Bride of the Buddha Read online

  The monk arranged his upper robe over his shoulder, preparing to leave. “Of course, but some of the monks are less encouraging than others. You may need to shout after all.”

  After five days listening to gossip and philosophy, sleeping fully clothed in temples and pavilions, and bathing after midnight at a deserted ghat just outside the city, I felt ready to face the future. In the dead of night I put on a fresh white robe Ama had given me, and at dawn I began the hour-long walk to King Bimbisara’s Grove, accepting a stale chapati from an elderly, hunchback woman, one of the many people of all varnas eager to create conditions for a better rebirth by feeding holy men—the more varieties of holy the better to increase the likelihood you’d chosen an effective one.

  It was another crystalline post-monsoon morning, with broad fields similar to those of the Sakyans but for the rocky hills towering around me. The valley itself was flatter than the Sakyan countryside, its river more leisurely, as befitting one of the most prosperous kingdoms in the land. Outside the city walls, King Bimbisara’s five-tiered, glazed-brick, pink palace soared like a celestial citadel in the western distance, far bigger and more splendid than Suddhodana’s establishment. I swallowed an unexpected lump in my throat. What sort of power did my former husband have, that he could convert the ruler of such a place? A single straight highway led in its direction, paved with stones so smooth one’s feet didn’t trudge but whispered, as if to prepare the traveler for the divinity beyond. Even at this early hour, a river of people, about half of them in holy robes, headed toward the complex.

  The Tathagata was to give his talk in a bamboo grove not far from the palace. By the time I arrived, hundreds of people of all varnas had gathered, the rich seated on cushions under a white silk canopy; the rest of the laypeople on the matted grass between clumps of jade-stemmed bamboo. The slender bamboo trunks soared as high as Bimbisara’s palace, their sun-filled leaves suffusing everything with a living green light, reminding me of the palm grove where I had dissolved into the soul of the universe, an experience I was sure would not be repeated today. What if I ended up making a spectacle of myself? And what if my son was here? I longed for the sight of him, but what if it made me lose my resolve?

  Around noon, King Bimbisara’s servants, wearing scarlet turbans and gold livery, served rice and red lentils on banana leaves to the laypeople. As I struggled to swallow a bite or two, I spotted a pair of middle-aged monks weaving their way through the crowd. The two resembled descriptions I’d heard over the past week of the Tathagata’s two main disciples, Sariputta and Mogallana, and they were heading in the direction of the dais. Abandoning my food, I hurried toward them.

  “Excuse me, sirs, but I wish to speak to the Master in hopes of joining the Sangha,” I said, the sentence coming out as one uninterrupted word.

  Sariputta, small-featured and still-faced, smiled serenely, bowed, and headed off, leaving me to his companion, the teak-skinned Mogallana. I looked up into his deep-set brown eyes and fleshy, olive-black face, alive with a world’s worth of expressions, changing every instant, yet all of them friendly in one way or another. If there was ever evidence of rebirth, Mogallana was it, carrying points of view from all his lifetimes with him, all transfigured into benevolence by his present blissful incarnation.

  “And what do you call yourself?” he asked.

  He had not asked my name, but rather what I called myself. He was not about to force me into a lie. He knew. “Ananda,” I said.

  “Well, Ananda—”

  “Excuse me.” A tall monk in a dingy, patched robe was approaching, and at the sight of his narrow face and acerbic eyes, I felt a cold fist in my throat. It was Devadatta.

  Of course he would be here at the center of everything. He looked the same as I remembered, except thinner, his jaw more prominent, his skin stretched tightly across his sharp cheekbones. He’d acquired the look of an ascetic, and the hard creases bracketing his mouth made me think he lacked mercy for himself and others.

  Devadatta asked Mogallana, “Is this fellow bothering you?” He nodded in my direction.

  “Not at all,” Mogallana said. “He simply wishes to join the Sangha. He goes by the name Ananda.”

  Devadatta burned his gaze into mine. “Where are you from?”

