There was once a wealthy house­hold­er in a val­ley. Early one morn­ing, he was head­ing back to his home while rid­ing a horse and lead­ing a don­key behind. In that place, there were two greedy thieves who saw him. With the aim of steal­ing the don­key, they stealth­ily snuck up behind the householder.

One of the thieves led the don­key away while the oth­er took the bridle off the donkey’s head and pro­ceeded to put it on his own head and fol­low the house­hold­er. When the house­hold­er had almost reached his home, he glanced behind him. Not only was his don­key nowhere to be seen, he was moment­ar­ily dumb­struck to see a man with a bridle on his head fol­low­ing him!

 The thief then explained: “Dear Mas­ter, there is no point being taken aback! I com­mit­ted a mis­deed in the god realm and the Lord of the Gods, Indra, in accord­ance with the laws of the gods, ban­ished me to a don­key rebirth in this human realm. How­ever, since that wrong­do­ing has now been pur­i­fied, I have attained a human form.” 

 Then the house­hold­er said, “If that is so, you have gone through many hard­ships for the sake of our fam­ily. I have here exactly 50 coins to give you as com­pens­a­tion. Now, go forth and live your life in a happy land! In the future, do not engage in any neg­at­ive actions caus­ing you to become a don­key again,” he advised him and let him go.

  A few days later, the house­hold­er went to the mar­ket with the idea of pur­chas­ing a don­key. See­ing his own don­key on sale there, he was dev­ast­ated and uttered, “Oh no! What bad karma you have! Have you engaged in evil actions?  You have become a don­key again! What evil action did you do? May the Three Jew­els show com­pas­sion!” He pro­ceeded to give 50 coins to buy the don­key back!