Buddha

Chapter 5 – Mission

buddhist art usually depicts the Buddha sitting alone, lost in solitary meditation, but in fact the greater part of his life, once he had begun to preach the Dhamma, was spent surrounded by large, noisy crowds of people. When he traveled, he was usually accompanied by hundreds of bhikkhus, who tended to chatter so loudly that occasionally the Buddha had to plead for a little quiet. His lay disciples often followed the procession of monks along the roads, in chariots and wagons loaded with provisions. The Buddha lived in towns and cities, not in remote forest hermitages. But even though the last forty-five years of his life were passed in the public eye, the texts treat this long and important phase rather perfunctorily, leaving the biographer little to work with. It is quite the opposite with Jesus. The Gospels tell us next to nothing about Jesus’s early life and only seriously begin their story when he starts his preaching mission. The Buddhist scriptures, however, record the Buddha’s sermons and describe the first five years of his teaching career in some detail, but after that the Buddha fades from view and the last twenty years of his life are almost entirely unrecorded.

The Buddha would have approved of this reticence. The last thing he wanted was a personality cult, and he always insisted that it was the Dhamma and not himself that was important. As we have noted, he used to say, “He who sees me sees the Dhamma, and he who sees the Dhamma sees me.” Furthermore, after his enlightenment nothing else could really happen to him. He had no “self,” his egotism had been extinguished, and he was known as the Tathagata, one who had, quite simply, “gone.” Even when the Pali texts do recount the early years of his mission, they are less interested in historical fact and more interested in the symbolic meaning of their stories. The Buddha had become an archetype of the spiritual life, an embodiment of the Dhamma and of Nibbana. He was a new kind of human being: no longer caught in the toils of greed and hatred, he had learned to manipulate his psyche in order to live without egotism. He was still living in the world, but inhabited another sacred dimension, too, which monotheists would call the divine presence. In their account of these first teaching years, the texts tell us nothing about the Buddha’s thoughts and feelings, therefore, but use his activities to show how the early Buddhists related to the urban, commercial, political and religious world of north India.

The scriptures say that the Buddha attained Nibbana in late April or early May, but they do not reveal the year in which this important event took place. The conventional date has long been held to be 528 b.c.e., though some modern scholarship would put it as late as 450. If we follow the possibly accelerated chronology of the Pali texts, the Buddha might have sent the sixty monks out to teach in September, after the end of the monsoon. Like the other sanghas, the Buddha’s new Order was a loose, peripatetic organization. The monks slept rough, wherever they could: “in the woods, in the roots of trees, under overhanging rocks, in ravines, in hillside caves, in cemeteries, in jungle groves, in the open, on heaps of straw.” But every day they spent time in meditation and preached to the people who needed the Dhamma, especially those who lived in the new cities where the malaise of the time was most acutely felt. Their preaching was successful: they not only attracted lay disciples but new recruits to the Sangha, and the Buddha authorized the sixty to receive novices themselves and ordain them as fully fledged monks.

Left to himself once more, the Buddha returned to Uruvela. On his way, he preached the Dhamma to thirty rowdy young men in hot pursuit of a local courtesan, who had decamped with their money. “Which is better for you?” the Buddha asked. “To look for a woman or to find yourselves?” The incident was a graphic allegory of humanity’s pointless stampede after pleasure, which can only frustrate and impoverish. After listening to the Buddha, the youths all became “stream-enterers” and joined the Sangha. But when he reached Uruvela, the Buddha achieved a far more startling conversion, when he successfully initiated a whole sangha of one thousand brahmins, who were living in the forests around Uruvela, Gaya and beside the river Neranjara, under the leadership of the three Kassapa brothers. This tale should probably be read as a parable, depicting the early Buddhists’ confrontation with the old Vedic tradition. These brahmins had “Gone Forth” and let their hair grow wild and matted as a sign of their repudiation of the settled, ordered lifestyle of normal society, but they still observed the old rites scrupulously and tended the three sacred fires.

The Buddha spent the winter with the Uruvela community and worked a number of impressive miracles. He tamed a highly dangerous cobra, a popular symbol of the divine, which the brahmins housed in their sacred fire chamber. He entertained gods, who visited his hermitage at night and lit the whole wood with unearthly radiance. He split logs miraculously for the fire ceremonies, ascended to the heavens and brought back a celestial flower, and showed the Kassapa who was leader of the Uruvela group that he could read his mind. Both the Pali texts and the later biographies contain stories of such signs and wonders performed by the Buddha, which is, at first glance, surprising. The practice of yoga was thought to give a skilled yogin powers (iddhi), which showed the dominion of a trained mind over matter, but yogins generally warned against the exercise of iddhi, because it was all too easy for a spiritual man to degenerate into a mere magician.The Buddha himself was highly critical of such exhibitionism, and forbade his disciples to exercise iddhi in public. But the monks who composed the Pali texts would have believed that such feats were possible, and they probably used these tales as a polemic. In their preaching, the Theravadin monks who composed these texts may have found it useful to relate that the Buddha had these impressive powers. Further, when disputing with brahmins and officials of Vedic religion, it was helpful to be able to relate that the Buddha had taken on the old gods (like the sacred cobra in the fire chamber) and soundly defeated them; even though he was a mere ksatriya, he had more power than did brahmins. Later the texts tell us that the Buddha challenged the whole caste system: “It is not simply birth that makes a person a brahmin or an outcaste,” he insisted, “but our actions (kamma).” Religious status depended on moral behavior, not upon the accident of heredity. As always, the Buddha, like the other great Axial sages, argued that faith must be informed by ethics, without which ritual was useless.

It was morality, not the exercise of the Buddha’s miraculous powers, which finally convinced Kassapa. Here again, the texts may also have been suggesting that a showy display of iddhi could be counterproductive: it certainly did not convince a skeptic. After each miracle, Kassapa merely said to himself: “This great monk is impressive and powerful, but he is not an Arahant like me.” Eventually, the Buddha shocked him out of his pride and complacency. “Kassapa,” he said, “you are not an Arahant, and if you continue like this, you will never achieve enlightenment.” Such rampant egotism was quite incompatible with the spiritual life. The rebuke hit home. As a famous ascetic, Kassapa would have known all about the dangers of such self-esteem. He prostrated himself on the ground and begged for admission to the Sangha. He was followed by both his brothers and all their thousand disciples. There were now a host of new novices, who shaved off their matted locks, threw away their sacred utensils, and became “stream-enterers.” Then they all gathered together at Gaya to hear the Buddha’s third great sermon.

