Bride of the Buddha Read online

  I bowed deeply. “I didn’t intend to imply that the boy was unqualified,” I said. “In fact, he assumed you wished to have him teach me some Dharma, which he did. I’m beginning to understand, Venerable One! The boy demonstrated perhaps the chief requirement for a monk—the spirit of a warrior. No wonder we Sakyans are so drawn to this Sangha.”

  “Quite,” Devadatta said, straightening as if in deference to his own warrior spirit. “Ignorant people fail to comprehend the difficulty of this path. Mara colludes with our human weakness to foil our every step. The only hope for any of us is discipline.” For the first time, I noticed, Devadatta had used the first person plural, and I allowed myself to appreciate that his main battle could well be against himself. But then he added, “And as far as young boys being incapable of facing death in charnel grounds, consider the Tathagata’s own son. He completed this meditation within the first six months of his arrival. Perhaps you should speak to him for inspiration.”

  I kept my eyes lowered, lest I betray my outrage. Had my former husband risked my child in this way? “Perhaps I will speak to both him and his father,” I said. “They will no doubt enlighten me.”

  I watched the long line of alms-bowl-carrying monks file off in the winking sunlight, walking in order of seniority, which meant Devadatta headed up the line and Kavi, arriving just as the line started moving, took his place at its end. The Tathagata and his most senior disciples, I assumed, were dining with the King, making me wonder how much my former husband needed to play up to powerful leaders in order to ensure that he and his monks could spread the Dharma. I also wondered whether he still enjoyed activities such as dining in the King’s palace. I hated to think he was completely indifferent to earthly pleasure, but perhaps my own unawakened nature made me feel that way. What was the word I’d heard to describe how people living in the truth viewed the world? Disenchantment. Overcoming ignorance meant becoming disenchanted with the joys one formerly lived for, whether milk sweets, landscaped gardens, battlefield triumphs, or maternal love.

  Kavi beamed at me as he passed by, and he signaled me to take my place behind him where those aspiring to be monks were allowed to walk, collecting alms-food with the others. I smiled back but declined. I needed time alone to consider how I should approach the Tathagata. How much did I want to denigrate Devadatta to him? And what about Rahula? I should at least inform his father that I planned to talk to my son. I wouldn’t want anyone reporting to the Tathagata that I’d gone behind his back.

  As far as food was concerned, it could wait, although my stomach was hollow with hunger. My life as a monk required a balance between keeping up my strength and staying as lean as possible, which reduced not only my curves but also my monthly bleeding. Fortunately, a monk’s life included opportunities for solitary meditation that I could use to my advantage to conceal womanly functions as well as for bathing on secluded banks of rivers and streams. I’d also devised various pads and plugs and had become adept at binding the different parts of my body as necessary. Finally, I could take advantage of the monastic practice of modesty. Monks were supposed to keep their bodies to themselves and covered at all times. I would prove exemplary in this way.

  The last of the monks were disappearing into the narrow passageway between the trees, the leaf shadows jiggling over their yellow robes. For now, I’d stave off my hunger with water. At the far end of the grove was a small stone well with a clay bucket where flurries of tiny blue butterflies had come for the moisture as the day heated up. I wandered over to the well and quenched my thirst, then sat down under a tree to ponder my strategy, the hum of insects around me and birdsong sparkling above.

  I took a deep breath, prepared to call my mind to order, and looked up to see the Tathagata walking toward me, his yellow robe flashing in the sun. No, too early! I wanted to shout out to him. Instead, I sprang to my feet, took a couple of steps forward, put my hands together, and bowed. Had he come here deliberately to seek me out? He seemed half-dissolved in the sunlight dazzling on his robe. In the glare I couldn’t focus on his face, much less enter into the otherworldly unity of the last time we spoke.

  “I assumed you’d be here,” he said, without explaining how or why he’d interrupted his important day to encounter me. “Now that you’ve meditated in the charnel grounds,” he said, “do you still wish for the life of a monk?”

  His voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, an impression that was perhaps a result of my dismay. I wasn’t ready for this interview. “I met a little boy among the dead bodies,” I said. “He seemed far too young for this sort of meditation.”

  “Only monks over eighteen stay in charnel grounds.”

  “Not according to Devadatta.” I took a breath. “He mentioned Rahula”—I couldn’t bring myself to say “your son,” and saying “my son” or “our son” was out of the question—“also spent the night there early in his training.” Simply stating this possibility out loud reawakened my outrage.

  “Rahula is an exception. He will achieve enlightenment before he turns twenty-one.”

  “Luckily, then, the dogs didn’t devour him.” I did not conceal my sarcasm.

  “He was watched over.”

  I felt some relief, but my anger had been aroused and my suspicion not fully allayed. “The little boy I saw last night was completely alone,” I said. “Devadatta seemed to think that a premature death would do him good.”

  “That’s Devadatta’s view. He believes that we’ve all spent enough time on the samsaric wheel of life and death to fill the oceans of the world with our tears. To die meditating can reduce our misery by cutting the number of future lives we’ll have to endure—or even eliminate them altogether.”

