Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

12

Gautama passed several travelers on the road who could have directed him to one of the forest ashrams where teachers were located. He greeted them humbly, letting them decide to accept his company for a few miles or not; a handful offered him food for his bowl. But he was reluctant to throw himself into the midst of a band of disciples. Gautama wanted to learn, but he didn’t want to give up who he was. His only model for a spiritual teacher was Canki, who had a hidden motive for everything he said.

It wasn’t long before he ran across a wandering monk, a thin, sunburned man who seemed old enough to have had a family with grown children. Gautama expected that the sannyasis he met would be very serious or very eccentric. But this monk, who gave his name as Ganaka, turned out to be cheerful and sociable.

“I’ve been away for twelve years now, lad,” he said as they walked along the road. “You meet all sorts. But now the local people know me, and I’m treated pretty well. Your first holdup’s a shock, though. The dacoits like you to know who’s boss.”

“Do you belong to an ashram?” Gautama asked.

Ganaka shrugged. “I’ve visited them. You get too hungry sometimes.”

“What Dharma do you follow?”

The older monk gave him a look. “Is that what you’re after? I didn’t know you were one of those.” He had nothing more to say for a while, and Gautama wondered with some puzzlement if the word Dharma had offended him. How could you be a monk without a teaching? When he decided to speak again, the older monk said, “Don’t let them fool you.”

“Who?”

“These teachers who promise enlightenment. Listen to the voice of experience. I’m not enlightened, and you won’t be either. They’ll feed you a pack of high-sounding ideas, you’ll work for them year after year, and then when they’ve worn you out, you’ll leave with the taste of ashes in your mouth.”

There was a lot to read in Ganaka’s bitter tone. In a sympathetic voice Gautama said, “Tell me your experience. I want to know.”

Ganaka sighed. “In that case, you’d better have some of my bread. I was going to save it until you were out of sight.” He reached into his shawl and pulled out a large round roti, or flat bread, folded into quarters. He ripped off half for Gautama, but not before blessing it. “I see myself in you,” the older monk began. “I left home after my wife died. I was a vendor of ghee and spices in a village, never rich enough to own a proper store but not poor either.”

“And you were devout?”

“Oh, yes. Raised by a strict father who sent us to the temple for lessons as soon as we could walk. As a child I believed. Even when my dear Bhadda died in so much pain, moaning pitifully for her suffering to end, I believed. I gave away all my earthly possessions, and with the blessing of the priests I set out on my journey.”

“I think you’re still devout,” said Gautama. “You bless your food. Even when no one is watching, I imagine.”

“Habit,” the older monk said curtly. “Anyway, the road is a hard life. I went to visit the forest ashrams, eager as a bridegroom the night after the wedding. I sat at the guru’s feet and waited, mouth open like a gaping fish. That’s why I see myself in you. You want them to drop their wisdom into your gaping mouth. You’re probably a philosopher. No offense, but I can tell by your accent that you never sold rubbish from a stall in the open bazaar.”

“I can’t disagree,” said Gautama diplomatically, caught between smiling at the older monk, who clearly had been dying for someone to talk to, and worrying about the tale of disillusion that was about to unfold.

Ganaka tore off a chunk of roti with his yellow teeth. “They’re shameless, these gurus. The garbage they spew as truth! Do they think we’re fools? They must, as I found out the hard way. I took some of the younger disciples aside and joked with them a bit. Little stuff. Does this guru get paid by the yarn, like a wandering storyteller? Does he think you can feed cows on moonbeams? Next thing I knew, I got thrown out bodily, like I came to steal their shoes. Hypocrisy.” His voice trailed off mournfully as he ran out of spleen. “Moonbeams and hypocrisy.”

“What did you decide to do?”

“I couldn’t go home. I’d given almost everything to the priests, and they don’t give back. But you’ve got some sense, you could see that I’m still devout. I pray, and I have a circuit of householders who feed me and let me take refuge from the storm.”

