-bowl that the monk carried.

Three of his leprous-ridden fingers dropped off into the bowl together with the rice. The monk accepted the donation with thanks and continued his way into the jungle.

On reaching a clearing, he wrapped each finger in a ball of rice, and then planted all three in the ground. He said a prayer, intending for the good-hearted donor to be blessed in his future reincarnations as someone or something highly desirable, unlike his current life, where as a leper he was cruelly shunned and banished.

According to the story, the 3 planted fingers grew into 3 trees. One was a durian tree; another was a petai tree and the last a jering tree – all 3 trees providing much desired fruits, thus fulfilling the blessing of the monk (the future Buddha) for the generous leper.

durian

petai

Moral of the story?

An act of charity straight from the heart, no matter how small or plain, is the most treasured gift and something to be cherished.

jering