Cp 12 - The Dragon Bhūridatta’s Conduct
Translated by Bhikkhu Sujato
Source: https://suttacentral.net/cp12/en/sujato
License: CC0-1.0

The Conduct Leading to Buddhahood
The Chapter on an Elephant
The Perfection of Ethics (2nd)
The Dragon Bhūridatta’s Conduct
“Then again when I was
Bhūridatta, a dragon of great psychic power,
together with Virūpakkha the Great King
I went to a heavenly realm.
There I saw gods
wholly given over to pleasure.
For the sake of going to that heaven,
I undertook the observance of ethics.
After tending to my physical needs,
and eating enough to get by,
I resolved on the four factors,
and lay down atop a termite mound, thinking:
‘My outer skin and inner, flesh,
sinews and bones:
whoever has use for these,
they are already given, please take them.’
While lying there the ingrate
Ālampāyana grabbed me.
He threw me in a basket
and made me perform in places all over.
Though thrown in a basket
and crushed by his hands,
I did not get upset with Ālampāyana,
for fear of breaking my ethics.
To give up my own life
was as light as a blade of grass.
To transgress my ethical principles
was like overturning the earth.
In a hundred successive lives
I would give up my own life.
I would not even violate my ethics
for the sake of the four continents.
For the sake of protecting ethics,
and fulfilling my perfection of ethics,
I did not let my mind change,
even when thrown in a basket.”