Buddha

  “Look!”

  A small child, bolder than the others, pointed at Gautama, then jumped down from the cart he was riding in. He ran up and tugged at the monk’s saffron skirt with a smile. The boy didn’t beg for anything; he just held on to the skirt and walked beside Gautama. Instead of scolding him or calling him back, the parents nodded benignly.

  “I have to find my brothers again,” mumbled Gautama. He removed the little boy’s hand and turned around. Walking away, he could hear the child crying behind him, and this, as much as the stares people were giving him, distressed Gautama. He’d heard children crying like that many times, when there was no food or the kind Prince Siddhartha had run out of coins for them. But Gautama had given this child nothing and taken nothing away. Except himself.

  Gautama found the path that had led him to the main road, and soon he was swaddled in the protective gloom of the jungle. The five cousins would still be in camp. They were never eager to travel in the heat of the day. Once he found them, Pabbata looked puzzled over why Gautama had been gone so long, but he kept this to himself. Solitude was a monk’s privilege, one of the few. Gautama had taken the precaution of gathering some mangoes on the way, which placated the other cousins in case they had questions to pose. He lay down under a tree, gazing up at the dappled light that filtered down and made small white circles on the forest floor. He couldn’t find a way to fall asleep as the others dozed off.

  Own nothing. Give everything.

  It was all he could think about.

  “DO YOU RECOGNIZE ME?”

  Gautama lifted the sick man’s head and brought a water gourd to his lips. The man had been unconscious when the novice monks, the bikkhus, found him. Only Gautama thought he was still alive. He ordered the bikkhus to put the body in his tent and leave the two alone. They obeyed without question. First, because wherever Gautama went, from camp to camp, ashram to ashram, he was revered. He had emerged from the forest only a year before, yet many of the novices whispered that someone like him, a man of stature and power, should be master, not a worn-out old yogi.

  There was a second reason too. If the man they found in the forest actually was dead, Gautama might bring him back to life. Miracle stories swirled around him, and no amount of discouragement on Gautama’s part could make them die down.

  “Do you recognize me?” Gautama repeated when he saw the old man’s eyes flutter and then open.

  “I—I’m not sure.”

  Hunger and dehydration had made the man’s mind weak. He looked around the tent, baffled at how he had gotten there. Then his gaze returned to Gautama’s face and stayed there. “Ah,” he said. “The saint.”

  “That’s what you called me, Ganaka. But don’t worry. Didn’t you also tell me that saints don’t exist?”

  Feeble as he was, Ganaka summoned a cynical smile. “You waited this long to prove that I’m wrong?”

  His head fell back; he struggled with another wave of delirium. Ganaka had been found deep in the forest, sheerly by accident when the bikkhus were chasing down a deer with bow and arrow. “I didn’t ask for your help,” he mumbled. “It’s my life. Who are you to save it?”

  “Weren’t you about to give it away?”

  Gautama had sensed such a possibility. Someone as experienced as Ganaka didn’t just wander away alone unless it was to die. The careworn monk turned his head away and refused to answer.

  “We’ll talk later,” Gautama said. He placed water and fruit beside the cot and departed. Outside the tent his eyes saw dozens of huts in the large clearing. It was spring, and the younger bikkhus were feeling the effects—they exercised, argued, talked in secret about girls they had left behind. Some missed home too much. Every day the weather was fair, a few more failed to show up for evening prayers. Spring had more power over them than God.

  Gautama walked among the campfires. By now he had explored every city in the kingdom and those that lay far to the east, but he had avoided the temptation to set foot inside the gates of Kapilavastu. As the word spread and scores of villagers and farmers traveled out to find him and receive his blessing, some were from Sakya and remembered him. If they murmured “Prince” or “Your Highness” when they prostrated themselves before him, Gautama took no notice, gave no hint to acknowledge who he once had been. Four years had made Gautama into Gautama.