“Bhikkhus,” the Buddha began, “everything is burning.” The senses and everything that they feed upon in the external world, the body, the mind and the emotions were all ablaze. What caused this conflagration? The three fires of greed, hatred and delusion. As long as people fed these flames, they would continue to burn and could never reach the coolness of Nibbana. The five khandha (the “heaps” or “constituents” of the personality) were thus tacitly compared to “bundles” of firewood. There was a pun also in the word upadana (“clinging”), whose root meaning is “fuel.” It was our grasping desire for the things of this world which kept us ablaze and impeded our enlightenment. As always, this greed and craving was coupled with the hatred which is responsible for so much of the evil and violence in the world. As long as the third fire of ignorance continued to rage, a person could not realize the Four Noble Truths, which were essential for release from the smoldering cycle of “birth, old age and death, with sorrow, mourning, pain, grief and despair.” A bhikkhu must, therefore, become dispassionate. The art of mindfulness would teach him to become detached from his five khandha and douse the flames. Then he would experience the liberation and peace of Nibbana.

The Fire Sermon was a brilliant critique of the Vedic system. Its sacred symbol, fire, was an image of everything the Buddha felt to be wrong with life: it represented the hearth and home from which all earnest seekers must “Go Forth,” and was an eloquent emblem of the restless, destructive but transient forces that make up human consciousness. The three fires of greed, hatred and ignorance were an ironic counterpart to the three holy fires of the Vedas: by tending these in the mistaken belief that they formed a priestly elite, the brahmins were simply fueling their own egotism. The sermon was also an illustration of the Buddha’s skill in adapting his Dhamma to his audience, so that he could truly speak to their condition. After the former fire-worshippers had listened to the Buddha’s sermon, which spoke so powerfully to their religious consciousness, they all achieved Nibbana and became Arahants.

In late December, the Buddha set out for Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha, accompanied by these thousand new bhikkhus. Their arrival caused a stir. People in the cities were hungry for new spirituality, and as soon as King Bimbisara heard that a man who claimed to be a Buddha was encamped outside the city in the Sapling Grove, he went to visit him with a huge entourage of brahmin householders. They were all astonished to find that Kassapa, the former head of the Uruvela community, was now the Buddha’s disciple, and were greatly impressed when Kassapa explained to them the reasons why he had abandoned fire-worship. When they heard the Buddha preach, all the householders-the Pali text tells us that there were 120,000 of them-became lay followers, and last of all, King Bimbisara prostrated himself before the Buddha and begged to be received as a lay disciple too. Ever since he was a boy, the king had hoped to listen to a Buddha preaching a Dhamma that he could understand. Now his wish had been granted. It was the start of a long partnership between the Buddha and the king, who invited him to dinner that night.

During the meal, the king gave the Sangha a gift that would have a decisive influence on the development of the Buddhist Order. He donated a pleasure-park (arama) known as the Bamboo Grove of Veluvana, just outside Rajagaha, as a home for the Sangha of Bhikkhus. The monks could live there in a quiet, peaceful place that was at the same time accessible to the city and to the people who would need to consult them. The Grove was neither “too far from the town, nor too near… accessible to the people, but peaceful, and secluded.” The Buddha accepted the gift, which was a perfect solution. The “seclusion” of his monks was to be a psychological one, not a total physical segregation from the world. The Order existed for the people, not simply for the monks’ personal sanctification. The bhikkhus would need a degree of quiet for meditation, where they could develop the dispassion and internal solitude that led to Nibbana, but if they were to live entirely for others, as the Dhamma demanded, lay folk must be able to visit them and learn how to assuage their own suffering. The gift of the Bamboo Grove set a precedent, and wealthy donors often gave the Sangha similar parks in the suburbs, which became the regional headquarters of the wandering bhikkhus.

The Buddha remained in the new arama for two months, and it was during this time that his two most important disciples joined the Sangha. Sariputta and Moggallana had both been born to brahmin families in small villages outside Rajagaha. They renounced the world on the same day, and joined the sangha of the Skeptics, led by Sanjaya. But neither attained full enlightenment, and they made a pact that whichever of them achieved Nibbana first would tell the other immediately. At the time of the Buddha’s visit the two friends were living in Rajagaha, and one day Sariputta saw Assaji (one of the original five bhikkhus) begging for alms. He was at once struck by the serenity and poise of the monk and was convinced that this man had found a spiritual solution, so he hailed him in the traditional way, asking Assaji which teacher and dhamma he followed. Pleading that he was a mere beginner in the holy life, Assaji gave only a brief summary of the Dhamma, but that was enough. Sariputta became a “stream-enterer” on the spot, and hurried to tell Moggallana the news. His friend also became a “stream-enterer,” and they went together to the Bamboo Grove to ask the Buddha for admission to the Sangha, taking, to Sanjaya’s chagrin, 250 of his disciples with them. When the Buddha saw Sariputta and Moggallana approaching, he instinctively knew how gifted they were. “These will be my chief disciples,” he told the bhikkhus. “They will do great things for the Sangha.” And so it proved. The two friends became the inspiration for the two main schools of Buddhism that developed some 200 to 300 years after the Buddha’s death. The more austere and monastically inclined Theravada regard Sariputta as a second founder. He was of an analytical cast of mind and could express the Dhamma in a way that was easy to memorize. But his piety was too dry for the more populist Mahayana school, whose version of Buddhism is more democratic and emphasizes the importance of compassion. The Mahayana has taken Moggallana as their mentor; he was known for his iddhi, would ascend mystically to the heavens and, through his yogic powers, had an uncanny ability to read people’s minds. The fact that the Buddha praised both Sariputta and Moggallana shows that both schools are regarded as authentic, and indeed they have coexisted more peacefully than, for example, Catholics and Protestants have in the Christian world.

Not everybody was enamored of the Buddha, however. During his stay in the Bamboo Grove, many of the citizens of Rajagaha were understandably worried about the dramatic growth of the Sangha. First the wild-haired brahmins, now Sanjaya’s Skeptics-who would be next? By taking away all the young men, the monk Gotama was making them all childless and turning their women into widows. Soon their families would die out! But when this was brought to the Buddha’s attention, he told the bhikkhus not to worry; this was only a seven-day wonder, and, sure enough, after a week or so the trouble stopped.

