Читать книгу Garland of the Buddha’s Past Lives (Volume 1) - Aryashura - Страница 55
Оглавление*His reputation for generosity was a fragrance
wafted about by the wind of the beggars’ voices,
destroying the pride of other kings,
like a tusker’s scent dispels the ichor of other elephants.
One day, while he was surveying his alms halls, the king noticed that the crowd of petitioners had greatly diminished because their needs had been satisfied and he felt disappointed that his virtuous practice of giving had been obstructed.
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Though the petitioners were sated on reaching him,
he was not on receiving them, so intoxicated was he
with giving.
No beggar could quell the king’s determination
to give,
whatever the size of their request.
The king then had this thought: “Great is the fortune of those eminently virtuous men who are entreated by beggars with confident and unrestrained requests for their very limbs! But to me petitioners only make meek requests for mere wealth, as if scared by harsh words of refusal.”
Observing Shibi’s lofty thought,
so dedicated to giving and unattached to his body,
the earth, herself under the king’s rule,
trembled like a woman who loves her husband.
When the earth quaked, so Mount Sumeru,* that king of mountains, also shook, glistening with the radiance of various gems. Stirred by the event, Shakra, the king of the gods, investigated its cause and when he realized the earthquake was produced by the king’s extraordinary thought, ________