  Of course he could still conjure up the old faces. But they didn’t return on their own anymore. In order to see images of Channa or Suddhodana, he would ask to see them. “Learn to use your memories,” he told the younger bikkhus. “Don’t let them use you.”

  Ananda, a monk around his own age of thirty-three, ran up. He looked vexed and excited. “Another miracle, brother. What should I do?”

  Gautama frowned. “What marvel did I supposedly perform this time?”

  “There’s a cripple just come to camp. Hobbled in on crutches, then he fell on his knees and called out your name. He gave a few twitches, and now he’s walking again.”

  “Aren’t you impressed, Ananda? You’d think with all my powers I could prevent my feet from getting blisters when we walk down a rocky trail.”

  Ananda was too exercised to smile. “He’s just one of those cheats who wants a free meal.”

  “Don’t we give food to anyone? Even cheats?”

  Ananda bit his tongue. No one was closer to Gautama in their travels, thanks to his sincerity about God and his total devotion to Gautama. Recently, though, the short, stocky Ananda, who exuded stubbornness as much as loyalty, had become like a sergeant or an aide de camp as more and more responsibilities fell Gautama’s way with the bikkhus.

  “I think I know what to do,” Gautama said. He sat down by the central campfire on a rough-hewn bench. Whenever they stopped for any length of time the bikkhus bestirred themselves to build huts and stools and such from forest timber. “Feed him well. Then say that I need his crutches to help another lame man. If he hesitates to hand them over, tell him to come and personally tell me why. I imagine he and the crutches will both be gone in the morning.”

  At last Ananda found a smile. “He’ll never hand them over. He needs them for his next miracle down the road.”

  “I think so.”

  Although he wasn’t the senior monk, Gautama had been relieved of chores around camp. He attended to the guru’s major affairs instead. “I wouldn’t burden you,” the guru said, “but you are cursed by your gift.”

  “And what is my gift?” asked Gautama.

  “The bikkhus think you’re their father.”

  “Shouldn’t you be their father?”

  The guru shrugged. “I already got rid of my curses.”

  This master’s name was Udaka, and he was the second luminary Gautama had found in his wanderings. The first, who was named Alara, had been a quiet, reclusive scholar, a Brahmin but nothing like Canki. Alara paid no attention to caste. He immersed himself in the Vedas and wouldn’t bother to eat unless someone placed a plate of food beside his study table. When he first walked in, Gautama immediately attracted Alara’s attention. His head, bent close over a sacred text, whipped up, and his eyes squinted as if looking into a bright light.

  Instead of saying hello, Alara asked a question. “Stranger, if the scriptures tell me to avoid violence, is it enough that I walk past a fight and not enter into it?”

  Gautama, who was prepared to prostrate himself at the master’s feet to beg for instruction, was taken aback. He opened his mouth to say, “Tell me the answer, wise one,” but what came out instead was, “Merely avoiding violence shows virtue, but it shows much more virtue to help end the fight and bring the combatants to a state of peace.”

  “Ah.” Alara looked pleased. He patted the rough plank floor next to him, signaling for Gautama to sit close by. He even shifted the small prayer rug that he occupied so that his new disciple would be more comfortable. The next two months were nothing like the silence Gautama had shared with the forest hermit. Alara was a gyani, or philosopher. He thought and he talked.
r />   “What is the mind for if not to find God?” he said. “The scriptures assure us that this physical world is a mask, and yet the mask isn’t physical. It’s made of illusion, and illusion is created by the mind. Do you understand? What the mind has created, only the mind can undo.”

  Gautama threw himself into a study of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures, and what Alara had said was holy writ. Every person has two selves, a lower self that is born of flesh and tied to the illusions of the material world, and a higher self that is eternal and unborn, with no attachments at all. The lower self craves pleasure, the higher self knows only bliss. The lower self cringes from pain, the higher self has never felt pain. If that was true, then Gautama had to find his higher self or be lost in the endless quicksand of the mind’s deceptions.

