Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.
Moment for All Ages
The Quails and the Net
Gautama Buddha was a great holy man who lived long, long ago in India. He was so wise that people came from far and wide to learn from him. Many of these people stayed with him, and became his bhikkus, or his followers.
Once upon a time, Buddha noticed that several of his followers spent a great deal of time arguing among themselves. These bhikkus began to disturb the other people who had come to learn from Buddha. Buddha felt that because of their arguing, they were not making progress toward becoming truly enlightened beings. That evening, Buddha sat all his followers down together, and told them this story:
“Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a large flock of quails in a forest. Now in near this very same forest there lived a hunter who made his living from capturing quails and selling them to people who wanted to eat them. Every day this hunter would slip quietly into the forest and sit hidden behind a big bush. Then he would imitate the call of a quail so perfectly that the quail thought the hunter was one of them.
“Upon hearing the hunter’s call, the quail would come out of the safe places where they had been gathering food. When they came into the open, the hunter would leap out from his hiding place and throw a big net over as many quails as he could reach. He would bundle up the net and take all the quail away to the marketplace to be sold to people who would eat them for dinner.
“The quails did not like this. And they grew frightened because the hunter captured so many of them. The quail decided to hold a meeting to discuss the problem. A wise quail said to the others:
“‘The net the hunter throws over us isn’t heavy. As soon as he throws the net over us, if we all fly up together at the same time, we can lift the net up with us and get away.’
“The other quails thought this was a good plan. They all agreed to fly up together and escape the next time the hunter threw the net over them.
“The next day, the hunter came back to the forest. He imitated the call of a quail and all the quail were fooled again. Then he threw the net over as many quail as he could reach, expecting to bundle them up as always.
“This time, however, was different. Before the hunter could bundle them up, all the quail flew up in the air together. They lifted the net up with them, and settled down together into a nearby rose bush. The net got tangled up in the thorns of the rose bush, and the quail scurried away to safety.
“The hunter was left to pick his net out of the sharp thorns. After hours of work, he finally untangled his net. He walked home, tired and discouraged.
“The next day, the hunter came back to try his luck again. He imitated the quail’s call. All the quail came running. When they felt the net settle over them, they flew into a nearby rose bush, leaving the net caught on the sharp thorns. Once again, the hunter was left to untangle his net, with no quails to sell at the market.
“This went on for some days. The hunter was growing more and more discouraged. Finally, one day the hunter came back into the forest, gave his imitation of the quail’s call, and threw his net over the quail when they came out into the open.
“But when it came time for all the quail to fly up together, one quail happened to step on the foot of another.
“‘Hey,’ said the second quail, ‘who kicked me?’
“‘No one kicked you,’ said a third quail.
“A fourth quail said, ‘Oh, he’s just complaining because he’s lazy; he never lifts his share of the net.’
“Another quail said, ‘Who are you to talk? You do very little flying, leaving the hard work to the rest of us.’
“As the quail fought and bickered among themselves, the hunter bundled them up in his net and carried them off to market. They were all fat, plump quails, and the hunter got a good price for them.”
The followers of Buddha all believed they had lived many lives in the past, sometimes as animals, sometimes as humans, sometimes as gods. Buddha told them that the story of the quails was really a story of them in one of their past lives.
“When you were on this earth as quails,” said the Buddha, “you argued among yourselves, and got caught by the hunter, and were eaten for dinner that very night. You are no longer quails. Is it not time for you to stop arguing among yourselves?”
The bhikkus who had been arguing so much grew embarrassed and ashamed, and from that day on, so it is told, they no longer engaged in silly arguments.(1)
Reading
The first reading was the poem “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” by Derek Walcott (not included here due to copyright).
The second reading was a very short poem by Rabindranath Tagore:
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. [Stray Birds #75]
Sermon
This morning, I’m going to retell three Buddhist stories from the Jataka Tales, one of the earliest collections of Buddhist writings. Each of these stories tells a tale from one of Gotama Buddha’s previous lives. For, you see, when Siddhartha Gotama achieved enlightenment, he was able to remember every single one of his previous lives.