“Pardon me, but aren’t you simply waiting to die?” asked Gautama.

Ganaka shrugged. “It’s a life.”

Before Gautama could pose another question, they heard a commotion up ahead. A man was screaming curses, a woman was crying. Gautama’s steps quickened, and when he rounded the next curve he saw what the trouble was. A laden bullock cart going to market had run off into the ditch. Several bags of grain had spilled out. A woman was crouched on the ground trying to scoop up the scattered grain with her hands, while over her stood her furious husband.

“Are you an idiot? You’re putting dirt back in the bags. Stop bawling!” he shouted. He began to beat her about the shoulders with his bullock goad.

Gautama came toward them. When he saw a monk, the husband sullenly lowered his stick. “Is your animal hurt?” Gautama asked, noticing that the bullock, which was old and blind in one eye, had fallen onto its front knees.

Without answering, the man began to apply the goad heavily to the bullock, who lowed mournfully as it struggled to regain its footing. Out of panic it pulled the wrong way and tilted the cart farther over; more bags spilled out, and the woman began to weep loudly. Beside himself now, the man couldn’t decide which one to beat next, the bullock or his wife.

“Wait,” begged Gautama. “I can help you.”

“How?” the husband grumbled. “If I have to give you a bag of rice, you’re cheating me.”

“Don’t think about that, just try to calm down,” Gautama coaxed.

Once he got the husband to back off from his rage, Gautama helped him free the bullock from its yoke and unload the cart. Then he and the man shouldered the cart from the rear and with considerable grunting and groaning rolled it out of the ditch. While they sweated in the hot sun, the wife sat in the shade holding the bullock’s tether and fanning herself with a palm leaf.

“There.” Gautama stood back after the last bag of grain had been put back into place.

Without a word the man got into the driver’s seat. “Are you coming or not?” he said sourly to his wife.

She put her hands on her hips. “Why? So I can go home with a man who beats his bullock into a ditch and is so stupid it takes a monk to show him how to get it out again?”

Gautama could see that the man wanted to hit her again with the goad, but his shame kept him from doing it in front of a holy man. He bit his lip while his wife climbed into the cart, flashing a contemptuous smile at the young monk. The cart began to trundle off. Over his shoulder the man said, “Whatever rice you can pick out of the road is yours. Namaste.”

Gautama turned around to find Ganaka standing a dozen yards away laughing, and he was clearly laughing at him. “How long have you been standing there?” Gautama demanded, feeling the blood rising to his face.

“The whole time,” said the older monk nonchalantly. He was chewing a stem of sour grass he’d plucked from the roadside.

“Is there a stream nearby? I need to wash my face,” Gautama said curtly. There was no point, he thought, in asking why Ganaka hadn’t helped or if he had heard of the monastic vow of service. The older monk led the way to a fresh rivulet in the forest. Gautama poured water from his begging bowl over his head and shoulders while Ganaka watched, squatting on his heels.

“Those people didn’t love you for what you did,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t expect them to,” Gautama replied. The stream was shallow enough that the water he poured over his back felt as warm as bathwater. His tense muscles began to relax.

Ganaka said, “If you didn’t want them to love you, at least you wanted gratitude. You’re just too proud to admit it. And angry that I laughed at you. Imagine, here you are being a saint, and a monk, no less, ridicules you for it.”

Hearing the truth stung, but Gautama was too exhausted to work up heavy resentment. Instead he said, “Was I ridiculous in your eyes?”

“Why would it matter? A saint has to rise above ridicule. Maybe I was trying to teach you that.”

“Are you my teacher now? I thought you hated teachers.” Gautama knew that he had let childish pique creep into his voice, but he didn’t care.

He expected Ganaka to keep on mocking him, but the older monk’s voice grew suddenly serious. “I’m part of the world. If you want a teacher, turn to the world.”

