Buddha

  “Where will you go?” asked Gautama.

  “Deeper into the jungle. I don’t intend to be found a second time.”

  Gautama was shocked. “You’re going to try to kill yourself again?”

  “Of course. It’s my Dharma.” Ganaka looked perfectly calm and serious, speaking without a trace of cynicism. “Strange, isn’t it? I have to eat to get the strength to go out and starve myself.”

  “I can’t let you,” Gautama blurted out. He was so shaken that he wanted to pace back and forth. Instead, he forced himself to sit on the ground with his hands folded in his lap. His heart pounded.

  Ganaka said, “There are two things even a saint can’t stop. One is being born, and the other is dying.” He waited for Gautama to protest. It was hard to miss who in the tent was calmer and more collected.

  “Killing yourself is a sin,” said Gautama, then he stopped himself. Ganaka wasn’t a fool or ignorant of scripture. “Please explain what you mean,” Gautama said.

  Ganaka burst out laughing. “Excuse me, but I just can’t help myself, little saint. Look at you. You wanted to jump out of your skin when I told you what I’m going to do. But you didn’t. Oh, no, you controlled yourself. You know how a holy man acts, and I must say you’ve gotten it down. I wish I could train a monkey half as well.”

  Gautama felt the heat creeping up his face. “That’s unfair.”

  “Who cares? I’m going to die tomorrow. I can say what I want.” The strange thing is that Ganaka wasn’t speaking harshly; his tone toward Gautama was almost kind. “I once told you that you reminded me of my younger self. Has it occurred to you yet that I might be your older self?” Seeing the scowl that Gautama was trying not to show, Ganaka broke out into laughter again. “You’re like a traveling show. I can see at least five or six people fighting inside you. Quite a spectacle.”

  “Stop it!” Gautama jumped to his feet and began pacing as anxiously as he’d wanted to since entering the tent.

  “Good,” said Ganaka. “Even a cat is smart enough to thrash its tail when it’s disturbed. Most people aren’t.”

  This show of implacable honesty caused Gautama’s heart to sink. “You’re making me so sad,” he said, half pleading.

  “Then I’ll stop,” said Ganaka. “Wisdom is never sad, and you want one last word of wisdom, don’t you?” He stood up and placed his hands on Gautama’s shoulders to stop him in place. “Dharma is worthless unless it teaches one how to be free. I have listened to all the masters, read all the scriptures, bathed in all the sacred springs. I found freedom in none of them.”

  “And killing yourself will set you free?”

  “When all else fails, whatever is left must be right,” Ganaka said with serious simplicity. He let go of Gautama and turned away for a moment. “What is freedom, little saint? It’s the end of struggle. Is not death the same thing? I want to meet God, but my efforts have failed. Not just failed, but made me more unhappy than when I was married and lived with a loving wife. I do not say your seeking is a fraud. Perhaps you must walk as many paths as I did before you reach this point.”

  He turned back and fixed Gautama with a clear, unflinching gaze. “You can shed your tears now.”

  “I won’t weep for you,” said Gautama mournfully.

  Ganaka sat back down on the cot. It was very late, and he was ready for sleep. “I meant weep for yourself. Whatever I am today, you will be tomorrow.”

  He lay down and turned his back on Gautama, who sat vigil for hours. He wanted to be awake in case one last plea would dissuade Ganaka when he woke up. But time stands still in the dark. The next thing Gautama knew he woke up with light in his eyes and his head lolling on his chest. He looked toward the cot with faint hope. It was empty.

  15

  One morning Ananda didn’t find Gautama in his tent. Several days had passed since the disappearance of Ganaka. None of the bikkhus were told anything about him, and only Ananda learned the grim truth. In the vastness of the jungle there was no possibility of searching for him, wherever he had gone to die. Gautama was badly shaken.

  “How can we believe in supernatural powers, Ananda? No power in heaven protected him, or even cared,” said Gautama. “Ganaka had fallen into despair, and I couldn’t save him.”

  “Why should it depend on you?” Ananda asked.

  “Do you know who Buddha is?”

  “No.” Ananda shifted with embarrassment.

