Devadatta - Greatest Enemy of Buddha
Author : Peter Vredeveld
Devadatta, one of the disciples of Lord Buddha, is also the greatest enemy of Buddha. He made many attempts to kill Gautama Buddha. One of the attempt to kill Buddha was by sending an elephant which was drugged. But the elephant keep calm when Lord Buddha
Devadatta was a Buddhist monk and was a cousin as well as brother-in-law of Gautama Buddha and was the brother of Ananda, one of the close disciples of Buddha. According to Pali Tipitaka, Devadatta was the greatest enemy of Lord Buddha and was believed to have split the Sangha by persuading about 500 Buddhist monks who admired and followed him.
Devadatta was the son of Shakya King Suppabuddha, Queen Pamita, and brother of Yasodhara (wife of Buddha ). He entered the Order of Sangha simultaneously with Ananda and other Shakya princes. Devadatta was quite jealous of Gautama Buddha.
Story of Devadatta
When Devadatta entered the Order in the early days, he was a good monk known for his elegance and psychic power. But he became pretty arrogant and desired worldly fame. When he could not attain arhat, his anger and jealousy grew even more, and he began thinking he should be the leader of the Order of Monks. One day, he requested Lord Buddha to step down from the Order, appoint him as the leader, and take over the running of the Sangha. But Lord Buddha declined immediately and said he was not worthy of letting him take over the Order. And that was the main reason that triggered the anger, ill-will, and jealousy of Devadatta towards Lord Buddha and became Buddha's enemy.
Coup d'état of Devadatta
Prince Ajatasattu, son of King Bimbisara, was greatly impressed by the psychic power of Devadatta and became a disciple of Devadatta. When Buddha turned down his proposal, Devadatta was angry and wanted to take revenge on Lord Buddha. Then he encouraged Prince Ajatasattu and made an evil plan to take revenge on Lord Buddha, and the Prince would assume his position as the king of Magadha by killing King Bimbisara. But being the devout of Buddha, he gave over the throne to the Prince. After the Prince became the king, he provided Devadatta with mercenaries and ordered them to kill Lord Buddha, and Devadatta would take over the Sangha.
The plan was to send two mercenaries to kill Lord Buddha, and four other mercenaries would kill those two. He would hire even more to kill the four mercenaries to cover his tracks on the plan. But this plan failed since the mercenaries could do anything before Lord Buddha and were converted to Buddhism instead. The angered Devadatta then decided to kill Buddha by himself. His first attempt to kill Lord Buddha was to throw a rock from high while Lord Buddha was walking on the mountain. But the rock broke into pieces. His next attempt was to let an intoxicated elephant, "Nalagiri," kill Lord Buddha. But the elephant became calm when it appeared in front of Buddha.
Since the two attempts to kill Lord Buddha failed massively, he tried another deceitful plan by turning 500 misled monks so that he could split the Sangha Community. He proposed a list of a few extra rules that must be made compulsory for all monks. They were:
- All monks must live in the forest
- All monks must live on alms obtained from begging
- All monks must wear robes made of discarded rags and accept no robes from laity
- All monks must live at the foot of trees
- All monks must not eat fish or meat
Buddha responded that those who wanted to follow the first four rules could follow them and disapproved of making them mandatory. Devadatta used this chance to mislead the 500 monks and became the leader. Later, Sariputra and Moggallana, on the Order of Buddha, went to Devadatta, taught the misled monks about Dharma's true meaning, and became successful. And 500 monks returned to Lord Buddha upon hearing the true meaning of Dharma from the chief disciples of Lord Buddha.
Despite his numerous unsuccessful attempts to seek revenge on Buddha, he succumbed to illness, a consequence of his evil karma. At near death, he regretted his evil actions and sought to see Lord Buddha before he died. But he died before he could see Lord Buddha.
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