King Kalābu
King Kalābu (Sanskrit: ), also known as "King Kalinga", "King Kalabha" or "King Kali" is a mythical king in Buddhism. His name is extant in both Southern Buddhism and Northern Buddhism. In Chinese he is known as 歌利王 ("Gēlì wáng"), sometimes rendered 迦蓝浮王 ("Jiālánfú wáng") or 卡拉補王 ("Kǎlābǔ wáng"). Jataka tales. King Kalābu appears in the "Kṣāntivādi Jātaka" (Sanskrit; Pali: Khantivādī Jātaka). The Sanskrit word "kṣānti" (Pali: "khanti") means "tolerance" while "vādi" is a modified form of the word "vāda" which means "teaching" or "view'. The name "Kṣāntivādin" or "Kṣāntivāda" describes the protagonist of the story: an ascetic who  excelled at tolerance in face of the brutal atrocities inflicted upon him by King Kalābu. The Pali version of the tale reveals that King Kalābu was a past birth of Devadatta, the enemy of the Buddha, and that Kṣāntivādin was the Buddha himself in that life. Narrative. The story runs as follows: This is the story of the past as told by the Buddha. At the end the Buddha declared that this was his perfection of tolerance. Moral: Tolerance in this life. Once we examine the attitude the Buddha held about the criticism brought against him, his teaching, and community  by some of his contemporaries; the perfection of tolerance he carried throughout his many lives of spiritual practice can be better understood. A similar rhetoric used with King Kalābu was applied when the Buddha came to know that Suppiya, an ascetic outside the Buddhist Sangha, criticized the Buddha. Here, the Buddha's admonition reminds us of his previous perfection of tolerance. The discourse from the Brahmajāla Sutta reports the Buddha's words as follows: "If, bhikkhus, others speak in dispraise of me, or in dispraise of the Dhamma, or in dispraise of the Sangha, you should not give way to  resentment, displeasure, or animosity against them in your heart. For if you were to become angry or upset in such a situation, you would only be creating an obstacle for yourselves. If you were to become angry or upset when others speak in dispraise of us, would you be able to recognize whether their statements are rightly or wrongly spoken?" Mahayana literature. An alternate version of the Jātaka appears in the Mahāvastu. In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha refers to King Kalābu and the sage of forbearance as follows: "Subhūti, the Pāramitā of Forbearance that the Tathāgata speaks of is  not a pāramitā of forbearance. Why? Subhūti, this is like in the past when my body was cut apart by the Kalirāja: there were no notions of a self, notions of a person, notions of a being, or notions of a life. In the past, when I was being hacked limb from limb, if there were notions of a self, notions of a person, notions of a being, or notions of a life, then I would have responded with hatred and anger. Remember also that I was the Ṛṣi of Forbearance for five hundred lifetimes in the past. Over so  many lifetimes there were no notions of a self, notions of a person, notions of a being, or notions of a life. References. External links. "Dictionary of Pãli Proper Names", G.P.Malalasekera, Vol.1,p. 536,709 ()