I find it fascinating that Buddha had over five hundred previous lives. In Western culture, we are much more likely to think that we each get one life, and after that life is over we either go to heaven, or to oblivion. Time is linear for most Westerners, but circular for Buddhists. We are encountering a very different mindset in these stories.
The Jataka Tales mostly begin with a framing story: something happened in the community that gathered around Gotama Buddha, and Buddha tells a story from one of his previous lives in order to help the people in the community get along better.
With that in mind, let’s consider the first story, which I told as the “Moment for All Ages”: the story of the quails and the net. This is a well-known story, and doubtless many of you have heard it before. In Western culture, the story is often told as a parable showing the importance of cooperation. Derek Walcott’s poem “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” offers a variation of that interpretation. The poem opens with an image taken directly from this Jataka Tale:
Then all the nations of birds lifted together
the huge net of the shadows of this earth
in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
stitching and crossing it….
If only human beings could learn how to cooperate, as do the birds, then we could have a world filled with peace!
Indeed, today’s world feels much like what happens in the story when the quails start to argue with each other. One quail accuses another of stepping on their foot; another quail says that someone is not lifting their share of the net; while another quail says that someone else didn’t do their share of flying. This sound very much like what we hear from our world leaders these days. And what is the result of all this bickering? Here’s how the Buddha told of the outcome:
“As the quail fought and bickered among themselves, the hunter bundled them up in his net and carried them off to market. They were all fat, plump quails, and the hunter got a very good price for them.”
Buddha doesn’t say we should never argue — he’s telling us that we should have enough humility so we don’t let our arguments get in the way of accomplishing our common goals.
This is true both in a small community like that gathered around Buddha, and the world community of nations. It’s always easy to blame our world leaders for acting like the quails in the net, yet we too must take responsibility for our actions in our families, in the workplace, in all the community groups we may belong to. Having the humility to admit when we are wrong turns out to be necessary ingredient for peaceful communities.
The next Jataka Tale is one you may have heard in a different form, but try to let go of your expectations….
The Tale of the Dhak Tree
One day, four of Buddha’s followers came up to him and asked how they might learn to meditate and rise above earthly things. Buddha explained to the four bhikkus how they might do so, and each went off to learn a different kind of meditation. The first learned the Six Spheres of Touch. The second learned the Five Elements of Being. The third learned the Four Principal Elements. The fourth learned the Eighteen Constituents of Being. Each one learned how to meditate so well, they each achieved Enlightenment and became a holy person.
One day all four of these bhikkus came back to tell the Buddha what they had done. Each of them claimed that their way was the best form of mediation. At last one of them said, “Buddha, each of us has achieved Enlightenment, but we each used a different type of meditation. How could this be?”
And Buddha said, “It is like the four brothers who saw the dhak tree….”
Once upon a time Bramadatta, the King of Benares, had four sons. One day, the four sons sent for a charioteer and said to him, “We want to see a dhak tree [Butea monosperma]. Show us one!”
“Very well,” said the charioteer . “Let me begin by showing the eldest.”
The charioteer took the eldest to the forest. It was late winter, so the eldest brother saw the dhak tree at the time when the buds had not yet begun to swell, and the tree looked dead.
The charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Two months went by until at last the charioteer could bring the second brother to see the dhak tree. It was spring, and the tree was entirely covered with reddish-orange flowers.
The charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Two more months went by until at last the charioteer could bring the third brother to see the dhak tree. It was summer now, the flowers were gone, and the tree was covered with leaves.
he charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Months went by until the fourth brother declared he could wait no longer. The charioteer brought him to see the dhak tree. Now it was autumn, and the tree was covered with long seed-pods.
When all four brothers had seen the dhak tree, they sat down together, and talked about what the dhak tree was like.
