Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

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 his 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.”

The five monks said nothing, which Gautama took to be assent.

“In time I concluded that my struggles could last a lifetime, and to what end? I will still be a slave to karma and a prisoner in this world. What is this karma that visits us with so much suffering? Karma is the body’s endless desires. Karma is the memory of past pleasure we want to repeat and past pain we want to avoid. It’s the delusions of ego and the storm of fear and anger that besieges the mind. Therefore, I have resolved to cut karma out by the roots.”

“How? You think you know something that no one else knows?” Assaji asked. His rail-thin body already showed the effects of years of austerity.

“Myself, no. But you live the ascetic’s life. Haven’t you already spent years sitting in silence, repeating your prayers, contemplating images of the gods, reciting a thousand and eight names of Vishnu?” The eldest monk nodded. “Has any of it made you free?”

“No.”

“Then why should you continue to do more of what doesn’t work in the first place? The temple priests taught you how to reach God-priests who have not found freedom either, but who claim title to the holy teachings the way a farmer puts a brand on cattle.” Gautama had eaten nothing for days and barely slept. He wondered briefly if he sounded delirious.

One of the younger monks interrupted. “Tell us your way.”

“On the road I met an old sannyasi named Ganaka, and he told me something important. Let the world be your teacher. I couldn’t understand what he meant at first, but now I do. Every experience that traps me is a worldly experience. The world is seductive and hard to interpret for what it really is. Yet this world is nothing more than desire, and every desire makes me run after it. Why? Because I believe it’s real. Desires are phantoms, concealing the grinning face of death. Be wise. Believe in nothing.”

It took many nights around the fire, but Gautama and the five monks came to an agreement. They would give their bodies nothing to live for in the world, no desires to fulfill, no cravings to become a slave to. They would sit like statues facing a wall, and no matter how many desires arose, each one would be coldly turned away. “Even if we are tied to our karma by ten thousand threads,” said Gautama, “we can break them one at a time. When the last attachment is gone, karma will be dead instead of us.”

He believed every word. Perhaps the five monks didn’t, but they followed him. They sat like statues facing a wall and waited. Gautama was so fervent that he expected to reach his goal soon. Assaji wouldn’t commit himself. “Unhappiness is born of expectations that don’t come true,” he reminded his brother monk. “Even to expect nothing can be a trap.”

Gautama bowed his head. “I understand.” But this gesture of humility disguised the fire he felt inside. In legend, other yogis had found immortality. They were great aspirants, and Gautama saw himself as nothing less. He chose a spot away from all shelter, sat down on a patch of rocks without clearing them away, and waited.

“IF YOU MUST GO, then go. I don’t need a reason,” said Assaji. He looked on Kondana with mild eyes that held no reproof. Kondana was the youngest of the five monks, but he had proved the toughest in the end.

“You already know my reasons. Look at him,” Kondana protested. He pointed at a gnarled carving lying on the jungle floor, which was so close to looking like weathered wood that at times he had to remind himself that it was actually a living person-Gautama.

“I can’t stay and watch him kill himself,” said Kondana. “It’s like watching a corpse decay while it’s still breathing.” He had already stayed longer than three of the five monks. None were impatient. Since vowing to follow Gautama, they had pursued enlightenment for five years.

“He never moves anymore. I wonder where he is,” said Assaji.

“I think he’s in hell,” Kondana said mournfully.

The years of austerity had caused many things to happen. They had all gone through experiences in meditation that they never dreamed possible. Assaji himself had visited the home of the gods. He had watched Shakti, the sinuous consort of Shiva, dance for him, a dance where every step shook the worlds and the tinkle of ankle bells turned into stars. He had conversed with the greatest sages, like Vasishtha, who had been dead for centuries. Only Gautama never told such tales, and after winter settled in among the Himalayan peaks, it was a matter of survival to force him to find a place where they could be more protected. Reluctantly Gautama agreed, but only on the condition that he would continue his austerities and that the five monks would make no contact with other human beings.

An emaciated man whose skin has toughened into cracked brown hide and who has subsisted on a tenth of the food given to a newborn baby is not a sight for ordinary eyes. Some people would consider him a fraud, others a madman. The superstitious few would call him a saint. “I do not know who I am anymore,” Gautama said. “But I am blessed, because it has taken me only five years to know who I am not.”

Now Assaji walked over to Gautama and with Kondana’s help set him upright again. He had fallen over during the night, and these days he was lost in a samadhi so deep that nothing registered from the outside world. It was up to the other monks to feed him by opening his mouth and placing a handful of chewed rice in it. They carried him to the river to bathe him and moved him out of the worst of the searing sun. All this made it appear that Gautama was helpless and paralyzed. But Assaji knew that appearances were deceiving. Gautama was on a quest the likes of which went back almost before time.

Kondana put on his sandals and tucked some dried berries into the corner of his shawl. “Will you come?” he asked Assaji.

“No.”

