Jātaka 20 – Naḷapāna

 

V. The Apophatic Passage — Drinking Without Meeting Power

The path of emptying in the Naḷapāna-Jātaka: how to quench thirst without falling into the trap of desire.

 

 

 

 

The image is clear, yet revolutionary. Hollow canes on the water. The ogre keeps watch. The water flows. 

This is not an epic clash, but a silent realignment of reality. In the Jātaka of the Naḷapāna Pool, the thirsty monkeys do not conquer the spring, nor kill the guardian. The Bodhisatta, their king, performs a miracle of emptiness: he blows the knots out of the canes, turning them into pure conduits.

The command is apophatic: not "destroy the trap," but "empty within yourself what can be grasped." 

The water (the need, the world) remains. The ogre (the mechanism of power, structural violence) remains. Yet, their deadly bond is broken. The monkeys sit on the bank and drink, long canes like prostheses of purified desire. They satisfy their thirst without owning the source, without challenging the keeper. They pass without meeting.

This is the heart of the practice of subtraction: do not deny the world, deny its right to possess you. 

Power feeds on our solidity, on our inner "knots"—greed, fear, fierce identification with our need. When those knots dissolve, we become transparent to its grip. We can draw from life, fulfill our vow, quench our thirst, without being the target of the trap anymore.

The few-second video captures the essence: the cane piercing the surface, the ogre growling into the void, the droplet falling as a witness to a non-violent victory. The gesture is complete in itself: to drink without bending down. 

This is the threshold. Here, the path does not advance; it empties. And precisely in that emptying, it finds its passage.