  I swallowed. Like my father he’d never really looked at me; but perhaps I’d been foolish to hope he’d be unable to conceive of me as a man. “The northern part of the Sakyan territory,” I said. “My father’s name is Chetan.” One of the few names Ama knew from the disease-decimated remote village.

  “So you’re a Sakyan,” he said. “Then why is it I’ve never heard of you? I, too, am Sakyan.”

  “My village is far from here,” I said. “And few of my people travel.”

  Devattta closed his eyes and seemed to enter into meditation. What was he up to? I glanced over at Mogallana, who seemed unperturbed. After a long moment, Devadatta spoke. “I must tell you, I’m renowned for my psychic powers.”

  I couldn’t run. I could do nothing but wait for what he had to say. Cold sweat wormed down the back of my neck.

  “I sense Mara’s presence here,” he said. “I fear you may not be speaking the truth.”

  “I am Sakyan,” I said, barely able to breathe. “I only wish to learn from the Blessed One.”

  Suddenly, Mogallana intervened. “Devadatta,” he said, “why are you harassing this monk, whose motives are pure?”

  Devadatta bowed his head. “My apologies, Noble One, but I fear that he belongs to a lower varna, and he’s concealing this fact. Otherwise I would have heard of his family.”

  “Is this true?” Mogallana asked me.

  All at once Mara came to my aid—or so I interpreted it later—filling me with the kind of huffy righteousness that banishes fear, and in that way prevents the suspicious behavior fear can engender. I was also relieved that Devadatta’s pyschic powers, such as they were, didn’t include the ability to see through my robes. “The Sangha accepts all varnas,” I said. “I don’t see the need to recite my genealogy.”

  Mogallana smiled equably at us both. “This young monk is correct, Devadatta, as you well know.”

  “Of course,” Devadatta said, “but I’m concerned that the Sangha has invited too many men of low origins into our company. Lately, we’ve had brawls and drunkenness, and even King Bimbisara has noticed.” He addressed me. “Friend, discipline is extremely important in our Sangha, and many monks from lower varnas simply are not prepared for Mara’s temptations. You would do well to return home and fulfill your class duties. In this way, you’ll earn merit for a better reincarnation. If as a monk you succumb to the Evil One, you will fall much farther than a layperson—you could get yourself reborn in hell.”

  “I’m willing to take that risk,” I said. “I imagine Mara would pose an even greater threat to upper-class monks with high opinions of themselves.”

  I thought I saw a glimmer of amusement in Mogallana’s brown eyes, but Devadatta’s narrow Sakyan face tightened. “I have only your welfare in mind, monk,” he said. “I can sense Mara inside of you even as you speak.”

  “Enough, Devadatta,” Mogallana said. “Mara has coursed through all our lifetimes and lingered in all our souls.” He smiled at me. “We’ve all been Mara many times over.” Later, I would learn that Mogallana had supposedly remembered all of his countless lives, including one where he had murdered his parents. And although he was now fully enlightened, he had stated that his past karma would cause his death to be a violent one, which turned out to be so.

  “Well, then,” Devadatta said to Mogallana, not looking at me at all, “I leave this monk to you.” He flipped his upper robe over his shoulder and marched off.

  Mogallana turned to me. “Come to the platform after the Dharma talk. The Blessed One will interview you then.”

  I bowed to him in gratitude, my heart soaring with relief. “I only wi
sh to be a good monk.”

  “Then mark well your karma,” he said in a not unkindly way. Yet I knew what he meant: my Mara self had created the karma of turning Devadatta into an enemy—and I hadn’t yet even joined the Sangha.

  Not long after the midday meal, King Bimbisara and his Queen—reputedly an even more devoted supporter of the Tathagata than her husband—arrived with their entourage. They both wore brocade paridhanas, he in russet and gold, she in blue and silver, yet their splendor faded into the background with the approach of the Tathagata in his simple ocher robes. I sat about two-thirds of the way back in the crowd—close enough to see that he was as physically peerless as ever; he also emanated that impersonal radiance I remembered from the last time I saw him, which now brought a hush to the crowd and compelled every gaze to follow him as he mounted the dais. Except mine. For directly behind him, his head shaved and in almost every way a smaller version of his father, was my son.

