{"collection":"Khuddaka Nikaya","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/suttacentral_cp12/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/suttacentral_cp12","id":"suttacentral_cp12","license":"CC0","rights_basis":"suttacentral_bilara_data_cc0","source":"suttacentral","source_url":"https://suttacentral.net/cp12/en/sujato","summary":null,"tags":["Early Buddhist Texts","Khuddaka Nikaya"],"text":"\u201cThen again when I was Bh\u016bridatta, a dragon of great psychic power, together with Vir\u016bpakkha the Great King I went to a heavenly realm. There I saw gods wholly given over to pleasure. For the sake of going to that heaven, I undertook the observance of ethics. After tending to my physical needs, and eating enough to get by, I resolved on the four factors, and lay down atop a termite mound, thinking: \u2018My outer skin and inner, flesh, sinews and bones: whoever has use for these, they are already given, please take them.\u2019 While lying there the ingrate \u0100lamp\u0101yana grabbed me. He threw me in a basket and made me perform in places all over. Though thrown in a basket and crushed by his hands, I did not get upset with \u0100lamp\u0101yana, for fear of breaking my ethics. To give up my own life was as light as a blade of grass. To transgress my ethical principles was like overturning the earth. In a hundred successive lives I would give up my own life. I would not even violate my ethics for the sake of the four continents. For the sake of protecting ethics, and fulfilling my perfection of ethics, I did not let my mind change, even when thrown in a basket.\u201d","title":"The Dragon Bh\u016bridatta\u2019s Conduct","tradition":"Khuddaka Nikaya","translated_text":null,"word_count":214}