Gautama stepped out of the water, feeling cooler but still sore with the sense of having been badly used. “The world’s wisdom is contained in you? Congratulations.”

“Not all the world’s wisdom, but a piece of it. The piece you need to hear,” said Ganaka calmly.

“And what is that?”

“Are you free enough of anger to listen?” Ganaka asked. He met Gautama’s stare. “I didn’t think so.” He sat under a tree and watched Gautama as indifferently as he had watched the husband and wife in trouble. Gautama could have walked away, but after a moment he felt settled enough to sit down beside the older monk.

“Everything you say is true,” he admitted.

“Only it shouldn’t be. That’s your position, isn’t it? That when you act like a saint, you should be loved, and whoever sees you doing good works should be inspired to join you.”

“All right, yes,” said Gautama reluctantly. “What’s your position? That you can be my teacher by standing around and letting me do all the work?”

“There was no work to do.”

“I think there was,” Gautama protested.

“Then tell me where I’m wrong. The man would have calmed down eventually and figured out how to unyoke his animal and empty the cart. He and his wife were strong enough to push the cart out of the ditch, and if they weren’t, they could walk back to their village and get help. So by helping them, you kept them from helping themselves.”

“Go on.”

“If you thought you were preventing violence because the man stopped beating his wife, all you really did was shame him. He will not only resent you for that; he will beat his wife extra hard tonight to make a point. He is master, she is slave.”

“And no one should try to show them a better way?”

“Maybe, but why should it be you? They had parents and priests who taught them right from wrong. They must know families where the wife isn’t beaten every time the husband loses his temper. Or maybe they don’t. Why should it be up to you? You’re a wandering beggar,” Ganaka pointed out.

Gautama was too tired to argue in the face of the older monk’s certainty. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he mumbled.

Ganaka laughed with a hint of scorn. “You can do better than that. I can tell what you’re thinking. You’re highborn, so that makes you right. No question about it.”

“Do you always goad people like this?” Gautama asked, resolving not to make himself the butt of this irksome cynic.

“Is there any other way to learn?” Ganaka replied. “If you don’t want the world to have more shame, helplessness, and slavery, stop doing what you did today. All you did was increase it.” He got to his feet, as indifferent as if they’d been talking about the possibility of rain, and looked around for the shortest way back to the main road.

“Thank you for the bread, and the company,” Gautama said, forcing the words out.

Ganaka shrugged. “I may not be enlightened enough to suit you, my idealistic lad. But I’m far from being a fool. Don’t pretend you’re a saint. Experience tells me that they might not even exist.”

THE OLD KING mourned the day he saw his son ride out the gates of Kapilavastu, but he didn’t send guards to break into the Shiva temple and arrest the high Brahmin. The writing had been on the wall a long time before their plan finally failed. Canki realized that fate had turned against him, and he decided to appear in the king’s chambers one morning unannounced. He bowed without prostrating himself on the floor.

“I hope you don’t have the gall to try to console me,” Suddhodana grumbled. He had taken to sleeping late, and more often than not there was a young courtesan on the pillow by his side, the only consolation Suddhodana wanted these days.

“I’m only a priest, bringing the king’s wishes before the gods,” Canki said.

“I had only one wish, and you failed to make it come true. Your presence is distasteful to us. You should stay home.”

They had hatched their conspiracy almost thirty years earlier, and Suddhodana wasn’t one to look backward. He placed little faith in the promise that Siddhartha would return. “Return as what?” he said. “He’ll never come back a king.” The last part he didn’t voice aloud to anyone, just as he didn’t voice a secret intention he had, to name Devadatta as his successor. The notion had come to him in a dream. He often revisited old battles in his dreams, but not as he had fought them. Instead he was a wanderer among the dead.

Night after night Suddhodana saw himself asleep in his tent, still dressed in armor. He would wake up feeling stifled, suffocating for air. He would throw aside the tent flap, and scattered around him in the moonlight would be bodies, thick on the ground in poses of agony. He didn’t weep over them; he hated them for troubling his peace.