  “You found me just in time,” said Alara. “Never mind that ordinary people are wasting their lives in foolish dreams of finding lasting happiness. To the ignorant, pleasure and pain appear to be different, but wisdom tells us they are the right and left hands of the lower self.”

  For months Gautama focused on nothing else, praying, meditating, and studying to find a path to his higher self. It was not difficult to believe in the teaching of illusion, or maya, because he continued to see ordinary people as ghosts, weighed down with care and suffering. Alara also looked like a ghost, but there was no pain lingering around him. For his part, the old gyani had never met a pupil like this one, and every day he delighted in him more and more.

  One day, however, a young man of about twenty came and sat beside the front door of Alara’s hut. He was thin, almost emaciated, and his face was one of the saddest Gautama had ever seen. As it happened, Alara stepped out of his hut just as Gautama was about to hand the young stranger a bowl of rice. With a swift, abrupt swipe, Alara knocked the bowl out of his hand, and the rice scattered on the ground. Before Gautama could speak, his master grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

  “Don’t look back,” he said sharply.

  Behind them Gautama heard the young man cry, “Father!” At this Alara’s neck stiffened, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. When they were out of sight of the hut he said, “Yes, he’s my son. I do not greet him or encourage him. You shouldn’t either.” Alara saw the baffled look in Gautama’s eyes. “My lower self once had a family. They are of no concern to me, just as this whole world is of no concern.”

  “I understand,” said Gautama, lowering his eyes.

  “No, Gautama, I can see you don’t. I have been on the verge of telling you that there’s little more I can teach you. But a true gyani must live what he’s learned. How can you hope to reach your higher self if you remain tied, even by the slightest thread, to this vale of illusion? Maya sets traps everywhere.”

  Gautama didn’t argue. But he wondered, How would the sad young man at Alara’s door feel to know that he was an illusion, another trap to be avoided?

  Two days later Gautama came into Alara’s room, but he didn’t take his accustomed place on the floor beside him. The gyani didn’t look up from the page. He said, “I’m almost sad that you’re leaving. That’s what you’re here to announce, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  It could have ended there, simply, without a rupture. But Alara’s hand shook, and he threw down his scrolls. “Just who do you think you are?” he asked irritably.

  “A disciple.”

  “And since when does the disciple dare to teach the master?” Alara still hadn’t looked at Gautama, who could see the veins standing out in the old man’s neck.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you this way,” said Gautama.

  “Insolence! I cannot be disturbed. You haven’t learned that by now?”

  Gautama knelt on the floor without coming closer.

  Alara was unable to disguise his cold fury now. “If I need a demon to shake my faith, I’ll call on a proper one, not a disciple who smiles and smiles, only to betray me.”

  This outpouring of blame didn’t shake Gautama. He had lain awake thinking about how his master, for all that he knew about illusion, had fallen into a trap. The scriptures were his illusion. They led him to imagine that he was free just because he could describe freedom out of a book and think about it with his subtle mind.

  “I didn’t come here to harm you,” said Gautama. “I no longer believe in the higher self. I wish that I could. But it seems nothing more than a fine phrase or an ideal no one ever attains. You are good and wise, but you became so by study—isn’t it the lower self that reads the Vedas?”

  These words, intended to be mild, had the opposite effect. Alara hurled a scroll at Gautama’s head, then jumped to his feet, looking for a stick.

  “Get out, scoundrel!”

  Gautama longed to say, “Who is so angry with me right now? Your higher self?” But Alara’s eyes were bulging already. Gautama backed away quickly.

  For weeks he had wandered on until he found Udaka, his next teacher. Udaka wasn’t a philosopher but a pure yogi, devoting his every moment to achieving divine union. Because he sat in silence most of the day, Udaka felt more like the forest hermit, yet he fathered the bikkhus around him every night and spoke.

  “Some of you are new here, some have traveled with me for years. Which of you has met God?” he asked. A few of the older bikkhus, after some hesitation, raised their hands.

