Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

9

The sky was divided between sun and clouds as the fighters circled each other. They had stripped down to cotton pants, their chest and feet bare. Siddhartha kept his eyes fixed on Devadatta’s, because as tempting as it was to watch his opponent’s hands, he knew that Devadatta’s glance would give away his intentions.

Siddhartha felt he was moving in a dream. A part of his mind floated high above, looking down in wonder that a fight to the death ensued. But Siddhartha’s instincts for survival were strong. He shook himself and made the opening lunge, his sword hand ahead of his dagger so that by warding off the first blade, Devadatta might open himself to the second one. Devadatta was agile and ready-he jumped to the side with a shouted “Ha!” and slashed with his own sword. Siddhartha went by too fast and wasn’t hit.

Devadatta began a relentless round of parry and thrust, making Siddhartha counter blow after blow with his sword. Each time metal clanged on metal, a shock wave went up his arm. Siddhartha’s muscles ached, and he knew that Devadatta had an advantage over him. This was his cousin’s first combat of the day, while Siddhartha had been fighting for hours. He had to win quickly or his energy would fail. Knowing that Devadatta was following his eyes as well, he made a feint, glancing right, taking a half step in that direction. When Devadatta’s dagger followed him, the move opened up his body, and Siddhartha stuck his sword into the exposed midriff. It was incredible luck. If the blow had struck home, it would have been fatal.

But in the instant before the blade entered Devadatta’s body, Siddhartha heard his heartbeat thud in his ears with long stretches in between the strokes. He felt the breeze blow the hairs on his forearm slowly, delicately, back and forth, and each blink of an eye was like a door closing, leading to blackness, before it opened again and the world reappeared.

He felt very different from before-calm, free of anger. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that the mood of the king had shifted. Suddhodana was returning to reason, and as he did, the thought of loss of his only son was intolerable. Suddhodana was within half a breath of stopping the fight. He had yet to register that Siddhartha was about to win. The last thing Siddhartha’s eye caught was his sword inching closer to its perfect target.

Suddhodana shouted, “Stand back, a fighter is down!” He wanted to run forward and embrace his son. The prince stood over Devadatta’s fallen body, panting hard.

“Get up,” he said. Devadatta was shaking his head. Instead of delivering a fatal wound, Siddhartha’s sword tip had been deflected, slicing the skin over his heart. He spat out the dust he’d swallowed going down, aiming deliberately at Siddhartha’s feet. Siddhartha’s eyes fixed on the slimy spot it made.

He held out his hand to Devadatta. “You win, if it pleases you.”

Devadatta refused the hand with contempt. “It’s not going to be that easy, boy,” he hissed. Siddhartha ignored the jibe and turned around.

“I quit this fight,” he said in a loud voice, keeping his eyes away from the king’s. “I can’t prevail over a better man. Give the honor to my cousin.”

Suddhodana shook his head. “You have prevailed. The contest is over,” he shouted, but few heard him. Screams rent the air because, at the moment when Siddhartha turned away from him, Devadatta lifted his dagger and raked its rippled blade across the small of his opponent’s back. Siddhartha staggered. Devadatta brought back his arm to strike straight up into his enemy’s stomach as he doubled over.

Siddhartha never gave him the chance. He reached out and grabbed Devadatta’s hair with one hand while batting the threatening dagger away with the other. The gash it made across his palm was insignificant; rage canceled out the pain. He banged Devadatta’s skull into the packed dirt. The first time was enough to make his opponent half senseless, but Siddhartha repeated the action twice more. Devadatta’s eyes betrayed panic when he realized that he was alone and defenseless. The second time his head smashed against the ground, his eyes glazed over; the third smash, and they rolled up into his head.

Siddhartha paid no attention. He lifted Devadatta’s limp body off the ground in a wrestler’s hold around the chest, squeezing the breath out of him. It was remarkably easy to do, as if he were shaking a rag doll. Siddhartha locked his arms into a vice and leaned back, his face to the sky. Inside a voice said, “This is freedom. This is what the gods feel like when they mete out death.” Siddhartha believed the voice and waited for the moment when he would let Devadatta’s body fall.

As his face turned up to the sky, which was still divided between sun and clouds, his arms felt Devadatta’s body grow more and more still.

Surrender, and be free.

For the first time since he could remember, a voice came to him from another place. Siddhartha’s grip weakened just a fraction.

Surrender, and be free.