At about this time, the Pali texts tell us, the Buddha made a visit to his father’s house in Kapilavatthu-but they give us no details. The later scriptures and commentaries, however, flesh out the bare bones of the Pali text, and these post-canonical tales have become part of the Buddha’s legend. They tell us.that Suddhodana heard that his son, now a famous Buddha, jwas preaching in Rajagaha, and sent a messenger to him, ith a huge entourage, to invite him to pay a visit to ipilavatthu. But when this crowd of Sakyans heard the Buddha preach, they all became Arahants and forgot Suddhodana’s message-a sequence of events that happened nine times. Finally, the invitation was passed on to the Buddha, who set out for his home town with twenty thousand bhikkhus. The Sakyans put the Nigrodha Park outside Kapilavatthu at the bhikkhus’ disposal, and this became the Sangha’s chief headquarters in Sakka, but, showing the pride and hauteur for which they were famous, the Sakyans refused to pay homage to the Buddha. So, descending, as it were, to their level, the Buddha staged a striking display of iddhi. He levitated, jets of fire and water gushed from his limbs, and finally he walked along a jeweled causeway in the sky. Perhaps he was trying, as was his wont, to speak to the Sakyans in a way that they could understand and enter into their mind-set. His father Suddhodana had wanted him to be a cakkavatti, a World Ruler, and this legendary figure, it was said, would also stride majestically through the skies. In Uruvela, the Buddha had shown the brahmin ascetics that he could overcome their gods; now he showed the Sakyans that he was more than equal to any cakkavatti. And the spectacle had an effect, though a superficial one. The Sakyans were stunned into acquiescence and bowed down before the Buddha.

But, as usual, iddhi could not achieve a lasting result. The next day, Suddhodana was scandalized to see his son begging for food in Kapilavatthu: how dared he bring the family name into such disrepute! But the Buddha sat his father down and explained the Dhamma to him, and Suddhodana’s heart softened. He immediately became a “stream-enterer,” even though he did not request ordination in the Sangha. He took the Buddha’s bowl from him and led him into the house, where, during the meal that was prepared in his honor, all the women of the household became lay disciples, with one notable exception. The Buddha’s former wife remained aloof, still, perhaps understandably, hostile to the man who had abandoned her without saying good-bye.

The Pali texts record that at some unspecified time after this visit to Kapilavatthu, some of the leading youths of Sakka made the Going Forth and joined the Sangha, including the Buddha’s seven-year-old son Rahula, who had to wait until he was twenty before he was ordained, and three of the Buddha’s kinsfolk: his cousin, Ananda; his half-brother, Nanda; and Devadatta, his brother-in-law. They were accompanied by their barber, Upali, who had been taken along to shave the new bhikkhus’ heads, but asked for admission himself. His companions asked that the barber be admitted before them, to humble their Sakyan pride. Some of these Sakyans became notable figures in the Order. Upali became the leading expert in the rule of the monastic life, and Ananda, a gentle, scrupulous man, became the Buddha’s personal attendant during his last twenty years. Because Ananda was closer to the Buddha than anybody else and was with him almost all of the time, he became extremely knowledgeable about the Buddha’s sermons and sayings, but he was not a skilled yogin. Despite the fact that he became the most learned authority on the Dhamma, without the ability to meditate, he did not attain Nibbana during the Buddha’s lifetime. As for Devadatta, the scriptures, we shall see, assign him a role that is similar to that of Judas in the Gospel story.

The mention of the Gospels, with their colorful portraits of Jesus’s disciples, makes a Western reader long to know more about these early Buddhists. Who were these people who flocked into the Sangha by the thousand? What drew them to the Buddha? The Pali texts tell us little. The legends indicate that the first recruits came from the brahmin and ksatriya castes, though the message was preached to “the many,” and everybody was welcome to join. Merchants were also attracted to the Order; like the monks, they were the “new men” of the developing society, and needed a faith that reflected their essentially casteless status. But there are no detailed stories of individual conversions, such as the Gospel tales of fishermen dropping their nets and tax collectors leaving their counting houses. Ananda and Devadatta stand out from the crowd of bhikkhus, but their portraits are still emblematic and stylized compared with the more vivid character studies of some of Jesus’s disciples. Even Sariputta and Mogallana, the leading disciples of the Buddha, are presented as colorless figures with apparently little personality. There are no touching vignettes about the Buddha’s relationship with his son: Rahula appears in the Pali legends simply as another monk. The Buddha instructs him in meditation, as he would any other bhikkhu, and there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that they are father and son. We are left with images, not with personalities, and with our Western love of individuality, we can feel dissatisfied.

But this is to misunderstand the nature of the Buddhist experience. Many of these early monks achieved enlightenment precisely by contemplating the doctrine of anatta. This enabled them to transcend self; indeed, the Buddha denied that there was any such thing as a constant personality. He would have regarded the obstinate belief in a sacred, irreducible nub of selfhood as an “unskillful” delusion that would get in the way of enlightenment. As a result of the spirituality of anatta, the Buddha himself is presented in the Pali Canon as a type rather than an individual. He contends with other types: with Skeptics, brahmins and Jains. He owed his liberation precisely to the extinction of the unique traits and idiosyncrasies that Western people prize in their heroes. The same goes for his disciples. There is little to distinguish the Buddha from his bhikkhus, who are all depicted as minor Buddhas. Like him, they have become impersonal and have vanished as individuals. The Canonical texts preserve this anonymity by declining to delve into the secrets of their hearts. Nor will they reveal the lovable quirks in their characters before the achievement of enlightenment. It may be no accident that it is Devadatta and Ananda who stand out from the rank and file. Devadatta is filled with egotism, and the gentle Ananda has failed to achieve enlightenment and consequently has more observable personal traits than, say, a spiritual giant like Sariputta. We see farther into Ananda’s heart during the last days of the Buddha’s life, but, as we shall see, he cannot share the Buddha’s perspective. To a Westerner, who would decry this loss of personality, the bhikkhus would probably reply that the surrender of the ego was a price worth paying for the inner peace of Nibbana, which is probably impossible for anybody who is still immured in selfhood.

But the impersonality of the Buddha and his disciples did not mean that they were cold and unfeeling. They were not only gentle and compassionate, but deeply sociable, and their attempt to reach out to “the many” attracted people who found this lack of egotism compelling.

Like all his monks, the Buddha was constantly on the road, preaching to as wide an audience as possible, but during the three months of the monsoon, when travel was difficult, he took to staying in the Bamboo Grove outside Rajagaha. Even though the park now belonged to the Sangha, the bhikkhus had not built in it, but still lived in the open. A rich merchant, however, visited the Grove, liked what he saw, and offered to build sixty huts for the monks, and the Buddha gave his permission. The merchant then invited the Buddha and his monks to a meal. It was no small matter to feed such a large gathering, and on the morning of the dinner, the household was in an uproar as the servants prepared a delicious meal of broth, rice, sauces, and sweets. The merchant was so busy hurrying about and giving orders that he scarcely had time to greet his brother-in-law, Anathapindika, a merchant from Savatthi, who had come to Rajagaha on business. “Whatever is going on?” Anathapindika asked in bewilderment. Usually when he visited the household his brother-in-law could not do enough for him. Was there a wedding? Or was the family about to entertain King Bimbisara? “Not at all,” replied the merchant; the Buddha and his monks were coming to dinner.

