"Pleasant is your cry."--This the Master told when at Jetavana, about the luxurious monk. The occasion is as above in the Story on True Divinity.
The Teacher asked him, "Is this true, O monk, what they say, that you are luxurious?"
"It is true, Lord," said he.
"How is it you have become luxurious?" began the Teacher.
But without waiting to hear more, he flew into a rage, tore off his robe and his lower garment, and calling out, "Then I'll go about in this way!" stood there naked before the Teacher!
The bystanders exclaimed, "Shame! shame!" and he ran off, and returned to the lower state (of a layman).
When the monks were assembled in the Lecture Hall, they began talking of his misconduct. "To think that one should behave so in the very presence of the Master!" The Teacher then came up, and asked them what they were talking about, as they sat there together.
"Lord! we were talking of the misconduct of that monk, who, in your presence, and in the midst of the disciples, stood there as naked as a village child, without caring one bit; and when the bystanders cried shame upon him, returned to the lower state, and lost the faith!"
Then said the Teacher, "Not only, O monks, has this brother now lost the jewel of the faith by immodesty; in a former birth he lost a jewel of a wife from the same cause." And he told a tale.
"Long ago, in the first age of the world, the quadrupeds chose the Lion as their king, the fishes the Leviathan, and the birds the Golden Goose.
"Now the royal Golden Goose had a daughter, a young goose most beautiful to see; and he gave her her choice of a husband. And she chose the one she liked the best.
"For, having given her the right to choose, he called together all the birds in the Himalaya region. And crowds of geese, and peacocks, and other birds of various kinds, met together on a great flat piece of rock.
"The king sent for his daughter, saying, 'Come and choose the husband you like best!'
"On looking over the assembly of the birds, she caught sight of the peacock, with a neck as bright as gems, and a many-colored tail; and she made the choice with the words, 'Let this one be my husband!'
"So the assembly of the birds went up to the peacock, and said, 'Friend Peacock! this king's daughter having to choose her husband from amongst so many birds, has fixed her choice upon you!'
"'Up to to-day you would not see my greatness,' said the peacock, so overflowing with delight that in breach of all modesty he began to spread his wings and dance in the midst of the vast assembly,--and in dancing he exposed himself.
"Then the royal Golden Goose was shocked!
"And he said, 'This fellow has neither modesty in his heart, nor decency in his outward behavior! I shall not give my daughter to him. He has broken loose from all sense of shame!' And he uttered this verse to all the assembly--
"'Pleasant is your cry, brilliant is your back.
"Then the king in the midst of the whole assembly bestowed his daughter on a young goose, his nephew. And the peacock was covered with shame at not getting the fair gosling, and rose straight up from the place and flew away.
"But the king of the Golden Geese went back to the place where he dwelt."
When the Teacher had finished this lesson in virtue, in illustration of what he had said ("Not only, monks, has this brother now lost the jewel of the faith by immodesty, formerly also he lost a jewel of a wife by the same cause"), he made the connection, and summed up the Jataka, by saying, "The peacock of that time was the luxurious monk, but the King of the Geese was I myself."