However, this dream was different. He wandered the dusty field listlessly, head bowed. He came across a shallow grave. A body lay faceup, arms crossed over its chest. A cloud passed away from the moon, and he recoiled to see Siddhartha’s corpse. A cry erupted from his chest, and Suddhodana leaped into the grave. He embraced the corpse, which was horribly cold. Suddhodana was wracked with sobs, so strongly that he was sure it would wake him up. Instead, the corpse moved. Suddhodana clutched it tighter, praying that his own life could seep into his son and revive him.

The corpse’s head was beside his ear, and a voice said, “The prince is not the king.” These were Siddhartha’s words, and the moment they were spoken Suddhodana woke up in a cold sweat, but not before he got an instant’s glimpse of the face again, which melted into dust.

He turned now to Canki. “You’ve been released. That’s why I’m not going to kill you,” he said.

“Released?”

“From our plot. I’m not heartless. I know what I’ve done, to my son and to all those people who suffered.”

Canki had never heard the king talk this way; remorse wasn’t in his nature. In fact, the high Brahmin had intruded in the royal chambers to remind Suddhodana that his son still had a great destiny ahead of him.

“You must have another plan. I will aid you however I can. I sense that you’ve found a ray of hope. True?”

Suddhodana gave a derisive snort. “So, you’re not in your dotage after all. I thought priests softened when they saw heaven coming closer.” He didn’t wait for a reply. “What if Devadatta is king? Do we trust him?”

“Is that really necessary?” Canki said coolly. After Sujata’s disappearance Devadatta had fallen under a cloud, yet he might be a necessary tool, and for that reason the king hadn’t banished him.

“Explain yourself,” Suddhodana demanded.

“The boy came here as a prisoner. He turned into a schemer. You have no idea if he really loves you or simply fears you. For myself, I don’t think anyone could find out the truth. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is ambition. If you promise Devadatta the throne, two purposes will be served. You will put out the fire of his hatred. And you will give your kingdom to someone as vicious as you are.”

Heaven had to be close indeed for anyone, let alone a Brahmin, to risk those last words. Suddhodana looked at Canki, who had lost much of his imposing bulk. His haughtiness seemed to have shrunk with his body.

“You call it vicious, I call it being strong,” Suddhodana said.

Canki and the king bent their heads together, rethinking every aspect of the new plan, mulling over every possible point where it might go wrong. Conspiracy was their only bond, and now that new blood flowed into it, the king felt alive as he hadn’t for a long time.

SUDDHODANA WOULD NEVER KNOW if a demon or a god had sent him his prophetic dream. But a demon wanted Devadatta to be king. Of that there was no doubt. For almost ten years Mara had been bored by mortal affairs. He had watched Devadatta and Siddhartha like twin horses trying to break the yoke that bound them. He hated the way humans clung to indecision.

Devadatta had grown more violent over the years. His night excursions into the poor parts of the city ended as often in murder now as in rape. Since he was protected by caste, no one dared assassinate him for fear that they would be damned in the afterlife. So the common people set up watch, and when Devadatta’s horse was spied, or if he showed his face in a tavern, word spread quickly and doors were locked. He found himself lurking deserted streets, and in time his great problem wasn’t his obsessive urge to hurt-it was loneliness.

His only escape these days was to go out riding, either to hunt deer or race his mount mile after mile until both rider and horse were totally spent. This reckless sport injured and crippled several fine horses, but it was the only way Devadatta had found to forget himself. One day soon after Siddhartha left to become a sannyasi-a decision Devadatta considered criminal for a prince of the blood but one that he rejoiced in as well, for now he had an opening, an opportunity to seize control of the kingdom-Devadatta had left the main road in order to force his horse to gallop where the trees were thick, adding to the thrill of his excursion.