Anathapindika could hardly believe his ears. “Did you say ‘the Buddha’?” he asked incredulously; had an enlightened Buddha truly come into the world? Could he go to visit him at once? “This is not the time,” the merchant said testily, hurrying off again. “You can go to talk to him early tomorrow morning.” Anathapindika was so excited that he could scarcely sleep, and at dawn he hurried to the Bamboo Grove. As soon as he left the city, however, he was overcome with the dread that was so widespread in the Axial countries. He felt vulnerable. “Light drained from the world, and he could see only darkness ahead.” Fearfully he pressed on, until he saw the Buddha pacing up and down in the morning light. When the Buddha saw Anathapindika, he led him to a seat and called him by name. Like Yasa before him, the merchant was immediately cheered, and as he listened to the Buddha he felt the teaching rising from within with such authority that it seemed inscribed in his deepest soul. “Superb, Lord!” he cried, and begged the Buddha to accept him as a lay disciple. The next day, he entertained the Buddha at his brother-in-law’s house and invited him to visit his own city of Savatthi, the capital of the kingdom of Kosala.

Savatthi was probably the most advanced of all the cities in the Ganges basin in the late sixth century. It was built on the south bank of the Rivati river, at the junction of two trade routes, and was inhabited by some 70,000 families. A leading center of commerce, it was home to many wealthy businessmen like Anathapindika, and the city’s name was said to derive from the word sarvamatthi, since it was a place where “everything was attainable.” Savatthi was protected by imposing walls and watchtowers forty to fifty feet high; the main roads entered the city from the south and converged in a large open square in the town center. Yet despite Savatthi’s prosperity, Anathapindika’s feverish excitement at the prospect of meeting a real Buddha shows that many people felt a nagging void opening up in their lives. It was exactly the place for the Sangha.

Anathapindika spared no expense in setting up a base for the Buddha. He searched hard for a suitable place, and eventually decided on a park owned by Prince Jeta, heir apparent to the throne of Kosala. The prince was reluctant to sell-until Anathapindika brought cartloads of gold coins, which he spread all over the parkland until the ground was entirely covered with the money that he was prepared to offer. Only a small space near the gate remained, and Prince Jeta, realizing belatedly that this was no ordinary purchase and that it might be advisable to make a contribution, threw it in for free, building a gate-house on the spot. Then Anathapindika made Jeta’s Grove ready for the Sangha. He had “open terraces laid out, gates constructed, audience halls erected, fire rooms, storehouses and cupboards built, walks leveled, wells prepared, baths and bathrooms installed, ponds excavated and pavilions made.” This would become one of the most important centers of the Sangha.

Yet these were very elaborate arrangements for men who had embraced “homelessness.” Within a short space of time, the Buddha had acquired three large parks, at Rajagaha, Kapilavatthu and Savatthi, where the monks could live and meditate, surrounded by lotus pools, lush mango trees and shady cloisters of palms. Other donors quickly followed Anathapindika’s example. As soon as they heard that the Buddha was teaching in Savatthi, three bankers from Kosambi on the Jumna river came to hear him preach in Jeta’s Grove and promptly invited him to their own city. Each equipped a “pleasure-park” (arama) for the Sangha there. They not only raised buildings at their own expense, but, like the other donors, they maintained the arama, providing for its upkeep themselves. King Bimbisara employed so many servants for the Bamboo Grove that they filled an entire village. But the monks were not living in luxury. Though ample, the accommodation was simple and the huts sparsely furnished, as befitted followers of the Middle Way. Each bhikkhu had his own cell, but this was often just a partitioned-off area containing only a board to sleep on and a seat with jointed legs.

The bhikkhus did not live in these aramas year-round, but still spent most of their time on the road. At first, most even traveled during the monsoon, but found that this gave offense. Other sects, such as the Jains, refused to travel during the rains, because they would do too much damage to the wildlife, and this violated the principle of ahimsa. Why did these followers of Sakyamuni continue their journeys during the monsoon, people began to ask, “trampling down the new grass, distressing plants, and hurting many little creatures?” Even the vultures, they pointed out, stayed in the treetops during this season. Why did the Buddha’s monks alone feel obliged to trudge around the muddy paths and roads, taking no heed of anybody but themselves?

The Buddha was sensitive to this kind of criticism, and when he heard about these complaints, he made the monsoon retreat (vassa) obligatory for all Sangha members. But he went one step further than the other wanderers, and invented the monastic communal life. Monks in the other sects either lived alone during the vassa, or they put up wherever they happened to be, sharing a forest clearing with ascetics who followed quite different dhammas. The Buddha ordered his bhikkhus to live together during the vassa, not with members of other sects; they could choose one of the aramas or a country settlement (avasa), which the monks built each year from scratch. Each arama and avasa had fixed boundaries; no monk was allowed to leave the retreat for more than a week during the three months of the monsoon, except for a very good reason. Gradually, the monks began to evolve a community life. They devised simple ceremonies, which took place in the assembly hall of their settlement. In the morning, they would meditate and listen to the instructions given by the Buddha or one of the senior monks. Then they set off with their bowls to the town to seek the day’s provisions, and ate their main meal. In the afternoon there would be a siesta, followed by more meditation in the evening.

But above all, the bhikkhus had to learn to live together amicably. The inevitable difficulties of living with people whom they might not find personally congenial would put the equanimity they were supposed to have acquired in meditation to the test. It was no good radiating compassion to the four quarters of the earth if bhikkhus could not be kind to one another. There were times when the Buddha had to take his monks to task. Once he rebuked them for failing to take care of a bhikkhu who had dysentery. On another occasion, when the Buddha and his entourage were traveling to Savatthi, a clique of monks went ahead to one of their local settlements and secured all the beds. Poor Sariputta, who seems to have had a bad cough, had to spend the night outside under a tree. Such rudeness, the Buddha told the guilty monks, undermined the whole mission of the Sangha, since it would put people off the Dhamma. But gradually, the best of the bhikkhus learned to set aside their own selfish inclinations and consider their fellows. The person who returned first from town with the alms-food made the hut ready for the others, setting out the seats and preparing the water for cooking. The one who arrived home last ate the leftovers and put everything away. “We are very different in body, Lord,” one of the monks told the Buddha about his community, “but we have, I think, only one mind.” Why should he not ignore his own likes and dislikes, and do only what the others wished? This bhikkhu felt lucky to be living the holy life with such companions. In the communal life of the vassa, the Buddha had found another way to teach his monks to live for others.