  “Buddha can protect people,” Gautama said.

  “Better than this?” Ananda held up an amulet he’d been given as a baby by his parents, who purchased it at a temple with half a year’s income from their farm.

  “Yes, much better than that. Don’t ask me how. I’m the last person who’d know. I should have protected Ganaka.”

  Mention of Buddha puzzled Ananda, but he took heart that this god, even if he’d never heard of him, was helping his friend. That was how he understood Gautama’s words. Ananda believed that the gods never let anyone out of their sight. It bothered him that Gautama didn’t respect the gods anymore. Sometimes he spoke of God, who was like the soul of the universe or a spirit that permeated everything. As a child Ananda had been brought up to believe that the gods were different faces of one God. But lately even that God was on shaky ground with Gautama.

  “We can pray to Buddha together,” Ananda said. “Or I can make an offering in the fire tonight.” Perhaps that would lift Gautama from his gloom.

  Instead of answering, Gautama closed his eyes. This was his way of getting out of reach. None of the other monks could go as deeply into samadhi, and when he was in this state, Gautama heard and saw nothing. Ananda departed, and then rain came during the night, turning the trampled ground of the encampment into a mud slick.

  Thunder rumbled overhead. Ananda’s shawl was soaked and useless for warmth, but he pulled it close to fend off a growing disquiet. Every monk was pledged to serve the master, but he had pledged to serve Gautama. He had done this silently, in his own heart. To him, Gautama was already a great soul. He kept that to himself too.

  Ananda frowned as he hurried through the rain to peer into all the makeshift shelters. When he was sure that Gautama was nowhere in camp, Ananda took a deep breath and knocked on Udaka’s door. Disturbing the master could result in something more physical than a rebuke. There was no answer, though, and Ananda turned back. After all, he had no proof that anything drastic had happened.

  He was only a few steps away when the guru’s door flew open, and Gautama stepped out. He looked pale and drawn, and when he set eyes on Ananda, he could have been looking at a stranger. Ananda’s heart pounded.

  “What’s happened?”

  Gautama shook his head and walked past. He offered no protest, though, when Ananda followed him into his tent. The lowering gray skies made the interior oppressively dark. Suddenly Gautama had something to say.

  “I have no faith anymore,” he said. “I’ll be gone by tonight. Dear friend, don’t try to follow me. I’ll come for you when it’s time. Be patient.”

  Ananda’s lip trembled. “Why can’t I come?”

  “Because you’ll try to stop me, as I tried to stop Ganaka.” The comparison filled Ananda’s face with alarm, but before he could say anything Gautama went on. “I’m not going to kill myself; don’t worry. But something may happen, something severe.”

  “You’ve told the master?”

  Gautama shook his head. “Only that I’m taking a journey that may be long or short. If he lives by his own teaching, he won’t sorrow over losing one disciple. If he gets angry, then I’m right to stop serving him. I’m only sorry to say good-bye to you.”

  Heartsick, Ananda fell into a gloomy silence; the two sat in the gray light listening to raindrops pelting the roof of the tent. Gautama placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “There’s no reason to keep secrets from you. I was brought a message,” he said. “A traveler came to camp this morning, and I stumbled across him in one of the huts. I knew from hi
s accent that he was a Sakyan, so I tried to leave, but I wasn’t fast enough.”

  “Fast enough for what?”

  “To not be recognized. The stranger threw himself at my feet and began to weep. I entreated him to get up, but he wouldn’t. The bikkhus in the hut began to murmur and exchange looks. Finally the stranger looked up and told me that I was supposed to be dead.”

  “Dead?” said Ananda. “Because you left everything behind?”

  “Worse, much worse. I have a cousin named Devadatta. He’s filled with jealousy and has always set himself against me. When I left home my fear was that he would gain influence at court. Now he has, and in the most terrible way.”

  Gautama told Ananda what he had just learned about how Devadatta had found a beheaded corpse in the forest wearing Siddhartha’s robes. “Everyone believed him. The head was never found. Probably Devadatta committed the murder himself. He’s capable of it.” Gautama’s voice died away mournfully. “I caused this disaster. Everyone I loved has been plunged into suffering.”