  “And you agree?” I fought off an attack of vertigo. Once again I was thinking that the man who had been my husband had gone beyond humanity, his mind as vast and impersonal as the winter sky.

  His eyes remained steady. “It doesn’t matter whether I agree with him or not. More important is the intention to do no harm. Placing children in danger is doing harm.”

  “But you allowed him to do it!”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “I thought you had psychic powers!”

  “Even a Tathagata’s powers are limited.”

  “And yet you knew I was here.”

  “Perhaps I was lucky.” He fastened his gaze to mine. “You will not be of help to me if you need to see me as a god.”

  “I don’t believe in gods,” I reminded him.

  “That’s just one point of view, you know. Although I may not be a god, some of my teachings concern deities, because this is the only way some people can understand the Dharma. As my follower, you would have to memorize and spread these teachings.”

  “So do you believe in deities, or is this your way of talking down to humans?” I couldn’t shake my mistrust.

  An ordinary man would have exhibited some annoyance by now, but his voice remained smooth and soft as a river after the rains have passed. “There are many ways the unawakened mind perceives this universe,” he said, “and every one of them is conditioned by ignorance. My perception, except in that it results from a human body, is no longer conditioned. I can choose to see deities or not. So you see your question concerning my beliefs is impossible to answer.”

  I folded my arms, realizing I had wanted him to be annoyed. Then I would have had some power in this exchange, in spite of his slippery answers and non-answers to my questions. “If you’re not a god, what am I to make of you?” I asked.

  “The question is, what are you to make of the Dharma? You have to see the truth for yourself. This is also one of my teachings.”

  Right now I wasn’t sure about the Dharma or his teachings. “I need to know the truth about Devadatta,” I said. “How can you let men like that remain in the Sangha, let alone grant him so much power?”

  “You don’t understand,” he
said. “I will certainly stop him from sending young boys to the cemeteries, but I can’t force him to disrobe.” As he stepped back out of the blinding sun, I noticed a faint network of creases under his eyes and a certain sharpness of his cheekbones, as if the resilient youthful flesh had worn away, showing the fatigue of teaching day after day for hours at a time. I had the thought that his body would have preferred to remain in the bliss of meditation for his entire lifetime, rather than trying to convince us humans to go against the raging current of our obsessions and delusions. Surely, a body would live longer bathed in eternal peace than traveling on foot from city to city, facing endless questions and controversies. But this was the choice he—or the Dharma—had made.

  “If you can’t force Devadatta to disrobe, I don’t understand why you think you can stop him from doing anything he wishes.”

  “By instituting a rule. When I started, we had hardly any rules, but the behavior of some monks has made them more and more necessary.” He half-smiled. “At least Devadatta likes rules, especially when he gets to enforce them.”

  “He could refuse to obey your rule.”

  “Then he’ll disrobe on his own. But he won’t, any more than I would force him to.”

  “So by saying you can’t force him means that you won’t.”

  “As I said, you don’t understand.” And now his eyes seemed to dim with true sadness. “This Sangha is divided. Monks quarrel about all sorts of things, particularly issues of discipline, and many agree with Devadatta. If I asked him to leave, the Sangha would not survive the division, not at this point, and the Dharma would be lost for hundreds of generations. Devadatta knows this, and he’s no more willing to take the risk than I am.”

  “That reflects on the Dharma,” I said. “If Devadatta is required to maintain it.”

  “The Dharma is not maintained, it unfolds.” His voice was gently corrective, making me wonder if his sadness, along with his fatigue, belonged only to his flesh and not to the mystery of his being. “There’s a chance that Devadatta will awaken into a great teacher,” he said. “His emphasis on discipline has much to offer, especially to those monks who think meditation means lolling in the grass all day and enlightenment happens after parroting a few sentences from a Dharma talk. This case of the boy monks is an opportunity for Devadatta to learn. Perhaps I can persuade him of the moral wrongness of his point of view.”

  “I doubt it.” Yes, I told myself, even a Tathagata’s powers were limited, perhaps too limited to maintain the integrity of his Sangha.

  “Doubt is permitted,” he said. “But you must make a decision whether to ordain or not.”

  I couldn’t answer. Although I feared I had nowhere else to go, how could I live in a spiritual community that not only tolerated but in some ways endorsed someone like Devadatta?

  “You do have a choice,” he said, and once again he seemed to have read my thoughts. “If you decide not to join the Sangha, I’ll ask King Bimbisara to admit you as a member of his court. You’d have more freedom there than among the Sakyans, and as you see, I come to this grove often. You’ll still have some contact with the monks.”

  It was almost noon, and hot white sunlight bore straight down on my bare scalp. His offer stunned me. Here was a chance to return to life as a woman without living under my brother’s thumb. I could give up my current deceptive, half-starved existence, where I’d already made a powerful enemy. As a laywoman I could continue my meditation practices—granted, they would necessarily be more superficial—but did I really trust the Tathagata’s Dharma? In Bimbisara’s court perhaps I could unite the women around an independent spiritual life, not as extreme as what the Tathagata taught. Or—although it was almost impossible to conceive of it at this point—I might even remarry. Best of all, I’d have a chance to meet with Rahula in a way that, even if there were rules against physical contact, he’d know me as his mother.

