This Venerable One’s name means “good-bearing.” In the past, throughout limitless kalpas, he exclusively cultivated the precept against killing. His cultivation of that precept was not like that of us ordinary people at all. His mind did not even give rise to the thought of killing. Not only did he not kill outwardly, inwardly he was spotlessly clean in that he never killed a single living creature. Because of this, he received five kinds of non-dying retribution.
When he was born, he was able to speak. He smiled and laughed and said, “Mama” and “Papa,” and was very playful. His mother thought “What on earth! I’ve never heard of a child who could talk and joke at birth. It must be a monster.” Since she was rather cruel and not compassionate, she put him in a frying pan and tried to fry him. But he wouldn’t fry. It was as if nothing were happening. The pan was red hot, but Vakkula was just as happy. “All right,” she said, “you may be fireproof, but you’re certainly not water-proof!” and she tossed him in a pot of rapidly boiling water, but he still didn’t die. Then she tried to drown him by holding him under water, but he couldn’t be drowned. Do you think this is strange or not?
She left him in the ocean and he was gulped down by a fish and he went right into the fish’s stomach, escaping the fish’s teeth. Just then, strangely enough, the fish was caught in a fisherman’s net and the fisherman cut the fish open with a knife. Vakkula was not harmed by the knife either, and jumped right out of the fish’s belly. Thus, he received the five kinds of non-dying retribution: the fire didn’t burn him, the water didn’t boil him, the ocean didn’t drown him, the fish didn’t chomp him to death, and the fisherman’s knife didn’t cut him. He received these five as a response from his observance of the precept against killing and among the Buddha’s disciples he was the foremost in longevity.