[464. {467.}1 Labujadāyaka2]

In the city, Bandhumatī,
I worked in a hermitage then.3
I saw the Spotless One, Buddha,
[who] was traveling through the sky. (1) [4895]

Taking fruit of a breadfruit4 [tree,]
I gave [it] to the Best Buddha.
Standing in the sky, the Calm One,
the Great Famed One accepted [it].
With a mind that was very clear,
having given Buddha that fruit,
productive of delight for me,
bringing happiness in this world,
I then came to possess great joy
and vast, ultimate happiness.
A gem was truly produced for
[me,] being reborn here and there.5 (2-3) [4896-4898]6

In the ninety-one aeons since
I gave [the Buddha] fruit back then,
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that is the fruit of giving fruit. (4) [4899]

My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (5) [4900]

Being in Best Buddha’s presence
was a very good thing for me.
The three knowledges are attained;
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (6) [4901]

The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (7) [4902]

Thus indeed Venerable Labujadāyaka Thera spoke these verses.

The legend of Labujadāyaka Thera is finished.

  1. Apadāna numbers provided in {fancy brackets} correspond to the BJTS edition, which contains more individual poems than does the PTS edition dictating the main numbering of this translation.↩

  2. “Breadfruit Donor.” This same apadāna (with the slight difference that the fifth and sixth verses are inverted there) appears above, with the same title in BJTS (PTS gives Labujaphaladāyaka), as #379 [382], above. It also appears below, titled Nāḷikeradāyaka°, with the slight change of the first foot of the second verse to read “coconut” rather than “breadfruit”↩

  3. ārāmika, lit., “hermitage attendant” or “hermitage dweller”↩

  4. Artocarpus lacucha or incisa; Sinh. del. The fruit of the tree is cooked and eaten as a starchy vegetable.↩

  5. lit., “from where to there” (yahiŋ tahiŋ, PTS) or “from there to there” (tahiṃ tahiṃ, BJTS and PTS alt.)↩

  6. PTS treats these as two verses of six feet each; BJTS treats them as three typical four-footed verses. BJTS is presumably correct, since the parallel apadāna,↩