King Pasenedi of Kosala was very impressed by the friendliness and cheerfulness of life in the Buddhist aramas. It was in marked contrast to that of the court, he told the Buddha, where selfishness, greed and aggression were the order of the day. Kings quarreled with other kings, brahmins with other brahmins; families and friends were constantly at loggerheads. But in the arama, he saw bhikkhus “living together as uncontentiously as milk with water and looking at one another with kind eyes.” In other sects, he noticed that the ascetics looked so skinny and miserable that he could only conclude that their lifestyle did not agree with them. “But here I see bhikkhus smiling and courteous, sincerely happy… alert, calm and unflustered, living on alms, their minds remaining as gentle as wild deer.” When he sat in council, the king remarked wryly, he was constantly interrupted and even heckled. But when the Buddha addressed a huge crowd of monks, none of them even coughed or cleared his throat. The Buddha was creating an alternative way of life that brought the shortcomings of the new towns and states into sharp focus.

Some scholars believe that the Buddha saw such rulers as Pasenedi and Bimbisara as partners in a program of political and social reform. They suggest that the Sangha was designed to counter the rampant individualism that was inevitable as society progressed from a tribal, communal ethos to a competitive, cutthroat market economy. The Sangha would be a blueprint for a different type of social organization, and its ideas would gradually filter down to the people. They point to the frequent juxtaposition of the Buddha and the cakkavatti in the texts: the Buddha was to reform human consciousness, they suggest, while the kings introduced social reforms. More recently, however, other scholars have argued that far from endorsing monarchy and working with it in this way, the Buddha seemed highly critical of kingship and preferred the republican style of government that still prevailed in his native Sakka.

It seems unlikely that the Buddha had such political ambitions; he would surely have regarded any involvement with a social program as an unhelpful “clinging” to the profane world. But the Buddha was certainly trying to forge a new way of being human. The evident contentment of his bhikkhus showed that the experiment was working. The monks had not been infused by supernatural grace or reformed at the behest of a god. The method devised by the Buddha was a purely human initiative. His monks were learning to work on their natural powers as skillfully as a goldsmith might fashion a piece of dull metal and make it shining and beautiful, helping it to become more fully itself and achieve its potential. It seemed that it was possible to train people to live without selfishness and to be happy. If the bhikkhus had been gloomy or frustrated, this would probably show that their lifestyle was doing violence to their humanity. “Unskillful” states, such as anger, guilt, unkindness, envy and greed, were avoided not because they had been forbidden by a god or were “sinful” but because the indulgence of such emotions was found to be damaging to human nature. The compassion, courtesy, consideration, friendliness and kindness required by the monastic life constituted the new asceticism. But unlike the old, extreme tapas, it created harmony and balance. If cultivated assiduously, it could evoke the ceto-vimutti of Nibbana, another eminently natural psychological state.

But the full Dhamma was only possible for monks. The noise and bustle of the ordinary Indian household would make meditation and yoga impossibilities, so only a monk who had left this world could achieve Nibbana. A layman such as Anathapindika, who engaged in commercial and reproductive activities that were fueled by desire, could not hope to extinguish the three fires of greed, hatred and delusion. The best that a lay disciple could achieve was rebirth next time in circumstances that were more favorable to enlightenment. The Noble Truths were not for laymen; they had to be “realized” and this “direct” knowledge could not be achieved without yoga, which was essential to the full Buddhist regimen. Without the discipline of mindfulness, a doctrine such as anatta would make no sense. But the Buddha did not ignore the lay folk. It seems that there were two main lines of preaching: one for monks and another for the laity.

This becomes evident in the poignant story of Anathapindika’s death. When he became mortally ill, Sariputta and Ananda went to visit him, and Sariputta preached a short sermon on the value of detachment: Anathapindika should train himself not to cling to the senses, since this contact with the external world would trap him in samsara. This, one might think, was basic Buddhist teaching, but Anathapindika had never heard it before. As he listened, tears ran down his face. “What is the matter, householder?” Ananda asked anxiously. ‘Are you feeling worse?” No, Anathapindika protested; that was not the problem. It grieved him that “even though I have waited on the Master and the contemplative bhikkhus for so many years, I have never heard talk on the Dhamma like that before.” This teaching was not given to the lay people, Sariputta explained. It was only for those who had left the household life behind. That was not right, Anathapindika replied. Householders should be instructed in such matters: there were some with only a little desire in them, who were ripe for enlightenment and could, therefore, achieve Nibbana.

Anathapindika died that night and, we are told, was reborn in heaven as a “stream-enterer” with only seven more lives ahead of him. This was doubtless seen as a blessing, but it seems a poor reward for his generosity and devoted service. To keep such essential teaching from lay folk seems unfair, but the idea that everybody should be on the same spiritual footing is essentially modern. Premodern religion was nearly always conducted on two tiers, with an elite who spent their whole lives studying and meditating on scripture, and gave instruction to the inevitably more ignorant laity. Full religious equality only becomes a possibility when everybody is literate and has access to the scriptures. The Buddhist canon was not written down until the first century b.c.e., and even then manuscripts were rare. Anybody who wanted to hear the Dhamma would have to go to the Buddha or to one of the monks.

What did the Sangha preach to the laity? Lay people had “taken refuge” with the Buddha from the very first. Lay men and women would feed the monks and support them, acquiring merit that would get them good rebirths. The monks would also teach the laity how to live morally and perform good, purifying kamma that would advance their spiritual prospects. Everybody regarded this as a fair exchange. Some lay people, such as Anathapindika, would spend a lot of time with the Buddha and the bhikkhus. They were encouraged to take five moral vows-a Dhamma for beginners. They must not take life; they must not steal, lie or take intoxicants; they must avoid sexual promiscuity. These were much the same as the practices required of Jain lay disciples. On the quarter (uposatha) days of each month, the Buddhist laity had special disciplines to replace the fasting and abstinence of the old Vedic upavasatha, which, in practice, made them live like novices to the Sangha for twenty-four hours: they abstained from sex, did not watch entertainments, dressed soberly, and ate no solid food until midday. This gave them a taste of a fuller Buddhist life and might have inspired some to become monks.

Like any yogin, before the Buddhist monk could even begin to meditate, he had to undergo a moral training in compassion, self-control and mindfulness. The laity were never able to graduate to serious yoga, so they concentrated on this morality (silo), which the Buddha adapted to their station of life. Laymen and -women were thus building the foundation for a fuller spirituality, which would stand them in good stead in their next existence. Where monks learned “skillful” techniques in meditation, the lay person focused on “skillful” morality. Giving alms to a bhikkhu, telling the truth at all times and behaving kindly and justly toward others helped them to develop a more wholesome state of mind, and to mitigate, if not wholly stamp out, the fires of egotism. This morality also had a practical advantage: it could encourage others to behave toward them in a similar manner. As a result, besides accruing merit in their next lives, they were learning ways of being happier in this one.