When the voice came back again, Siddhartha could hardly keep from shouting back, Haven’t I already surrendered? He had conceded the fight to his enemy, yet instead of freeing him, it had opened him to treachery. What was this new surrender? Where would it take him? Siddhartha felt seized with fear. If he let go of Devadatta, their old enmity would be twice as strong; he would have failed his father and turned victory into humiliation. None of that mattered now. Deep down he knew what he had to surrender. The voice wanted him to jump into the abyss, a place deep inside and completely unknown to him. It was the only way out.

Devadatta quivered and softly moaned. Siddhartha dropped him without being aware of his action. He walked to the edge of a cliff-the image in his mind was as real to him as anything he’d ever seen-and leaped. He saw his arms fly up and the yawning gulf, like a monstrous mouth, below him. His first impulse was to shriek, so dizzying was the sensation of plummeting into emptiness. This must be like dying, he thought. He couldn’t feel his body anymore; no sights or sounds reached him from the outside world. But his worst fears were unfounded. The void was not a place of destruction and chaos. No, it was very different.

He saw his mother holding a baby in her arms, and her face was the sun. He saw Mara sitting on his throne surrounded by swarming, buzzing entities, and his face was the night. He saw his father, an infant swaddled in a suit of armor, crying to be let out because he was suffocating. He saw Sujata, the stars, Channa riding the white stallion Kanthaka. The spectacle whirled and slipped past him like painted gossamer, and Siddhartha laughed, feeling exhilarated. The things that had meant so much were as thin and fragile as tissue.

He kept on falling. The tissuelike images flew apart. It was like watching the wind scatter leaves, and the leaves were his life. As this life evaporated before his eyes, Siddhartha felt a shiver, as if someone had ripped off his winter coat and left him naked in the cold. But he wasn’t naked, and far from dead. Instead of the mask of images and memories, surrounding him on every side was something pure and free: life itself. He couldn’t remember who he was. There was nothing left of his fears and dreams, nothing to do, nothing to want. He was simply alive, the breath of the breath, the eye of the eye.

The falling sensation ended. Siddhartha was held in suspension, an invisible spider dangling from an invisible thread. It would have been wonderful to remain like that. It would have been everything. Then a low throbbing could be heard like distant thunder, and it rolled toward him, a wave of thunder that boomed in the night until the muffled boom turned into a word.

“Son?”

Siddhartha opened his eyes. His father’s stricken face covered the sky. I’m all right, he wanted to say, seeing the sick worry in the king’s eyes. No words came out. They were stifled by Siddhartha’s emotions. He reached back in his mind, trying to return to where he’d been after he leaped into the abyss. There was nothing there.

He felt his father lifting his head; other arms were under his legs and torso. They lowered him onto a litter, and then he was jounced up and down as the bearers ran with him toward the palace. He was returning to his right mind now, full of images and memories once again. What had he done to Devadatta? What would happen to Channa? His whole body felt heavier; it was being tied to earth again by a thousand threads. Siddhartha struggled, desperate to break free. Then a physician’s soothing voice said, “Try to calm down. Quit fighting.” Someone pressed a cold slimy thing to his forehead, and the last thing Siddhartha saw before passing out was the painted ceiling of his father’s bedroom, in the image of the sky.

“HEAT STROKE, THAT’S ALL. Did you see his face? He was sweating like mad, then he turned white as a sheet before they carried him off. He could have died.”

“He went crazy. It was bound to happen. Don’t you know the pressure he’s under? You’d crack too.”

“The wretched boy’s cursed. My wife has a maid who can see demons. The one she saw around him almost scared her to death.”

The rumor mill at court hummed with excited speculation. No one could make their favorite theories stick. They were too bewildered over Siddhartha’s sudden outbreak of violence. Would he ever be himself again? The gods of gossip were not sure. After three days the leeching was over, and the royal physicians, squeezing clotted blood between their fingers, declared that the worst poisons had been extracted. The astrologers sounded guardedly optimistic about the transit of Mercury coming to an end after it had combusted with the sun. In their eyes, malefic forces had taken over Siddhartha. Suddhodana didn’t believe any of it. But no one had died, and if his guests went away thinking he had raised a half-demented son, it was better than thinking he had raised a gentle one.

Even though Devadatta’s dagger had drawn considerable blood, and losing more was dangerous, Siddhartha felt no distress over the leeching-not compared to the shroud of sadness that would not unwind from his heart. His father refused to leave him unattended, but late at night when the nurse’s head lolled on her breast-Siddhartha made sure she was given a double cup of liquor with supper-he crept out of bed and paced the floor. In his mind he would approach the edge of an abyss again, but when he jumped, nothing happened. It was simply his imagination.