“It is like a bunch of dead twigs,” said the first.
“No, it is reddish like a piece of meat,” said the second.
“No, it has leaves like a banyan tree,” said the third.
“No, it looks like an acacia tree with its long seed pods,” said the fourth.
None of them liked the answers the other gave. They ran to find their father. “Father,” they asked, “tell us, what is the dhak tree like?”
“You have all seen the tree,” the king said. “You tell me what it’s like.”
The four brothers gave the king their four different answers: it is like dead twigs, it is like meat, it has leaves like a banyan, it has seed pods like the acacia.
“You have all seen the tree,” said the king. “But when the charioteer showed you the tree, you didn’t ask him what the tree looked like at other times of the year. This is where your mistake lies.” And the king recited a poem:
Each one of you has gone to view the tree,
Yet you remain in great perplexity
Because you did not ask the charioteer
Just how it looked at other times of year.
Buddha then spoke to the four bhikkus. “These four brothers did not ask themselves what the tree looked like in different times of the year, and so they fell into doubt. In just the same way, the four of you have fallen into doubt about what is true and right.” Then the Buddha gave another stanza for the king’s poem:
If you know truth, and yet the whole you cannot see,
You’ll be unsure, like those four brothers and the tree.(2)
I love the framing story of this Jataka Tale. The four bhikkus have each achieved enlightenment, yet they still feel the need to argue about which method for attaining enlightenment is best. You would think they would realize that they learned of the four different types of meditation from the same person, from Buddha, which would imply that he felt each meditation system was of equal value. Yet although they have achieved enlightenment, perhaps they have not yet achieved humility. The framing story is telling us that there is no end to spiritual growth; even when you think you have attained some major spiritual accomplishment, you are not yet finished.
This wisdom of Buddhas reminds me a bit of the wisdom of Jesus. Jesus chose several of his followers to be especially close to him, yet they constantly misinterpret Jesus’s teachings; at which point, Jesus assists them in proceeding farther along their spiritual journey. I also get the sense that both Jesus and Buddha realize they have fallen short as spiritual teachers — their spiritual guidance is not wholly adequate for the needs of limited, fallible human beings — and they both have the humility to understand that they, too, have human failings.
This comes back to one of our basic Unitarian teachings. In my Unitarian Universalist Sunday school, when I was a child, we heard stories about both Jesus and Buddha. Our teachers always made it clear that neither Jesus nor Buddha was God; they were each much wiser than the rest of us, but they were not infallible. Their greatness lay in their ability to show us we all have the capacity to choose to become better human beings.
And with that in mind, here’s another story….
King Usinara and the Huge Hound
One day, the followers of Buddha were sitting in the Hall of Truth talking with one another.
“Isn’t it amazing,” one of them said, “that the Buddha gave up a beautiful home, and now lives only for the good of the world?”
“Yes,” said another, “isn’t it amazing that he has attained supreme wisdom, yet rather than making himself rich, he goes about teaching goodness?”
Buddha came into the Hall and heard them talking. “Yes, it is true,” said the Buddha. “Even in my previous lives, even then when I had not attained supreme wisdom, I still always tried to live for the good of the world. Let me tell you the story of one of my previous lives.” This is the story the Buddha told:
Once upon a time, there reigned a king named Usinara. Under the rule of this king, the people had given up doing good, and instead they followed the paths of evil-doing. Sakka, the ruler of all the gods, looked upon this, and saw that the people were suffering because they did evil.
“What shall I do, now?” he said to himself. “Ah, I have it! I will scare and terrify humankind. And when I see they are terrified, I will comfort them, I will tell them the universal Law of life, I will restore their moral compasses!”
Sakka turned his divine charioteer Matali into a huge black hound, with four tusks each as big as a plantain, with a hideous shape and a fat belly. Sakka fastened this horrible dog with a chain, and turned himself into a hunter. Together they walked to King Usinara’s city.
