The Buffalo

At a Glance

• Central figures: The Bodhisatta, reborn as a buffalo; a mischievous monkey who torments him; a tree-spirit who witnesses the abuse.
• Setting: A forest near a river in ancient India, as told in the Pali Jataka collection (Mahisa Jataka, No. 278).
• The turn: A monkey repeatedly climbs onto the buffalo, pulls his ears, rides his back, and fouls him - and the buffalo does nothing.
• The outcome: A tree-spirit questions the buffalo’s patience; the buffalo explains that the monkey’s cruelty will find its own answer when a less patient buffalo comes along.
• The legacy: The monkey, emboldened by the Bodhisatta’s forbearance, tries the same behavior on a strange buffalo and is gored to death.

The monkey came down from the sal tree and landed on the buffalo’s back. He did this every day. He grabbed the buffalo’s horns and swung from them. He pulled the buffalo’s ears until the skin stretched. He climbed onto the buffalo’s head and sat there, picking at ticks that were not there. When he was bored with sitting, he urinated.

The buffalo stood in the river shallows and did not move. The water ran past his legs. The monkey screamed and chattered and slapped the broad space between the buffalo’s eyes, and the buffalo blinked and went on chewing.

The Monkey’s Habit

Every morning the buffalo came down to the river to drink and to stand in the cool mud. The forest was thick along the banks - sal and teak and wild fig, and the roots of the trees made shelves in the water where small fish gathered. The buffalo liked the quiet of this place. He was enormous, dark, with horns that curved back like the prows of boats, and when he stood still he looked like something that had always been there.

The monkey lived in the sal tree directly above the buffalo’s usual place. He was small, reddish, quick-fingered. He had no particular grievance against the buffalo. He was simply the kind of creature who could not leave anything alone. A piece of bark had to be stripped. A bird’s nest had to be scattered. A sleeping lizard had to be poked until it bit, and then he shrieked as though the lizard had started it.

The buffalo was the best target he had ever found. The buffalo was large, slow, and - most importantly - did nothing back. The monkey could ride him like a prince on an elephant. He could hang from his tail. He could defecate on his shoulders. The buffalo stood and chewed, or walked forward one heavy step at a time, and the monkey rode along as though this arrangement had been agreed upon.

This went on for weeks, then months.

The Tree-Spirit Speaks

A spirit lived in the great fig tree at the bend of the river. She had watched the monkey and the buffalo from the beginning. She had watched with the patience that spirits have, which is different from the patience of animals - spirits are patient because time means little to them, but they are not necessarily tolerant. The spirit had grown irritated.

One afternoon when the monkey had gone off to raid a nest of honey somewhere upriver, the spirit made herself visible. She appeared in the fork of the fig tree as a woman dressed in green, her feet not quite touching the bark.

Why do you bear it? she said.

The buffalo looked up. He had been standing in water to his knees, and his jaw worked slowly on a mouthful of river grass.

You are stronger than he is. One toss of your head would break his spine. Why do you let him ride you and foul you and pull your ears?

The buffalo swallowed the grass. He was quiet for a long time - not because he did not have an answer but because he was a buffalo, and buffaloes do not rush.

I feel pity for him, the buffalo said. If I harm him, I add suffering to the world. If I endure, I add nothing. The weight of a monkey on my back is a small thing.

The spirit frowned. She was not convinced by this. Spirits understand the logic of cause and consequence, and she could see where this road led.

You are patient, she said, and your patience is good for you. But it is making him worse. He believes the world is made of creatures who will bear anything. One day he will find a buffalo who is not you.

The Bodhisatta - for the buffalo was the Bodhisatta in that life - said nothing for a moment. Then he said:

Yes. That is what I am afraid of.

The Strange Buffalo

The day came. The Bodhisatta had gone to a different stretch of river, farther downstream where the grass was fresher after the rains. The monkey came down from his sal tree and found the usual place empty. But there was another buffalo standing in the shallows - a younger animal, darker, with a raw scar across his flank where a tiger had raked him a season ago. He was not the Bodhisatta. He was not patient. He was not even particularly calm. He was a buffalo who had been clawed by a tiger and had learned that the world was a place where things attacked you and you had to be ready.

The monkey did not notice the difference - or did not care. A buffalo was a buffalo. He dropped from the tree onto the strange buffalo’s back, grabbed the horns, and pulled.

The strange buffalo did not think. His head snapped sideways, then down. One horn caught the monkey across the chest and flung him into the air. The monkey hit the ground, and the buffalo stamped on him. Twice. The monkey’s body lay in the mud at the edge of the water, broken and still, and the buffalo shook his head once and went back to drinking.

The Fig Tree

The tree-spirit saw it happen. She did not speak. There was nothing to say that the buffalo’s body in the mud did not already say. The reddish fur matted in the wet earth. The small hands open. The face still wearing something like surprise.

When the Bodhisatta returned to his usual place the next day, the spirit told him. He stood in the shallows and listened. The water ran past his legs. He did not speak for a long time.

He had known it would happen. He had said so. Knowing had not helped the monkey, and it did not comfort the buffalo now. He had been patient because patience was right, and the monkey had died because the monkey had mistaken one buffalo’s patience for every buffalo’s nature. The Bodhisatta could not have taught him otherwise - you cannot teach a monkey by being a buffalo - but the knowledge sat heavy, heavier than the monkey had ever been on his back.

He stood in the water. The tree-spirit withdrew into her tree. The river moved around his legs, and the small fish gathered in the roots, and the forest went on in its ordinary way, which is the way forests go on after anything has happened in them.