Suddenly he smelled smoke in the air. He stopped and rose in the stirrups, casting his eyes over the trees until he saw the thin wisp of a campfire. Normally he wouldn’t have cared. Fires were set by woodcutters and other workers, never women. But Devadatta heard a faint whisper in his ear, and on impulse he rode toward the fire.

Sitting by the fire with his back turned to him was Siddhartha, and he hadn’t become a monk at all. He was still wearing his princely robe and embroidered skirt. His cousin had simply run off for some secret reason. In the next instant, however, Devadatta’s horse stepped on a twig with a loud crack. The man by the fire turned his head, and Devadatta saw that he was mistaken. The man smiled nervously, and his cracked teeth and stubbled beard betrayed that he was a beggar. Devadatta could see that he was roasting a dead parrot he must have scavenged on the forest floor.

“Friend, can I help you?” The man stood up, smiling anxiously.

“Don’t call me friend,” said Devadatta coldly. “Where did you steal those clothes? Did you kill someone for them, or are you with the dacoits?”

“Kill?” The man looked alarmed now as Devadatta slowly rode toward him. “I couldn’t be no killer, or no dacoit, sir. As Your Worship can see, I’m all alone.”

It was true that forest thieves always traveled in packs. “What if I believe you? You still have on royal clothes, anyone can see, filthy as they’ve gotten,” said Devadatta, making his voice as menacing as he could.

The man started to strip Siddhartha’s robes off. “You can have ’em, sir. I never been to court. I knew they was fine clothes, but I never suspected them of being royal. Not for a minute, I swear.”

The poor man was too frightened to run and had no chance of escape if he did. Devadatta had already seen what must have happened in his mind’s eye. A wretched beggar lying in a ditch. His fool of a cousin taking pity-hadn’t he already wasted years ministering to the poor? No doubt he lifted the beggar up and gave him the clothes off his back. Devadatta shook his head.

“Stop trembling,” he said. “And put your clothes back on. You think I’d touch them?”

“Thank you, sir.” The beggar mumbled his gratitude and with one eye glanced over at the fire, where he had dropped the parrot. His meal had roasted to a crisp, and he looked pained.

“It’s ruined,” said Devadatta, nodding toward the fire. “Forget it. I’ll make sure you don’t need to beg anymore.”

The beggar’s smile would have turned to a look of puzzlement, but he had no time for that. It took a matter of seconds for Devadatta to draw his sword and even less, given his years of practice with the weapon, to chop off the beggar’s head with one swipe.

That evening Suddhodana heard women wailing outside his rooms. Something in their cries was heartrending. This wasn’t another funeral formality for an aged courtier. He opened the door to see every lady at court kneeling along the entire length of the main corridor.

“Out of my way!”

He strode through the mass of female bodies, bent as low as hummocks in a meadow, with little care that he was stepping on them. In the main courtyard of the palace the court men formed a dense crowd, some murmuring in low, grim tones, others shouting oaths and imprecations. The crowd was a thick, angry mass like a single creature. By now Suddhodana’s blood was cold. It could only be one thing. The crowd parted when he was spotted, and all but the most senior advisers and generals prostrated themselves on the cobblestones, which were still hot as cooking stones so soon after sunset.

“Where is he? Where is my son?”

Suddhodana followed the eyes of the men around him. Their gaze formed a path, and at the end stood Devadatta. He had dismounted. Over his tall horse, whose sides were panting from a hard ride, a body was draped. It took a second before the king recognized his son’s clothes hanging off the corpse. The head had been cut off, leaving a grisly stem.

Suddhodana recoiled in revulsion. He had no desire to come closer or to take a second look. He turned and put one foot ahead of the other until he had reached the security of his darkened rooms. The heat of the cobblestones seeped through his sandals. The old king felt it, and somehow his hot shoes stuck in his mind, the way trivial things often do, as the first thing he remembered on the long road of suffering that stretched ahead forever.