  Tears burned my eyes. It was all I could do not to rush up to the stage, crying out, “My darling!” and bundling him into my arms. My sweet one! Rahula had grown taller and lost every bit of his childhood plumpness, yet he looked happy. And right next to him was Mogallana, who appeared to be one of his teachers, for which I rejoiced.

  But nothing could quell my longing to be with him as his mother, and without realizing it, I’d stood up and taken a step toward him, remembering his boyish scent and the softness at the back of his neck. Then our eyes met, and the innocent curiosity in his face filled me with love, then dread. If I were found out in this public way, I would most probably be banished from my son forever. And what would Rahula think of me, his mother, in the guise of a male? He could be repulsed or horrified far beyond simply never wanting to see me again.

  I sat down, my back rigid and my heart thrashing, and ordered myself to listen to the talk, about how clinging to worldly phenomena caused suffering. The Master made another point: that this clinging was always the clinging of possession and identification. Was it true that I loved Rahula only because he was my son? And how selfish was my craving to be with him? How much of it was my clinging to the identity of being his mother?

  Selfish or not, I knew that the only way I could be with my son was to join the Sangha. And the Tathagata would discern my craving simply by looking at me.

  After the talk, I stopped at the edge of the crowd around the Tathagata, who was still seated on the platform, patiently conversing with all sorts of people, from vulture-catchers to Bimbisara’s queen. The cowering child-self inside me almost hoped he wouldn’t notice me, that he’d go off with his attendants and I’d never see him again. But all of a sudden he stood up, engulfing me in his gaze. “Please come with me,” he said, descending from the dais, and I had no doubt he was speaking directly to me, and that he’d recognized me right off. The crowd parted on either side of him. Woozy with a terror that contained a sense of momentousness of what I was about to do, I followed him into the depths of the grove. And even though I thoroughly believed that my deception was justified, I still suffered the guilt of a child who has broken her parents’ rules.

  We stopped in front of a shed, which housed a single room, simply constructed of varnished sal wood, with narrow scalloped windows on all sides. It had to be an interview room, I decided, and when the Tathagata ushered me inside, it seemed to contain its own silence. In here it felt as if the crowd outside had abruptly gone mute.

  We sat cross-legged on low cushions, facing each other. The room was entirely of polished pale hardwood, with no adornments but for a single brass bowl containing a blue lotus, its petals edged with flame-orange. When I looked up from the flower I saw in his eyes that same compassion I remembered, which gave me hope that he wasn’t going to denounce me, although his compassion could well be for the pain that such a denunciation would bring. Then, as moments passed and he didn’t speak, I noticed something else in his gaze, something beyond emotion—even beyond serenity—filling me with that strange sense that I had only known once before. “Here” and “there” had disappeared, and the distinction between one mind and another no longer applied.

  “Why do you wish to join the Sangha?” he said, but the words were already inside me as he spoke, as if I was posing this question to myself for the first time. At the same time, the question was posing itself to the universe.

  Somewhere back in the ordinary world, I knew I needed to be as honest as I could without saying too much. Then I felt the Tathagata’s will engulf me, just as his gaze had earlier. Only it wasn’t his will; it was the will of the Dharma, speaking through me. “To help you liberate as many beings as possible,” I said, surprising myself. Earlier I’d thought mainly in terms of helping women and my son. I looked into the Tathagata’s face. Its sober expression exactly mirrored my own, as the truth of my words settled over me.

  He closed his eyes, and I felt the Dharma’s power fade. Had he closed his eyes out of sympathy or irritation?

  The silence returned, now taking on time as well as space, stretching out until I felt compelled to speak in my own behalf. “I can memorize your teachings word for word and spread it beyond the Sangha.”

  He nodded very slowly, but the silence went on.

  Finally, he spoke. “The Tathagata never tells an untruth.”