Siddhartha got reluctant permission to have Channa admitted to his room. He breathed a sigh when he set eyes on him. He was still alive. Siddhartha’s relief was too enormous to disguise. Channa was embarrassed; he raised his voice and talked about the whole affair with bravado. “No one’s going to kill me. I have friends everywhere. I’m protected.” But Siddhartha noticed welts on Channa’s shoulders, and when he pressed him for an explanation, the truth emerged.

There was consternation on the field of combat when Siddhartha and Devadatta had both been carried away. The king ordered the massed fighters to remain in place, which added an air of threat to the confusion, but he wanted to make sure that every guest realized that his army was always at the ready. No one had time for Channa, who ran back to the stables and packed his best saddle horse to leave. As he was stuffing food and blankets into leather bags, he sensed that someone had entered the stall.

“Father?” He turned around expecting to confront Bikram, who would never forgive him for touching a high-caste. But it was the king, who had not forgotten Channa for a moment. He brandished a whip in his hands.

“I expect you to take what’s coming to you and then keep your mouth shut.”

Without waiting for a reaction, Suddhodana struck the youth across the chest with the lash’s iron-tipped barbs-there were three, a gentler version of the deadly seven-tipped whip used in battle. The pain was excruciating; Channa fell to the ground and rolled over, which was fortunate, because the king was in a genuine rage and vented it by striking him, over and over, across the back and shoulders instead of his face.

The only way that Channa could keep from passing out was to force himself not to count the blows. This one’s the last, he thought every time the iron hooks raked his flesh. It never was the last, however, or so it seemed. Then he became aware that the searing pain was coming not from the lash anymore but from the wounds he already had. Channa risked looking up, and he saw the king stooped over, panting hard with the whip dropped to the stable floor.

“Walk around, make sure everyone sees your wounds. Don’t dress them for two days.” Suddhodana was focused on him, but not with rage or implacable cold hatred. Channa could almost read sympathy, as if he’d had to punish his own son. “Then have Bikram hide you for a month, somewhere far away. Somewhere a hired assassin won’t look. They’re lazy; they won’t go very far to find you. And never go near Devadatta again, understand?”

They both knew that Channa was being let off easy. By rights he should have been turned over to the priests, who would have meted out maximum punishment as a show of power over the king. As Suddhodana turned away, Channa mumbled, “Thank you.”

The king looked back at him, and now his eyes were stone cold. “Your father was a horse thief when I met him. That’s a hanging offense, and if I ever have a whim to kill him, why not take the son along too? Just to be sure.”

Channa related only the bare bones of this incident to Siddhartha. The prince was troubled enough by the welts he could see; the worst were hidden under Channa’s tunic. Several days passed before Siddhartha told Channa about his own mysterious experience.

Channa was amazed. “You turned into a god. What else could it be?”

Siddhartha didn’t know whether to be shocked or amused. But when Channa’s face remained serious, even a little awed, he said, “I shouldn’t have told you. I should just go to old Canki and get him to purify me.”

“I wouldn’t. Not until somebody purifies him.” Channa’s contempt for the Brahmin was open, despite the risk he was running if the priest should find out. “How long have I been getting school from him? Ever since any of us can remember. You think that matters? He’d see me stretched out on a rack as soon as look at me. He thinks I’m an animal, and he has scripture to back him up.”

Siddhartha looked grim. “And I’m not much better.”

Channa was stunned; the color rushed to his face. Siddhartha rushed ahead. “I mean, caste keeps my life perfect. That’s the word you used, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re stronger than me or smarter or braver. The fact that we embraced when you walked in the door today could mean a death sentence if my father decreed it.”

Channa straightened up. “I am stronger than you, that part’s true.”

“The rest is true too.” Siddhartha couldn’t help smiling.

Channa said, “You can change the world when it’s yours to play with. The rest of us have to live in it.”

“You think I’m going to get the world?”

“It’s just what they say.”

Siddhartha knew it was better to let the whole subject die. He had lived a long time with the knowledge that even his best friend, at some level that reason couldn’t touch, regarded him with superstitious awe. It wouldn’t matter that Channa had seen the worst of Siddhartha, watched him cry, run away, complain bitterly about his father. It wouldn’t matter that the prince was a creature of flesh and blood or that Channa had often in the heat of sword practice drawn his blood. Being the friend of a royal gave Channa the special status and protection that he enjoyed. But there was a limit to royal protection with an enemy as cunning as Devadatta.

The realization came to Siddhartha that he had always regarded his cousin with anxiety. Devadatta had been like a blade held lightly against his throat. That’s what was now missing. Fear. Siddhartha couldn’t bring back the old sense of threat.

