88.GOLDEN SWAN
108 Buddhist Parables
The Buddha told this story as something that took place in one of his previous lifetimes. At that time, he was a simple man with a wife and three daughters. He was always kind to people and was dearly loved by his family. Unfortunately, he died before he could marry his daughters and this saddened his soul. When he entered into the other world, he observed what was happening on earth and saw that his family was almost poverty-stricken.
So he returned to his family as a beautiful golden swan and said to his wife, “I have come to you in this form. Once a month I shall come and leave one of my gold feathers for you to sell. In this way you will easily be able to meet with all your expenses.”
So every month he used to come and leave a gold feather.
The wife was very happy, and the daughters were so delighted when they saw their father. The swan used to stay for a few minutes and then leave.
One day an idea entered into the wife’s mind, ‘My husband may not come regularly, or he may change his mind and stop coming, or he may grow old and die. The best thing is for me to catch him and strangle him the next time he comes, so that I take away all his feathers.’
The daughters were simply shocked, “How can you do this kind of thing, Mother?”
The wife said, “All right, I will not strangle him. But I will take away all his feathers. If he cannot fly anymore, no harm. You will take care of your father.”
The daughters pleaded their mother not to proceed with a wicked plan, but the mother would not listen. The next time the bird came, she caught hold of him by the neck and took away all the feathers, one by one.
It was very painful to the swan and he cried and screamed most pitifully, “What are you doing? I have been so kind to you.”
When the wife was finished, the bird, suffering immensely, could not fly anymore. Then all of a sudden all the gold feathers turned into ordinary white feathers: they no longer were made of gold.
The greedy wife felt miserable because of this change and decided to check her secret box where she had been keeping the gold feathers that she had accumulated but had not yet sold. She knew that she still had many of them, enough to meet her family’s expenses for at least six months. But as soon as she opened the box, she found that these feathers, too, had turned into ordinary white feathers.
The three daughters, with great love and affection, each day fed the poor swan and showed him tremendous concern. The mother was now helpless; she fell into remorse. ‘This is what happened because of my greed,’ she thought, but she still secretly hoped that the swan would grow new gold feathers. Slowly the feathers of the swan grew back again, but this time they were pure white. There was no point in taking them and the bird flew away.
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All parables in printed book format: 108 Buddhist Parables and Stories