  “You can do this?” I said, a whole new future lighting up inside me.

  “Bimbisara and I have been friends since boyhood.”

  Of course, I knew this to be true.

  Just as I was about to agree to this arrangement, I heard the hollow thunk of bamboo trunks striking each other. Someone was entering the clearing. Emerging from the shadows was Kavi, holding up a banana-leaf package. “Look, Ananda! I brought you pokaras and cheese!”

  He was smiling so happily at being able to make this offering.

  My throat caught. How could I leave my little friend, let alone all the other lower-caste child monks, in Devadatta’s heartless realm?

  By now, Kavi had recognized the Tathagata. Still clutching the package, he dropped to his knees. “Please forgive me, Blessed One! I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  My former husband smiled, and his warmth confused me all the more as to what I should do. “You didn’t disturb me, Kavi. In fact, you have gained merit by your practice of generosity.” He nodded in my direction, in a way that told Kavi to go ahead and give me the package, warm and fragrant with cinnamon and ghee. He handed it to me, eyes lowered.

  “Thank you so much!” I took the package, feeling my stomach lurch in anticipation of food in spite of everything else that was happening.

  “You’re welcome,” Kavi whispered, and vanished as suddenly as he’d arrived.

  I stood holding the package, my mind and heart in disarray. The prospect of King Bimbisara’s court beckoned me like a soft breeze leading to a gentle lake, one I hadn’t known existed until now. Yet such a life of ease was a temptation I could withstand. The opportunity to reunite with Rahula as his mother was a whole other matter.

  I looked directly at the Tathagata. “Before I decide, I have to talk to Rahula,” I said, offering no pretext.

  “You’ll find him here just before sunset. I trust you’ll say only what’s necessary.”

  I bowed. The truth between us felt like the clearest day in the coldest part of the year.

  I returned to this secluded part of the grove late in the day, having been too agitated even to attend the afternoon’s Dharma talk. The light was fading quickly and in my current mood I heard the distant peacocks’ cries as edged with desperation. “Dukkha! Dukkha!”—Suffering! Suffering! I took deep breaths to calm myself, trying to feel soothed by the cool evening smells of moss and damp soil as I sat in the same spot I’d occupied earlier, near the well.

  Then, there he was, my dearest son, beaming down on me. “The Blessed One said you wished to ask me some questions,” he said.

  For a moment I just sat still and drank in the sight of him, the glowing brown eyes and strong Sakyan cheekbones just beginning to emerge in his nearly nine-year-old face. I missed the wild softness of his thick black hair, but perhaps his shaved head—that hint of strangeness in his appearance—would keep me from being overwhelmed with the desire to clutch him to my bound-up bosom. I motioned him to sit.

  “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me,” I said. I tore my gaze away from him, telling myself I was relieved that he didn’t recognize me—only just now realizing how much I had longed for him to do so. I steadied my breath. “I’m thinking of ordaining, but I wonder about some of the practices here. Is it true that children are sent to meditate in the charnel grounds?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said.

  “But didn’t you do this meditation yourself?”

  “Yes, but I volunteered.”

  I wasn’t surprised, but I was still worried. “Was someone there to protect you from the beasts?”

  He laughed his warm, full-throated laugh, a kind of laugh he’d probably have all his life, and which I had missed so much. He was laughing as if I’d asked an obvious question. “Of course I had protection, more than I knew what to do with!”

  Greatly relieved that the monks, other than Devadatta, had proved themselves responsible, I asked, “So who went with you?”

  He was still smili
ng. “Hundreds! The same ones who are always with me, whenever I need them.”

  Hundreds? Reflexively, I looked around, half-expecting to see a monk behind every clump of trees. But there was nothing. “It must have been quite a sight, so many of the Tathagata’s followers surrounding you as you meditated.”

  “Yes! And all wearing gold, or shimmering rainbows! All flooding down from the heavens and singing songs from their thousands of lives.”

  I stared at his bright eyes, his wide, innocent brow. But of course he must be teasing me. “Truly,” I said, “how many monks were there in this amazing chorus?”

  “Monks? I’m talking about devas. The ones who swarm around me when I meditate, or even when I’m just walking along! They protect me all the time.”

  My throat went numb. “Please, don’t tease me about this. Who really protects you?”

  He looked into my eyes, a quizzical expression on his face. “I’m not teasing. The Blessed One tells us never to lie, even as a joke.”

  I hoped he couldn’t read the mixture of horrors on my face. “And so when did you start seeing these deities?” I asked.

  His smile belonged to a good-natured boy who only wished to be helpful. “Not long after my mother left me.”

  I felt as if he had pushed me off the edge of the earth.

  I had to force myself not to scream out a denial. Instead, I nodded, as if with my own knowledge. “There are many stories about you,” I said, “told to inspire other monks. One is that you’d already joined the Sangha when your mother left your home, and that your willingness to live apart from her was a sign of your dedication to the monastic life. Surely, your mother didn’t abandon you.” No, I begged him in my mind, please don’t ever have felt that way, not for a second.