If he wasn’t afraid of Devadatta anymore, what else wasn’t he afraid of? Siddhartha reached inside and opened the hidden trunks of memory, expecting that phantoms of dread would fly out. But the trunk was empty. He had been a death-haunted child, a boy full of fears without a mother.

Tears were rolling down his cheeks now. It was the first time in his life that truth had made Siddhartha weep. That’s what had changed when he jumped into the abyss. He exchanged illusion for truth. He felt purified, and yet some part of him couldn’t rejoice in it. What would it be like to be the only man who wasn’t afraid? His father was afraid despite his battles won; Canki was afraid despite the favor of the gods; Channa was afraid despite his bravado. None of them would be able to grasp this change in Siddhartha. They might even hate him for it.

WITH THE CURTAINS CLOSED and one candle guttering to a spark, Sujata’s room was almost dark. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling. In her mind she kept going over what she should have said to Siddhartha. Everything had gone wrong. Even when she got her heart’s desire and he showed that he wanted her, she had run away. Sometimes when she woke up in the middle of the night, all Sujata could think about was the fact that Siddhartha had looked at her with longing. She fixed that look in her mind and swore she would never let it go.

The simple truth is that Sujata was waiting for Siddhartha to come to her on his own. So when she lay half asleep and the door creaked open, Sujata was instantly wide awake. She trembled under the sheets and widened her eyes to see him in the dark, to make sure this wasn’t another phantom of her imagination.

She saw the outline of a strong young man moving toward the bed, his bearing erect, moving quickly because he desired her so strongly. Fear and exultation fought wildly in Sujata’s breast. If only her bed could have been prepared properly for love, with scattered flower petals, rose water, and sprinkled spices known to make a man aroused.

For a fleeting instant Sujata thought of her mother and wondered if she had been in the same situation. She banished this thought as soon as it came. She didn’t want to think about anything when Siddhartha’s hand took hers; he was bending over her, lowering his face to kiss her.

“Hold still. If you scream I’ll kill you.”

Scream was all she wanted to do, in that instant when she realized this wasn’t Siddhartha and horror had entered her sanctuary. The man’s hand came over her face, covering mouth and nose so that she would be too breathless to cry out, even to think. But panic had already seen to that.

“You’ve been waiting for me a long time. I’ve seen your light. I wanted the moment to be perfect, sweetheart.”

It was unmistakably Devadatta. He tore open her bodice with quick efficiency and began to knead her breasts with his hands, roughly and without consideration for how it hurt her.

Please stop… I’ll do whatever you want.

With her breathing cut off, Sujata didn’t know if she actually spoke those words or if they were a desperate prayer. Devadatta had opened her dress against her feeble struggling, and she felt his hand opening her legs. Half-suffocated as she was, she couldn’t sob. Devadatta was having her, and his thrusts were violent signals of his savagery and disdain.

She went limp, hoping that her rapist would spare her more violence. Devadatta suddenly stopped what he was doing to her. “I know who you want!” he said, and the menace in his voice should have warned her. But Sujata, knowing she was dead, felt a flood of relief.

The only mercy remaining to her was that Devadatta acted swiftly in the dark. She couldn’t detect him pulling out his rippled dagger. “Remember that the last thing you ever saw was me,” he growled at the instant that the blade swept across her eyes. Sujata heard a shriek that must have been her own, then the searing pain came, and she stopped breathing. She was spared the spectacle of Devadatta rolling off her body with a groan. He tried to control himself, but his hands were shaking.

Devadatta realized his predicament: someone would come sooner or later, and there was no time to waste. He seized hold of himself and started the work in front of him. He wrapped Sujata in bed sheets and tied her shrouded body with curtain cords. He easily slipped past the guards and found a sentry’s horse tethered by the gates. He loaded the corpse on its rump and rode quietly toward the river. Mara was already there; he stood by while Devadatta, still not speaking, strong enough that carrying the body didn’t make him groan with exertion, approached the water.

“Weigh her down with stones,” Mara ordered. Devadatta shot him a look of hatred and dumped the bundle into the water. The bed sheets were not securely tied, and they billowed out over the surface of the river, a spectral white like sails in the moonlight. They retained enough air in bulges and bubbles that Sujata didn’t sink immediately, and the fast current carried her away. Devadatta didn’t wait. He wanted to forget that Mara was beside him.

“Not beside, dearest. Inside,” Mara said with satisfaction.

Devadatta trembled in despair. He had no doubt that the gods didn’t exist. But at that moment he understood why, when the horror of life finally reveals itself, somebody had to invent them.