Arida
Arida
阿利q Arida
Also known as Arita. The name of Aniruddha, one of Shakyamuni's ten major disciples, in a previous lifetime. The story appears in the Storehouse of Various Treasures Sutra and elsewhere. Ninety-one kalpas ago, there lived a wealthy man who had two sons, Rida and Arida ( Jpn; their original Sanskrit names are unknown). On his deathbed, he admonished them not to divide his property between them but to live together. This they did, following their father's advice, and they respected and helped each other. Later, when the younger brother, Arida, married, his wife complained to him that he acted like a servant to his elder brother, Rida. She persuaded him to divide his father's wealth with his brother and to live independently.Arida and his wife were satisfied but in time squandered their portion of the wealth and asked Rida for more. Rida complied, but Arida lost all his wealth again, eventually repeating this cycle six times. When Rida fulfilled his younger brother's request a seventh time, he admonished him against wasteful living. From then on, Arida and his wife lived frugally until finally they amassed a fortune. The elder brother, Rida, then happened to become destitute and came to Arida for money, but he was refused. Disappointed, he renounced the secular world and eventually became a pratyekabuddha.Meanwhile, Arida again lost his fortune and eked out a living selling firewood. One day, he saw a pratyekabuddha in the city with an empty alms bowl. Arida, not knowing that the mendicant was his brother, offered him a meal of millet, which he had managed to obtain by selling firewood. Then one day while collecting wood, he came across a hare and struck it dead with his staff. The hare changed into a dead person, who folded his arms about Arida's neck and would not loosen his hold. When Arida returned home, the corpse released its hold and changed into a statue of gold. Upon separating the golden head from the statue, Arida saw it regenerate itself. When he broke off its hands and feet, they were also restored. In this way, he again accumulated wealth.After his death, he was reborn as the deity Shakra and then as a wheel-turning king. During the following ninety-one kalpas, he repeated this cycle of birth and death, finally being reborn as a member of the Shakya clan. Aniruddha related this story to reveal that, as a reward for offering a meal to a pratyekabuddha in a prior existence, he had been able to repeat a wonderful cycle of birth and death and was not lacking for food and drink in his present life as a monk.
