The Bodhisatta was once a spirit of the air. A poor couple planned to attend their city’s large, elaborate night festival, and the wife was upset they had only old, coarse clothes. She wanted to wear safflower-dyed cloth, but there was no way for poor people like them to afford it. The wife didn’t care what it took, she demanded safflower, telling her husband to sneak into the royal park to steal some. They knew this was a very foolish, dangerous thing to do, but the man could not convince his wife to be happy with what they had. And since he loved her very much, he agreed to do it.
Under cover of night, the man broke down a fence and got into the park. But the guards heard him and took him away in chains. Brought before the king the next morning, he was sentenced to death and led out of the city to the execution grounds, where he was impaled. As he slowly died in intense agony, with crows pecking out his eyes, he muttered to himself that his greatest pain was not being able to see his wife in beautiful new clothes. He asked a crow to tell his wife that his valuables were hidden in his pillow. Then he died and was reborn in hell. The Bodhisatta saw all this happen.
In the Lifetime of the Buddha
One of the Buddha’s disciples began longing for his wife from his lay life. The husband and wife seeking the safflower-dyed clothes were earlier births of this disciple and his wife, and the Buddha told the disciple this story from his past so he knew that his wife was harmful to him and he should not crave her.