“Everything is doomed to destruction!” the hunter cried out, so loudly that he terrified everyone within earshot. He repeated this cry as he walked up to the very gates of the city.
The people of the city saw the huge dog and heard the hunter’s cries, and hurried into the city to tell the king what had happened. The king ordered the city gates to be closed. But the hunter and the huge dog leaped over the wall.
When they saw that the hunter and the dog had gotten inside the city, everyone ran away to find a place to hide. Those who could not get to their houses in time ran to the king’s palace to find safety.
The hunter and the dog came to the palace. The dog raised itself up, put its paws on the window of the room where the king was hiding, and barked. Its bark was a huge roaring that seemed to go from the depths of the earth to the highest heaven. The people were terrified by this, and no one could say a word.
At last the king plucked up his courage, and went to the window. He called out to the hunter: “Ho, huntsman! why did your hound roar?”
“The hound is hungry,” said the hunter.
“Well,” said the king, “I will order some food for it.”
The king told his servants to give all the food in the palace to the dog. The huge dog gulped all the food down in one mouthful, then roared again.
Again the king called out the window: “Huntsman! Why does your dog still roar?”
“My hound is still hungry,” said the hunter.
Then the king had all the food for all his elephants and all his horses and all his other animals brought and given to the huge dog. Once again, the dog swallowed it in one gulp. So the king had all the food in the entire city brought. The huge dog swallowed all that in one gulp, and then roared again.
Terrified with fear, the king thought to himself, “This is no ordinary dog. I must ask why he has come.” He said to the hunter: “Why does this huge hound, with sharp white fangs as big as plantains, come here with you?”
“The dog comes to eat my enemies,” said the hunter.
“And who are your enemies?” said the king.
“All those people who are smart and educated, but who use their skill only to acquire money. All those who do not take care of their parents, once their parents get old. All those who betray their friends or spouses or siblings. All those who pretend to follow religious principles, but who actually do whatever they want. All those who are criminals, who kill and rob. All those who have hearts filled with evil, and who are evil and deceitful.
“These,” said the hunter, “are all are my enemies, O king!”
And the hunter made as though he would let the hound leap forth and devour all those who were his enemies. But as all the people froze in terror, he held the hound by the leash.
Then Sakka shed his disguise of a hunter. By his power he rose and poised himself in the air, and said: “O great king, I am Sakka, ruler of the gods! I saw how this land had become corrupt; I saw humans were suffering because they were doing evil; and I came here with my huge hungry hound. If you wish to keep me out of your land, you must all stop doing evil.”
King Usinara and all the people saw they must return to the ways of virtue. They must stop doing evil, or the huge dog would remain hungry, and would keep roaring!
And when Sakka and Matali saw that the people had turned away from evil, and once again followed the paths of good — then they returned to the home of the gods.
When Buddha finished telling this story, he said: “So you see, in my former lives I lived for the good of the world.” Buddha then added: “My follower and friend, Ananda, was Matali. And I was Sakka.”(3)
I like to think of this story as a parable about the limits of human knowledge. King Usinara and his people had lost the knowledge of how to be good, and it took a huge frightening roaring dog to scare them into the knowledge of how foolish and wrongheaded they had been. This is a good metaphor for what it feels like when I have had to confront my own foolishness and wrongheadedness.
Earlier this week, I was talking over these stories with Kate Sullivan, our director of spiritual exploration. The stories made her think of two questions for reflection:
What did you think you knew, only to find that you didn’t actually know it?
And when you realized you didn’t know, were you courageous enough to humble yourself?
I’ll leave you with those questions.
Sources for the stories
(1) Source: Jataka tale no. 33, from The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, in six volumes, ed. E. B. Cowell (Cambridge Univ., 1895-1907).
(2) Source: Kimsukopama-Jataka, Jataka tale no. 248, in the Cowell translation.
(3) Source: Maha-Kanha Jataka, Jataka tale no. 469, in the Cowell translation.