  “But it’s a fraud,” Ananda protested. “Send a messenger home and tell them.”

  “If I do that, Devadatta will be arrested and executed. I didn’t sacrifice my family’s happiness for that. Killing him would make a mockery of my search. I have to push on. I haven’t done enough.”

  “But they’ll suffer even more to think you’re never coming back,” Ananda said.

  Instead of persuading Gautama, this seemed to harden him. “The person they once knew is never coming back. If that’s what they wait and hope for, then I might as well be dead.”

  Hard as he tried, Gautama could not conceal the anguish in his voice. Ananda reached out and grabbed his hand. “Go home, put everything back in order. I’m not brilliant like you, but if I caused so much pain to my family, I would consider it the same as betraying God.”

  This speech moved Gautama, but as he considered what Ananda had said, his face grew darker. “You’re condemning me to a trap, my friend. I set my whole heart on meeting God. I abandoned everything for his sake. If that is the same as betraying God, my situation is hopeless. So is yours, and everyone’s here.”

  There were more arguments that afternoon, more pleas from Ananda, but Gautama had made up his mind. The skies were so dark that they blended seamlessly into nightfall. Gautama didn’t permit Ananda to keep vigil beside his cot until dawn; he recalled how much it had hurt when he woke up to find Ganaka gone.

  “Before we part, I want you to understand something,” he said. “I was raised in a palace, but I was a prisoner there. I had only one friend, so I spent hours alone or with the servants. What most fascinated me were the silk weavers. I discovered them bent over their looms in a tiny upstairs chamber. The room was full of the smell of indigo and saffron. The weavers didn’t talk among themselves; all I heard was the clack of shuttles running back and forth.

  “There was one old woman, stooped and nearly blind, who did something I couldn’t understand. If a thread snapped, she would unload her loom completely and start over again. I asked her why she destroyed a week’s work over a single thread. She answered me in a word: karma.

  “Karma keeps good and evil in balance. Karma is a divine law. When the law is violated, however innocently, it can’t be undone. One snapped thread alters the whole design; one misdeed alters a person’s destiny.”

  Ananda listened carefully, wanting to remember every word from Gautama in case they never met again. “So the thread of your life has been broken,” he said.

  “I thought it broke the day I left home. But I was naive. When I ended as Siddhartha, his karma continued to follow me. I feel as troubled as the day I left my wife and child a year ago. My hunger is for freedom, but the trap keeps closing tighter. Instead of attacking me directly, the demons sow discord everywhere around me. There’s only one thing left to try.” Gautama had skirted the truth, that the demons actually feared him.

  “But what are you going to do?” Ananda pleaded, trying not to think about how alone he would be after this night.

  Gautama wanted to protect his intentions, but he relented a little. There was a good chance that he would fail, and if that happened he would return home, not try to find the next guru. “Death has been stalking me since the day I was born. Eventually, no matter how hard I struggle, death will win—the hunter will kill his prey. But until then I have one chance to turn the tables. If I move quickly, I may be able to kill death first. There’s no other way, not if you want to be free.”

  IN A COUNTRY where villages were a day apart and travelers hugged a strand of road winding through miles of uncharted wilderness, Gautama could disappear into the green world and never be seen again. He set out to do just that, but it was too dangerous to go alone. Tigers don’t mind eating idealists. Therefore, once he had left Udaka’s camp behind, Gautama searched for more rigorous company. They would have to be monks. They would have to be willing not to talk for days or weeks at a time. Finally, they would have to push their bodies so far that only two choices remained: bursting through to freedom or perishing in mortal form.

  Gautama made the same proposition to every monk he encountered: “Come with me and defeat your karma once and for all. Death is playing a game with us. It’s a long game, but in the end the outcome is certain. Now’s your only chance to defeat the pain and suffering that became your inheritance the day you were born.”

  These words were not strange; every holy man knew that the world was an illusion. The Vedas talked about it endlessly. But each monk who heard Gautama shook his head and looked away guiltily. “Your truth is too harsh, brother. I’m already living a life that ordinary people consider impossible. One day I will meet God, but if I try to force his hand, the only reward I may get is that I kill myself.”