The Dhamma was very appealing to merchants and bankers like Anathapindika who had no place in the Vedic system. The businessmen could appreciate the Buddha’s “skillful” ethics, because it was based on the principle of shrewd investment. It would yield a profitable return, in this existence and the next. Monks were trained to be mindful of their fleeting mental states; lay followers were directed to appanada (attentiveness) in their financial and social dealings. The Buddha told them to save for an emergency, look after their dependents, give alms to bhikkhus, avoid debt, make sure that they had enough money for the immediate needs of their families, and invest money carefully. They were to be thrifty, sensible and sober. In the Sigalavada Sutta, the most developed sermon on lay morality, Sigala was instructed to avoid alcohol, late nights, gambling, laziness and bad company. There is a lay version of the Fire Sermon, in which the disciple is urged to tend the three “good fires”: taking care of his dependents; caring for his wife, children and servants; and supporting the bhikkhus in all the different sanghas.

But, as always, the cardinal virtue was compassion. One day King Pasenedi and his wife had a discussion in which each admitted that nothing was dearer to them than their own selves. This was obviously not a view that the Buddha could share, but when the king told him about this conversation, the Buddha did not chide him, launch into a discussion of anatta, or preach a sermon on the Eightfold Path. Instead, as usual, he entered into Pasenedi’s viewpoint, and built on what was in his mind-not on what the Buddha thought should be there. He did not, therefore, tell the king that the self was a delusion, because without a life of regular yoga, he would not be able to “see” this. Instead, he told him to consider this: if he found that there was nothing dearer to him than himself, it must also be true that other people also cherished their “separate selves.” Therefore, the Buddha concluded, “a person who loves the self, should not harm the self of others.” He should follow what other traditions have called the Golden Rule: “Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you.” Laymen could not extinguish their egotism entirely, but they could use their experience of selfishness to empathize with other people’s vulnerability. This would take them beyond the excesses of ego and introduce them to ahimsa.

We see the way the Buddha preached to lay people in his famous sermon to the Kalamans, a people who lived on the northernmost fringe of the Ganges basin and who had once run a tribal republic, but were now subject to Kosala. Gradually, they were being drawn into the new urban civilization and were finding the experience unsettling and undermining. When the Buddha passed through their town of Kesaputta, they sent a delegation to ask his advice. One ascetic, one teacher after another had descended upon them, they explained; but each monk and brahmin expounded his own doctrines and reviled everybody else’s. Not only did these dhammas contradict one another, they were also alien, coming as they did from the sophisticated mainstream culture. “Which of these teachers was right and which wrong?” they asked. The Buddha replied that he could see why the Kalamans were so confused. As always, he entered completely into their position. He did not add to their confusion by reeling off his own Dhamma, and giving them one more doctrine to contend with, but held an impromptu tutorial (reminiscent of the question-and-answer techniques of such other Axial sages as Socrates and Confucius) to help the Kalamans work things out for themselves. He started by telling them that one of the reasons for their bewilderment was that they were expecting other people to tell them the answer, but when they looked into their own hearts, they would find that in fact they knew what was right already.

“Come, Kalamans,” he said, “do not be satisfied with hearsay or taking truth on trust.” People must make up their own minds on questions of morality. Was greed, for example, good or bad? “Bad, Lord,” the Kalamans replied. Had they noticed that when somebody is consumed by desire and determined to get what he wants, that he is likely to kill, steal or lie? Yes, the Kalamans had observed this. And did not this type of behavior make the selfish person unpopular and, therefore, unhappy? And what about hatred, or clinging to what were obviously delusions instead of trying to see things as they really were? Did not these emotions all lead to pain and suffering? Step by step, he asked the Kalamans to draw upon their own experience and perceive the effect of the “three fires” of greed, hatred and ignorance. By the end of their discussion, the Kalamans found that in fact they had known the Buddha’s Dhamma already. “That is why I told you not to rely on any teacher,” the Buddha concluded. “When you know in yourselves that these things are ‘helpful’ (kusala) and those ‘unhelpful’ (akusala), then you should practice this ethic and stick to it, whatever anybody else tells you.”

He had also convinced the Kalamans that while they should avoid greed, hatred and delusion, it would also obviously be beneficial to practice the opposite virtues: “non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion.” If they cultivated benevolence, kindness and generosity, and tried to acquire a sound understanding of life, they would find that they were happier people. If there was another life to come (the Buddha did not impose the doctrine of reincarnation upon the Kalamans, who might not have been familiar with it), then this good kamma might get them reborn as gods in heaven next time. If there was no other world, then this considerate and genial lifestyle might encourage others to behave in like manner toward themselves. At the very least, they would know that they had behaved well-and that was always a comfort. To help the Kalamans build up this “skillful” mentality, the Buddha taught them a meditative technique that was a lay person’s version of the “immeasurables.” First they must try to rid their minds of envy, feelings of ill will and delusion. Then they should direct feelings of loving-kindness in every direction. As they did so, they would experience an enhanced, enlarged existence. They would find that they were imbued with “abundant, exalted, measureless loving-kindness”; they would break out of the confines of their own limited viewpoint and embrace the whole world. They would transcend the pettiness of egotism and, for a moment, experience an ecstasy that took them out of themselves, “above, below, around and everywhere,” and would feel their hearts expand with disinterested equanimity. Laymen and -women might not be able to attain the permanence of Nibbana, but they could have intimations of that final release.

The Buddha was, therefore, teaching monks and lay folk alike a compassionate offensive to mitigate the egotism that prevailed in the aggressive new society and that debarred human beings from the sacred dimension of life. The skillful state that he was trying to promote is well expressed in this poem in the Pali Canon:

A lay person who achieved this attitude would have advanced a long way along the spiritual path.

The scriptures do give us a few examples of lay disciples who practiced meditation outside the Sangha and reached Nibbana, but these solitary virtuosi were the exception rather than the rule. It was thought that an Arahant could not continue to live the life of a householder: after achieving enlightenment, he would either join the Sangha immediately or he would die. This, apparently, is what happened to Suddhodana, the Buddha’s father, who attained Nibbana in the fifth year of his son’s teaching mission and died the next day. When the Buddha heard the news, he returned to Kapilavatthu and stayed for a while in Nigrodha Park. This event led to a new development in the Sangha, which, it seems, the Buddha did not initially welcome.