“You still think he has a chance-he might succeed?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

There was nothing more to talk about. Kondana bowed down before Gautama and placed a pink wild orchid at his feet in reverence. He no longer felt guilty over losing hope; he was too exhausted to feel much of anything. As he left camp, Assaji touched him on the shoulder.

“When the time comes I’ll send for you. The five of us should carry the body back to his people.”

That was the last word Assaji said or heard for the next three months. Spring came, and every day brought a shower of creamy white blossoms falling from the sal trees that blanketed the northern forest. Gautama had not altered. At times he showed more signs of life than at other times. Assaji would hear him at night walking out of camp for the call of nature, but that was rarely. The water level might dip in the gourd Assaji placed by his side.

What eventually broke was Assaji’s own body. He got sick alone in the jungle; for all he knew it was a sign. Wrapped in his shawl, he suffered the delirium of fever for five days and nights. When the fever broke, he shivered with cold sweat. Slowly his body returned to health, but with it came an unexpected change. Assaji grew hungry again. He craved a real meal and would scour the jungle floor for a dead parrot to take back and cook.

If I am reduced to unwholesome food, my quest is over, he thought. He wasn’t willing to sink to a subhuman level, no matter how enormous the goal of enlightenment might be. He decided to tell Gautama. One morning he crouched in front of his motionless brother, wiping away the dirt from his face with water from the gourd.

“I’m going,” he said. Gautama showed no signs of hearing him. “I must think about my soul. If you die and I let you, my sin is as great as murder. You shouldn’t be responsible for that. I’m ashamed to speak of sin to someone like you, but there’s no shame in it if you decide to come with me.”

Assaji’s guilt made him feel that he’d said too much already. Like the others, his faith had been worn down too far. Assaji lingered around camp a few more days. He piled fruit next to Gautama and a week’s supply of water. How strange that this immobile icon should still be alive and that behind his mask he was fighting such a huge battle. Face the wall like a statue and give them nothing. Assaji remembered Gautama’s rallying cry, but he couldn’t follow it anymore. He left camp before dawn without a sound.

Gautama didn’t hear him depart; he had heard nothing since he became aware-and then only at the farthest edge of his mind-that Kondana was gone. It didn’t matter. He had come to realize that he was walking the path alone. Two journeys had to be made without companions: the journey to your death and the one to enlightenment.

In his meditations he had arrived at heaven before the others, but he said nothing about it. There was dazzling beauty; golden celestial beings materialized all around him, but then he took a route the other monks would not. Gautama turned his back on the celestial beings. “I’ve already known pleasure. What good does it do me to feel more?”

“This is heavenly pleasure,” the celestial beings said.

“Which I can enjoy forever only after I die,” said Gautama. “Therefore it’s as good as a curse.” He walked away and asked to see more suffering.

Thus he arrived at the gate of hell, where Gautama saw the terrifying torments that lay beyond. But no demons came for him. Instead he heard these words: “No sin brings you here. Do not pass.”

He entered anyway, of his own free will. I’ve known fear, he thought. And fear is death’s chief weapon. Let me experience the worst torment, and then fear will lose its hold over me.

The phase of hellish torment lasted a long time because every morning his broken bones and flayed skin grew back. “Where is Mara?” Gautama asked. “I need to see the worst that he can do too.” But for some reason Mara hung back and never appeared. Gautama wondered if this was a trap, but after a while the torments became routine, and his mind grew bored. One morning the demons failed to appear, and then the scenes of hell disappeared, giving way to dark, motionless silence.

Gautama waited. He knew he had defeated every form of suffering he could imagine. His body no longer felt pain; his mind gave rise to not a single desire. And yet no sign came that he had reached his goal. Like an endless, calm night, the silence bathed him. Gautama decided to open his eyes.

At first there was only a dim sensation of being wrapped in a blanket, which after a time he realized was his body. He looked down. It was midday, but someone had positioned him under the jungle canopy where no sunlight ever penetrated. Surveying himself, Gautama saw two crossed sticks. Legs. Two dried monkey paws. Hands. He noticed a pile of rotting fruit beside him, covered with ants and wasps. Suddenly he realized that he was thirsty. He reached for his water gourd, but the last inch of liquid inside was green and filled with mosquito larvae.

He could feel, as he grew used to being in his body again, that it could endure no more. Yet all he could think about was finding the five monks to tell them that he was enlightened. Gautama tried to uncross his stick legs and get up, but when he moved them an inch, the wasted muscles screamed with pain. He stared at them with a slight frown of disapproval, like a new father who feels helpless when the baby cries.

Gautama felt no sympathy for his body, but it would have to be dealt with. He willed his limbs to move, and slowly he began to crawl along the forest floor. It felt damp and hot; there were vermin that slid under his skin, and fungi and rocks. He could hear running water nearby. He sensed his body’s desperate thirst. Maybe he would get to water in time, maybe not. He kept crawling, but the forest floor barely crept beneath him now. He could practically count each beetle that his weight crushed. A small snake, colored brilliant red, slithered away at the level of his face. The air became very still, and moving any farther, even at a crawl, became impossible.

Lying there, he never expected that enlightenment would be the last thing to happen before he died.