  Some put it this way, some another, but no one braved Gautama’s challenge. The more eloquent he grew, the more reluctant they became. “You look holy, but you may be a silver-tongued demon,” one old monk reminded him. Eventually Gautama did find company, but not with his words. He ceased to eat more than a handful of rice a day. His body wasted away, and as his skin became a taut, translucent membrane clinging to his bones, Gautama acquired a glow. His hands, which he held out to bless anyone who asked, looked larger, as did his deep brown eyes. This aura of saintly emaciation attracted five other monks, and once the band had gathered, Gautama led them upriver into the high country, where they found a large isolated cave.

  It was a breathtaking place to suffer in. The sentinel peaks of the Himalayas ringed the far horizon. The air was crisp and cold as the first ice crust on a pond in winter. Gautama would wake up with supersensitive hearing. The faint air currents sweeping up the valley sounded like the breathing of the world. But rain made his bones ache, and thunder split his head open—it would throb with pain for days. For some months he and the five monks sat in their cave, doing the minimum of speaking, collecting roots for food, filling their gourds from a stream.

  At first Gautama was worried that he was indulging himself, because no matter how austere the conditions, he loved the life of austerity. Perhaps too much. He tried sitting in the snow for hours to see if he could make his body hurt so much that it would give up all its hopes for pleasure. Day after day he repeated this, and then a miracle happened. Through the heavy falling snow he saw a stranger walking toward him. At first he was only a blurred dark shadow against the whiteness, but as he came nearer, Gautama saw that it was not a man who had braved the storm but the god Krishna. He had the most serene and beautiful face; his skin was a deep blue-purple that was all but black.

  Gautama prostrated himself in the snow. “I have waited to meet you all my life,” he murmured. “I have abandoned everything for you.”

  “I know,” Krishna said. His voice rang among the mountains like dull thunder. “Now go home and don’t do anything so stupid again.”

  The god turned his back and walked away. At that instant Gautama woke up, shivering and starving. The skies were clear;
there was no snowstorm. He returned to the cave but said nothing to the five monks. Maybe he’d only had a dream; maybe Krishna was real. In either case Gautama was determined not to heed a delusion. But he needed some kind of sign that his war against death was succeeding. All he got was that his mind started to rebel. At first it complained of being lonely and afraid. It argued that Gautama was hurting himself needlessly. In this phase the voice Gautama heard in his head was whining and weak, like a small child’s. As the weeks passed, however, his mind grew fiercely angry.

  Gautama wanted to hasten its surrender, so the more his mind ranted, the more he deprived himself. He would sit naked all night on a frozen lake while his mind screamed in agony.

  If you want to kill me, do it now, Gautama said defiantly. He didn’t know who he was addressing, exactly. Perhaps not his mind but Yama, the lord of death. When dawn came and he wasn’t dead, Gautama exulted. He had gotten his sign, because the cold and the elements had not defeated him. He was still alive, which proved that he was stronger than sun, wind, and cold.

  Bolder now, he wanted to push further. More extreme austerities lay ahead. He could pile rocks on his chest or pierce his cheeks with sharpened sticks. There were legendary yogis who tore their own arms off and threw them into the fire. But the five monks resisted. They had been given no signs of their own. Gautama knew that he had to preach conviction into his brother monks. Otherwise, he would open his eyes one day after a cruel austerity and find that they had vanished.

  “You doubt my methods, don’t you?” he said.

  “Yes,” said the eldest monk, who was named Assaji. “If you could see yourself, you would be frightened. Why do you think that inviting death is the way to defeat it?”

  “Because when everything else has failed,” said Gautama, “whatever is left must be the answer. I’ve done nothing yet to earn your respect, but believe me when I say that I have tried everything to become free. I learned the Dharma of the higher self, but I never met my higher self or heard a word from it. I learned the Dharma of the soul, which was supposed to be my speck of the divine, but no matter how blissful I might feel, the time always came when I was overwhelmed once more by anger and sorrow. Much the same must be your experience.”