The Bodhisatta was once a king. Out in the forest lived a goose king who had two sons. One time they asked their father why he went to the town so often, and he explained that he had once mated with a crow and had another son living there. The goose sons did not want their father traveling to dangerous areas, so they went to pick up their half-crow half-brother and bring him to the forest.
They carried a stick between them in their beaks for their brother to ride on. As they flew, they saw the Bodhisatta’s carriage on a road down below being pulled by four milk-white horses. The half-crow commented that he was just like the king, and his goose brothers were like the horses. This insult angered the geese, and upon landing they told their father about it. He too was angry about his son’s air of superiority and told him to go back home. At their father’s order, the goose brothers took the half-crow not to his tree, but to the city’s dunghill.
In the Lifetime of the Buddha
The half-crow son was an earlier birth of Devadatta, a disciple of the Buddha who became his nemesis. The goose king was an earlier birth of Ananda and the goose brothers were earlier births of Sariputta and Moggallana, three of the Buddha’s top disciples. One time after Sariputta and Moggallana visited Devadatta, the Buddha asked what had happened at their meeting. They answered that Devadatta had tried to act equal to the Buddha by having them sit at his side while he preached, but he had failed to impress and most of his disciples left to come back to the Buddha’s monastery. The Buddha told them this story so they knew that it was not the first time Devadatta had suffered a rebuke after acting like him.