While he was living in the Nigrodha arama, the Buddha was visited by his father’s widow, Pajapati Gotami: she was also the Buddha’s aunt, and had become his foster-mother after the death of his own mother. Since she was now free, she told her nephew, she wanted to be ordained in the Sangha. The Buddha adamantly refused. There was no question of admitting women to the Order. He would not change his mind, even though Pajapati begged him three times to reconsider and she left his presence very sadly. A few days later, the Buddha set out for Vesali, the capital of the republic of Videha on the northern bank of the Ganges. He often stayed in the arama there, which had a hall with a high-gabled roof. One morning, Ananda was horrified to find Pajapati sobbing on the porch with a crowd of other Sakyan women. She had cut off her hair, put on the yellow robe and had walked all the way from Kapilavatthu. Her feet were swollen, and she was filthy and exhausted. “Gotami,” cried Ananda; “What are you doing here in such a state? And why are you crying?” “Because the Blessed One will not have women in the Sangha,” Pajapati replied. Ananda was concerned. “Wait here,” he said, “I will ask the Tathagata about this.”

But the Buddha still refused to consider the matter. This was a serious moment. If he continued to bar women from the Sangha, it meant that he considered that half of the human race was ineligible for enlightenment. But the Dhamma was supposed to be for everybody: for gods, animals, robbers, men of all castes-were women alone to be excluded? Was rebirth as a man the best they could hope for? Ananda tried another tack. “Lord,” he asked, “are women capable of becoming ‘stream-enterers’ and, eventually, Arahants?” “They are, Ananda,” the Buddha replied. “Then surely it would be a good thing to ordain Pajapati,” Ananda pleaded, and reminded his master of her kindness to him after his mother had died. The Buddha reluctantly conceded defeat. Pajapati could enter the Sangha if she accepted eight strict rules. These provisions made it clear that the nuns (bhikkhunls) were an inferior breed. A nun must always stand when in the presence of a male bhikkhu, even one who was young or newly ordained; nuns must always spend the vassa retreat in an arama with male monks, not by themselves; they must receive instruction from a bhikkhu once every fortnight; they could not hold their own ceremonies; a nun who had committed a grave offense must do penance before the monks as well as the bhikkhunls; a nun must request ordination from both the male and the female Sangha; she must never rebuke a bhikkhu, though any monk could rebuke her; nor could she preach to bhikkhus. Pajapati gladly accepted these regulations and was duly ordained, but the Buddha was still uneasy. If women had not been admitted, he told Ananda, the Dhamma would have been practiced for a thousand years; now it would last a mere five hundred years. A tribe with too many women would become vulnerable and be destroyed; similarly, no Sangha with women members could last long. They would fall upon the Order like mildew on a field of rice.

What are we to make of this misogyny? The Buddha had always preached to women as well as to men. Once he had given permission, thousands of women became bhikkhunls, and the Buddha praised their spiritual attainments, said that they could become the equals of the monks, and prophesied that he would not die until he had enough wise monks and nuns, lay men and lay women followers. There seems to be a discrepancy in the texts, and this has led some scholars to conclude that the story of his grudging acceptance of women and the eight regulations was added later and reflects a chauvinism in the Order. By the first century b.c.e., some of the monks certainly blamed women for their own sexual desires, which were impeding them from enlightenment, and regarded women as universal obstacles to spiritual advance. Other scholars argue that the Buddha, enlightened as he was, could not escape the social conditioning of the time, and that he could not imagine a society that was not patriarchal. They point out that, despite the Buddha’s initial reluctance, the ordination of women was a radical act that, perhaps for the first time, gave women an alternative to domesticity.

While this is true, there is a difficulty for women that should not be glossed over. In the Buddha’s mind, women may well have been inseparable from the “lust” that made enlightenment an impossibility. It did not occur to him to take his wife with him, as some of the renouncers did, when he left home to begin his quest. He simply assumed that she could not be the partner in his liberation. But this was not because he found sexuality disgusting, like the Christian Fathers of the Church, but because he was attached to his wife. The scriptures contain a passage which, scholars agree, is almost certainly a monkish interpolation. “Lord, how are we to treat women?” Ananda asked the Buddha in the last days of his life. “Do not look at them, Ananda.” “If we do not see them, how should we treat them?” “Do not speak to them, Ananda.” “And if we have to speak to them?” “Mindfulness must be observed, Ananda.” The Buddha may not have personally subscribed to this full-blown misogyny, but it is possible that these words reflect a residual unease that he could not overcome.

If the Buddha did harbor negative feelings about women, this was typical of the Axial Age. Sad to say, civilization has not been kind to women. Archeological discoveries indicate that women were sometimes highly esteemed in pre-urban societies, but the rise of the military states and the specialization of the early cities led to a decline in their position. They became the property of men, were excluded from most professions, and were subjected to the sometimes draconian control of their husbands in some of the ancient law codes. Elite women managed to hold on to some shreds of power, but in the Axial countries women suffered a further loss of status at about the time that the Buddha was preaching in India. In Iran, Iraq, and, later, in the Hellenistic states, women were veiled and confined in harems, and misogynistic ideas flourished. The women of classical Athens (500-323) were particularly disadvantaged and almost entirely secluded from society; their chief virtues were said to be silence and submission. The early Hebrew traditions had exalted the exploits of such women as Miriam, Deborah and Jael, but after the prophetic reform of the faith, women were relegated to second-class status in Jewish law. It is notable that in a country such as Egypt, which did not participate initially in the Axial Age, there was a more liberal attitude to women. It seems that the new spirituality contained an inherent hostility toward the female that has lasted until our own day. The Buddha’s quest was masculine in its heroism: the determined casting off of all restraints, the rejection of the domestic world and women, the solitary struggle, and the penetration of new realms are attitudes that have become emblematic of male virtue. It is only in the modern world that this attitude has been challenged. Women have sought their own “liberation” (they have even used the same word as the Buddha); they too have rejected the old authorities, and set off on their own lonely journey.

The Buddha predicted that women would blight the Order, but in fact the first major crisis in the Sangha was caused by a clash of male egos. According to Buddhist principles, a fault is not culpable unless the perpetrator realizes that he has done wrong. In Kosambi, a sincere and learned monk was suspended, but protested that his punishment was unfair, since he had not realized that he was committing an offense. The Kosambi bhikkhus at once divided into hostile factions and the Buddha was so distressed by the schism that at one point he went off to live by himself in the forest, forming a friendship with an elephant who had also suffered from aggressive peers. Hatred, the Buddha said, was never appeased by more hatred; it could only be defused by friendship and sympathy. He could see that both camps had right on their side, but the egotism of all the bhikkhus involved made it impossible for them to see the other point of view, even though the Buddha tried to make each faction understand the position of the other. He told Sariputta and Pajapati, now head of the women’s Sangha, to treat both sides with respect; Anathapindika was instructed to give donations impartially to both camps. But the Buddha did not impose a solution: the answer must come from the participants themselves. Eventually, the suspended bhikkhu climbed down; even though he had not known it at the time, he had committed a fault. Immediately, he was reinstated and the quarrel came to an end.