  “You new ones, look around and pay attention. See those with their hands up? They are the greatest fools, and you must never listen to them,” said Udaka. Somebody gave a sharp laugh; the older bikkhus stirred uncomfortably.

  “How can you meet God when God is invisible and ever-present?” Udaka asked. “If He is everywhere, you cannot meet God, and you cannot leave Him, either. So how many of you are seeking God right now, with all your hearts?”

  This time a great many of the men sitting around the campfire raised their hands. “Take a close look at yourselves,” said Udaka. “You too are fools. I just told you that God is everywhere. How can you seek what is already here? If someone came up to you and said, ‘A thousand pardons, sir, but I am seeking this mysterious thing called air. Can you tell me where it is?’ you would mark him down as a fool, wouldn’t you? Yet you follow like sheep somebody’s word who told you that you must seek God.”

  What Udaka taught instead was redeeming the soul, or atman. “Your soul is just as invisible as God, but it belongs to you. It’s your divine spark, hidden and disguised by restless desires. Your atman is always watching you, but you do not notice it. You notice your next meal, your next argument, your next fear. It is always drawing you closer to the divine, but you do not heed it. You heed a thousand desires instead. Be still and know your soul. Seek it, and when you meet your soul, seize it for yourself, because it’s worth far more than gold.”

  Gautama, who had been disillusioned by the higher self, felt a sympathy for this new teaching. For one thing, it gave him time in seclusion, where he could meditate and sit in the cool silence that he considered his real home. Udaka knew that the other bikkhus held the new arrival in awe; they vied to sit next to Gautama because his mere presence deepened their meditations. The guru put Gautama on his right hand when the group next sat together, and this unspoken gesture was enough to raise him above even the most senior monks, who were not so holy that they enjoyed being displaced.

  “Let them hate you, let them love you. It’s all a waste of time,” Udaka said indifferently. Gautama believed him. He’d grown up in a world torn apart by worse things than petty jealousy in an ashram.

  “But if another monk hates me,” asked Gautama, “why can’t he see that he is being distracted from his purpose?”

  “He might. His soul could send him a message,” Udaka said.

  “But not always? He could go on hating me a long time, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Gautama felt a disquiet. “But if the soul is always loving, why doesn’t it tell him immediately not to hate me? What reason does it have to hold back?”

  “You’re askin
g me to be wiser than the soul,” said Udaka, with a trace of irritation. “Don’t be so clever. I’ve never seen anyone think their way to heaven.”

  Now Gautama knew what his disquiet was about. He had lost the forest hermit and Alara. If he kept on this way, Udaka would fall away next. Disciples without masters are like fallow fields where no rain falls. He couldn’t do without nourishment. Udaka knew this too; he gave Gautama a hard look. “You have something more to say? Perhaps you want to ask me about humility.”

  “No.” Gautama kept his composure. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve been having a vision. My wife comes to me. She says that I deserve compassion. Can you tell me what that means?”

  “Ignore it.”

  Udaka said this without the slightest sign that he cared about such things. Gautama wouldn’t be put off, however.

  “Master,” he said, “many of the disciples have left homes and women they love. Their children are forgetting their father’s face. Can’t a devoted wife be part of my soul?”

  “No one belongs in your soul but you,” said Udaka.

  “Then perhaps her image is a message. You said that the soul sends messages.”

  “But it doesn’t send dreams. She’s the figment of an ignorant mind,” Udaka said curtly. “What if you caught a cold? Would you want me to tell you what the soul means when it sends you a cold? Get over her as you would get over any other disease.” Gautama’s master had never been married, and like many yogis he made a sour face whenever women were mentioned. Udaka’s revulsion bothered Gautama. Does he imagine that women have no souls? But the discussion was over. Gautama bowed and left without another word.

  That night he returned to his tent, where he found Ganaka sitting up eating a bowl of millet gruel. “Why so worried, saint?” asked Ganaka, looking up.

  “You must be feeling better.”

  “Much.” Ganaka began slurping the last bit of gruel from the bowl. “I should be strong enough in the morning to leave.”