  My hopes plummeted. He was obviously saying that he couldn’t participate in my deception. Yet my purpose wouldn’t let me give up. I closed my eyes and willed the Dharma to reveal itself.

  Instead, I felt the presence of Stick Woman, as if she were the only Dharma I was going to get just now. Then words came to me. “You have stated that there are countless leaves in a forest,” I said, “but that you hold only a few in your hand.”

  “I have.” His voice was noncommittal.

  I continued, “The leaves in the forest stand for everything that you know; the leaves in your hand represent all that you teach. You don’t speak of all the things you know, because they wouldn’t lead to the end of suffering.”

  By which I meant, you don’t need to say outright to anyone what sex I am.

  The Tathagata’s gaze intensified; I had no idea what he was thinking. “I do refrain from answering certain questions,” he said, “such as whether the world is eternal, or whether a self exists forever, or whether the Tathagata persists after death. This is because any answer would only leave the listeners vexed and confused, ending up with wrong views that would lead them to more pain.”

  I didn’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged by his reply. I persisted, “And you also address different listeners in different ways, depending on what they are able to comprehend.”

  “Yes.”

  “And so there must be many items that people living in this age cannot understand properly, and therefore you must keep silent about them.” Such as a woman taking vows as a monk.

  Abruptly, he stood, turning toward one of the windows, and I feared he was going to say the interview was over and I had failed to convince him.

  “I have a question for you,” he said, looking back at me. “You’ve already memorized some Dharma, it seems. Have you not heard the Dharma that cherishing a loved one causes suffering? How can this be otherwise when you, your loved one, and the very nature of your love is doomed to change and eventually die? I’ve preached that if you have a hundred loved ones you suffer a hundred times more.”

  I knew he was referring to my feelings toward Rahula, which he was using to discourage me from engaging seriously with the teachings. I wouldn’t let him. “I haven’t heard that Dharma specifically, but it seems to follow from what you preach.”

  He remained standing. “There are many people who might think this teaching is cold. Mothers would fear abandoning their feelings for their children.”

  The windows seemed to go dim, and I felt myself sinking into the memory of the night he left, his silhouette in the doorway, the star and crescent moon in the windo
w shining heartlessly away. Had he awakened to a Dharma that had taken away his humanity?

  A thought approached me. “Perhaps some parents would not abandon their love for their offspring. Instead, they’d expand that love to include every living being—which I have also heard you preach. I gather that, if someone loves all equally, then he can’t cherish any single being or group of beings over the others. Perhaps to develop this kind of love is the practice.”

  Could I do that? Surely, this task was impossible except perhaps for an enlightened being. Yet I was committing myself to try.

  He sat down again, facing me. “You are clever, Ananda, but this practice requires more than mental agility.” He gestured around the little room. “King Bimbisara has started constructing wooden kutis for all the monks. But currently many of them still live out in the open, in the forest, in fields, and even in charnel grounds. Before making your final decision you’ll have to sleep in a charnel ground—not only to prove that you are willing to endure the hardships of the holy life but also as a matter of practice, as a way of learning to understand the earth and the body as they really are.”

  He knew about Deepa, of course—was this why he was sending me to such a place? I had not been in a charnel ground since I left my sister to the dogs. I dreaded the possibility that returning to such a place would undo me in ways I couldn’t begin to predict.

  “Meditating in charnel grounds is required of all Sangha members,” he said, as if he wanted to assure me I was not being singled out.

  “I’m ready to do what you ask.” I hoped I could make this statement true.

  I bowed and left.

  That same day, after receiving instructions from Mogallana, I arrived at the city’s charnel ground just before sunset, carrying only a water gourd and a sharp stick to discourage dogs and jackals. The corpse area was far larger than the one outside my village, occupying a vast trampled plateau. The evening was mild, with just enough breeze so that as I climbed the stone steps to the top, wafts of decay assailed me, each more revolting than the last. Every breath transported me to that first charnel ground, where the smell of death was a warning to flee from its presence. I readied myself to be terrified.