The Great Ape

At a Glance

• Central figures: The Bodhisatta, born as a great ape living alone in the Himalayan forests; a Brahmin who has lost his way in the mountains.
• Setting: The foothills of the Himalayas, near a deep gorge with a river at its bottom; from the Pali Jataka collection (Mahakapi Jataka, No. 516).
• The turn: The Bodhisatta rescues the Brahmin from the gorge at enormous physical cost, then lies down to rest - and the Brahmin, seeing his chance, strikes the sleeping ape’s head with a rock to obtain his flesh.
• The outcome: The ape survives the blow, does not retaliate, and instead guides the treacherous Brahmin out of the forest; the Brahmin is afflicted with leprosy and wanders as an outcast.
• The legacy: The Brahmin’s fate became a teaching the Buddha told at Jetavana to illustrate the consequences of betraying one who has shown compassion - the ape’s forbearance standing as an act of the paramis perfected across lifetimes.

The ape was the size of a man and moved through the canopy like wind through grass. He lived alone in the Himalayan foothills, feeding on wild fruit and sleeping in the fork of a sala tree whose trunk was broader than three men standing abreast. He had no herd. He needed none. His strength was such that he could swing across the gorge of the river below his tree in a single motion, hand over hand on the vines that laced the cliff face.

Below that gorge the water ran white over black rocks. Anything that fell in would not climb out.

The Man in the Gorge

A Brahmin from Varanasi had come into the mountains seeking rare herbs - or so he later claimed. He had wandered off the trading road three days earlier and had been walking in circles, eating what he could find, sleeping badly. On the fourth morning he slipped on wet stone at the lip of the gorge and tumbled down. He fell a long way. He landed on a ledge above the water, bruised and scraped but not broken, and he could not climb back up. The walls were sheer. The ledge was narrow. He sat and wept.

The great ape heard him. He came to the edge and looked down and saw the man sitting with his knees drawn up, shaking.

The ape climbed down. It was not easy. He tested the rock with his fingers, shifted his weight carefully, found holds where no human hand would have found them. When he reached the ledge he crouched beside the Brahmin and studied him. The man stank of fear and hunger. The ape touched his shoulder, gently, the way one touches something fragile.

He could not carry the man up. Not yet. The man was too heavy and the ape was not sure of the route. So he climbed back up alone, found a boulder roughly the weight of a man, hoisted it onto his back, and climbed down again with it. Then up again with the boulder. Then down. He did this several times, testing the holds under load, memorizing the sequence. His hands bled. His shoulders cramped.

When he was sure of the route he went down a final time, crouched, and let the Brahmin climb onto his back.

The Climb

The ape climbed. The man clung to his neck and the ape’s fingers dug into stone and his breath came hard and ragged. Halfway up a handhold crumbled and for a moment they swung on one arm over the white water below. The Brahmin screamed. The ape did not. He found another hold, pulled them both up, kept climbing.

At the top he set the Brahmin down on solid ground, then collapsed beside him. Every muscle in his body shook. His hands were torn open. He could barely keep his eyes from closing.

“I need to rest,” he said - for in that life the Bodhisatta had the power of human speech. “Watch over me while I sleep. This forest has leopards.”

The Brahmin said he would.

The ape slept.

The Rock

The Brahmin sat beside the sleeping ape and looked at him. The ape’s body was large, well-muscled, covered in dark fur matted with sweat and blood from the climb. The Brahmin had not eaten properly in days. He thought about the meat on those limbs. He thought about the marrow in those bones. He thought: this is only an animal.

He found a jagged rock. He lifted it in both hands. He brought it down on the ape’s skull.

The blow was not clean. The rock was not sharp enough and the Brahmin was weak from hunger - his arms had no real force behind them. The ape’s head split open along the scalp and blood poured down into his eyes, but the skull held. He woke screaming and rolled away. He saw the Brahmin standing over him with the bloody rock still in his hands.

The ape looked at the rock. He looked at the man. Blood ran into his left eye and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

He did not strike back. He did not bare his teeth.

“What have you done?” he said.

The Brahmin dropped the rock. He could not meet the ape’s gaze.

The Path Out

The ape stood. His head throbbed and blood kept coming - scalp wounds bleed freely - but he stood. He looked at the Brahmin for a long moment. The man was shaking again, the way he had shaken on the ledge.

“You cannot find your way out of this forest alone,” the ape said. “Follow me.”

He turned and walked. The Brahmin followed. The ape led him through the trees, down animal tracks, past streams and clearings, bleeding the whole way. Drops of his blood marked the path behind them like red seeds. He did not speak again. He did not look back to see if the man was keeping up. He simply walked until the forest thinned and the trading road appeared below them, a brown line through the green valley.

The ape pointed. The Brahmin looked at the road, then looked back at the ape. The ape’s face was a mask of dried blood. Only his eyes were clear.

“Go,” the ape said.

The Brahmin went.

The Brahmin’s Affliction

He reached Varanasi. But within days of his return a disease settled into his skin - white patches first, then the skin thickened and cracked and lost feeling. Leprosy. It spread. His family withdrew. His students left. He wandered from town to town, begging, and no one would touch the food he had touched. He told anyone who would listen what he had done in the mountains, hoping confession would lift the affliction. It did not.

Years later, at Jetavana, the Buddha told this story to his monks. A monk had been shown great kindness by a lay supporter and had repaid it with slander. The Buddha said: “This is not the first time.” He told them about the ape and the gorge and the Brahmin with the rock. He said he himself had been that ape, in a life long gone.

He did not say what lesson to draw. He told the story. The monks sat in the shade of the trees at Jetavana and were quiet for a long time.