The story tells us a good deal about the early Sangha. There was no tight organization and no central authority. It was closer to the sanghas of the old republics, where all the members of the council were equal, than to the new monarchies. The Buddha refused to be an authoritative and controlling ruler, and did not resemble the Father Superior of later Christian religious orders. Indeed, it was probably inaccurate to speak of an Order; there were rather a number of different orders, each of them situated in a particular region of the Ganges basin. Nevertheless, the members all shared the same Dhamma and followed the same lifestyle. Every six years, the scattered bhikkhus and bhikkhunis would come together to recite a common confession of faith, called the Patimokkha (“bond”). As its name implies, its purpose was to bind the Sangha together:

Refraining from all that is harmful, Attaining what is skillful, And purifying one’s own mind; This is what the Buddhas teach.

Forbearance and patience are the highest of all austerities;

And the Buddhas declare that Nibbana is the supreme value.

Nobody who hurts another has truly “Gone Forth” from the home life.

Nobody who injures others is a true monk.

No faultfinding, no harming, restraint, Knowing the rules regarding food, the single bed and chair,

Application in the higher perception derived from meditation-

This is what the Awakened Ones teach.

The Buddha attached great importance to this ceremony, which corresponded to the plenary assemblies that had characterized the republics. Nobody was allowed to miss the Patimokkha, since it was the only thing that held the early Sangha together.

Much later, after the Buddha’s death, this simple recitation was replaced by a more elaborate and complex assembly, held by each local community in each region once a fortnight, on the uposatha days. This change marked the transition of the Sangha from a sect to an Order. Instead of chanting the Dhamma, which distinguished them from the other sects, the monks and nuns now recited the rules of the Sangha and confessed their transgressions to one another. By this time, the Sangha’s regulations were more numerous than they had been in the Buddha’s day. Some scholars argue that it took two or three centuries for the Rule, as recorded in the Vinaya, to take its final form, but some believe that, at least substantially, the spirit of the Order can be traced back to the Buddha himself.

The Sangha is the heart of Buddhism, because its lifestyle embodies externally the inner state of Nibbana. Monks and nuns must “Go Forth,” not only from the household life but even from their own selves. A bhikkhu and bhikkhuni, almsman and almswoman, have renounced the “craving” that goes with getting and spending, depend entirely on what they are given and learn to be happy with the bare minimum. The lifestyle of the Sangha enables its members to meditate, and thus to dispel the fires of ignorance, greed and hatred that bind us to the wheel of suffering. The ideal of compassion and communal love teaches them to lay aside their own egotism and live for others. By making these attitudes habitual, nuns and monks can acquire that unshakable inner peace which is Nibbana, the goal of the holy life. The Sangha is one of the oldest surviving voluntary institutions on earth; only the Jain order can boast a similar antiquity. Its endurance tells us something important about humanity and human life. The great empires, manned by vast armies of soldiers, have all crumbled, but the community of bhikkhus has lasted some 2,500 years. It is a polarity adumbrated in the early Buddhist legends that juxtapose the Buddha with the cakkavatti. The message seems to be that it is not by protecting and defending yourself that you survive, but by giving yourself away.

But even though the members of the Sangha had all turned their backs on the lifestyle of the vast majority of the population, the people at large did not resent them but found them profoundly attractive. The lay folk did not see the bhikkhus and bhikkhunis as grim renouncers, but sought them out. This again tells us that the lifestyle devised by the Buddha was felt not to be inhuman but to be deeply humane. The aramas were not lonely outposts; kings, brahmins, merchants, businessmen, courtesans, aristocrats, and members of the other sects flocked to them. Pasenedi and Bimbisara constantly dropped in to ask the Buddha’s advice, while he was sitting in the evening beside a lotus pool, or reclining in the porch of his hut, watching the moths fly into the candle flame. We read of crowds of ascetics pouring into the Buddhist settlements; delegations would come to ask the Buddha a question; noblemen and merchants would arrive, mounted on elephants, and the gilded youth of a district would ride out en masse to invite the Buddha to dinner.

In the midst of all this excitement and activity was the quiet, controlled figure of the Buddha, the new, “awakened” man. He remains opaque and unknowable to those of us who are incapable of his complete self-abandonment, because after his enlightenment he became impersonal, though never unkind or cold. There is no sign of struggle or effort on his part; as he exclaimed on the night of his enlightenment, he had completed everything that he had to do. He was the Tathagata, the man who had disappeared. He had no personal attachments and had no aggressively doctrinaire opinions. In the Pali texts he is often compared to nonhuman beings, not because he was considered unnatural, but because people did not know how to classify him.

One day, a brahmin found the Buddha sitting under a tree, composed and contemplative. “His faculties were at rest, his mind was still, and everything about him breathed self-discipline and serenity.” The sight filled the brahmin with awe. The Buddha reminded him of a tusker elephant; there was the same impression of enormous strength and massive potential brought under control and channeled into a great peace. There were discipline, restraint and complete serenity. The brahmin had never seen a man like that before. “Are you a god, sir?” he asked. “No,” replied the Buddha. “Are you becoming an angel… or a spirit?” persisted the brahmin. Again, the answer was “No.” “Are you a human being?” asked the brahmin, as a last resort, but again the Buddha replied that he was not. He had become something else. The world had not seen humanity like this since the last Buddha had lived on earth, thousands of years ago. Once he had been a god in a previous life, the Buddha explained; he had lived as an animal and as an ordinary man, but everything that had confined him to the old, unregenerate humanity had been extinguished, “cut off at the root, chopped off like a palm stump, done away with.” Had the brahmin ever seen a red lotus that had begun its life underwater rising above the pond, until it no longer touched the surface? the Buddha asked. “So I too was born and grew up in the world,” he told his visitor, “but I have transcended the world and am no longer touched by it.” By attaining Nibbana in this life, he had revealed a new potential in human nature. It was possible to live in this world of pain, at peace, in control and in harmony with oneself and the rest of creation. But to achieve this tranquil immunity, a man or woman had to break free of his or her egotism and live entirely for other beings. Such a death to self was not a darkness, however frightening it might seem to an outsider; it made people fully aware of their own nature, so that they lived at the peak of their capacity. How should the brahmin categorize the Buddha? “Remember me,” the Buddha told him, “as one who has woken up.”