Bride of the Buddha Read online

  “Everyone is still at breakfast, mistress,” I said, averting my eyes. I turned in the direction that I needed to go and started off.

  Suddenly the air cracked open and searing pain tore through my back, then another blow, driving me to my knees. The girl had got her hands on a whip.

  “How dare you walk away from your betters!” screamed the girl, raising the leather whip, about the length of a man’s arm.

  Rage deprived me of all thought. I grabbed the whip and jerked it, but she held on, flying forward as if holding the reins of a runaway chariot and landing on her chest in a heap of pink silk and glossy black hair. I glared down at her. In that moment, I was no longer Ananda, or Yasodhara. I had been drawn entirely into the identity of a slave. And this arrogant girl was regarding me in the same way as she did the stunted donkeys forced to haul mounds of bricks many times their weight until they keeled over to be fed to the dogs.

  I yanked the whip out of her hands, barely stopping myself from slashing it across her face. Instead, I raised it over her head.

  “I’ll have you killed!” she screamed.

  I dropped the whip, now terrified. How could I have let rage take over yet again, jeopardizing everything I was trying to do?

  “Esha. Stop this immediately.” It was Pajapati. She seized the girl by one of her shoulders, and the girl, surprisingly, collapsed in her arms. “I won’t marry him!” she sobbed. Then even more surprisingly, she turned her head and addressed me. “He’s fifty years old and his breath smells like pig shit and he has three other wives and now you can just kill me along with yourself!” Her face was a tragedy of tears. “I’m no better than any other slave.” She pressed her face into Pajapati’s collarbone and wept.

  I should have realized earlier that her anger had nothing to do with me. She was like a trapped sand fox hurling herself against the bars of her cage, and I was simply one of those bars. My anger melted into a heavy sorrow, which apprehension quickly replaced. The other servant women would be back any minute, and they’d recognize me as a stranger. I only hoped no one had heard the commotion.

  “You should take the buckets out to the privy. Now!” Pajapati gave me a significant look.

  But I still was sealed into the perspective of a slave, even as my spine stung and throbbed from the lash across my back. As a slave I knew that if the buckets were discovered at the latrine with none of the chamber pots emptied, one or more of my fellow slaves would get flogged, or worse. I hadn’t thought of this. “I need to do the chamber pots first,” I said.

  Pajapati stared at me. “The women will soon return from breakfast,” she said.

  “I’ll work as quickly as possible.” I headed toward the first arched doorway.

  Pajapati stood in silence for the time it took me to reach the half-open door. “I’ll help you,” she said.

  The girl, still kneeling on the tiles, looked up in horror. “Auntie! You can’t!”

  Pajapati smoothed her boney hands along the sides of her white sari. “Remember what we’ve learned of the Dharma, my dear,” she said. “Of all freedoms, there is none greater than from your own hatred and disgust. The only way to obtain this freedom is to face those things. Running away from them, or making others suffer them for you, only increases your slavery.”

  I never loved Pajapati more than at that moment.

  “But you’ll be contaminated!” the girl said.

  Pajapati actually smiled. “I’m training myself not to worry about that.”

  The two of us hurried from room to room, reaching under the carved beds and children’s cots and pushing aside bright patterned coverlets to find the white ceramic chamber pots, generally about two to a room. We worked in silence, the stench breathing into our faces, as urine foamed and slurped, and feces of all shapes and sizes plopped and slithered into one bucket after another, the odors intensifying with the day’s increasing heat. At first I fought to swallow a dizzying nausea, my throat clutching and seizing at a sudden tang of fresh urine; then I reminded myself that I had been trained to look upon these human wastes as simply one more manifestation of earth, made glorious or horrendous as a result of my ignorance of its true nature. As I continued pouring and lifting, the nausea subsided, my movements coalescing into a rhythm, blending in with the shapes and shadows around me, the smell just another texture in the air.

  As we worked in the fourth room, we heard a stirring at the door. The girl Esha stood there, her shoulders tense, her black hair twisted back. She nodded as if to herself and stepped forward to help us with our task.

  The three of us continued, all the while listening for noise in the outside rooms. At the first footstep or murmur, Pajapati and Esha would need to stop working immediately. Then, hopefully, Pajapati could come up with some explanation, perhaps passing me off for a servant borrowed from one of her male relatives for the day. I doubted the servants would object very much to someone who had taken on a good portion of their work.

  Meanwhile, the women were conveniently slow in returning. It didn’t occur to me that there might be a reason for that.

  Finally, the buckets were full. We attached them to the yoke and I was just about to raise it to my shoulders when heavy male footsteps sounded outside the door. Jagdish stamped into the courtyard, followed by two guards. He bore down on us, looking directly at me, his face deep russet with fury, his gaze pouring over me like flaming oil.

  “This is an abomination.”

  I felt more despair than terror. It almost didn’t matter whether or not he knew about Ananda. At best I would be imprisoned here forever, at worst, sold as a slave or even killed for disgracing my clan. I lowered my eyes, so he would not see me weep.

  “What are you doing here, Nephew?” Pajapati’s voice was metallic.

  “Originally, I came to make sure that the monk you were chatting with wasn’t lurking on the premises. No one ever saw him leave the dining room. But I never thought I’d see you defiling yourself in this way, Aunt.”

  “This is my spiritual practice,” Pajapati said.

  Jagdish turned his head and spat onto the tile. “And you would corrupt the children of this compound as well?”

  “I’m not a child,” Esha said.

  I glanced up, not daring to speak. It was still unclear whether he’d recognized me as disguised as a monk or simply as his wayward sister performing a spiritual exercise in the clothes of a slave. If the latter, then at least the Sangha would be spared the embarrassment. The male Sangha, closed to women forever.

  Jagdish turned around and addressed the two guards, both in late middle age and bleak-faced. “Search the rooms.” Then he turned back to me.

  “What are you still doing here!” he demanded. “My aunt is finished with you. She will now spend the rest of the day performing the purification rituals.”

  Even as had happened with Devadatta, it took awhile for me to glean that perhaps I hadn’t been recognized after all. Could it be true that he’d stared at my face and seen only a slave? How was this possible?

  I stood up under the yoke, the wooden bars bearing down on my shoulder bones much harder now that the buckets were full. My legs quaked, fear and incredulity jolting through me. I’d lost my meditative detachment. The foul stew in the buckets gurgled and sloshed.

  “Get that shit to the privy, now!” my brother ordered.

  I nodded, then risked one last glance at Pajapati. One that said: don’t forget what we agreed on. Then I started walking, the buckets swaying and clunking together with each deliberate step. I would not allow myself to feel any relief until they were safely in the privy and I was on the path back to the summer palace.

  The cobweb-draped brick passageway that led to the exit nearest the privy was barely wide enough for the yoke to fit, and it went on much farther than I’d estimated. I finally reached the door to the outside, the opening concealed by tall oleander bushes, hidd
en like an anus—which in a way it was, with only one class of humans meant to pass through it. Meanwhile, Pajapati would spend the rest of this day scrubbing her face with cow dung and taking a ritual bath in milk to purify herself from the pollution brought on by contact with her slaves. What folly! I refused to believe that these practices were the natural order of the universe, whether decreed by powerful kings, personal karma, or prettified gods lazing in pampered eternities. And even though the Tathagata never spoke on such metaphysical subjects, I was sure he would agree.

  I understood now why my brother failed to recognize me, even though I was sure he would have done so had I been in my monk’s robes. His eyes examined men’s faces as a matter of course, but he’d never get that far with a slave. From a single glance, his mind had fashioned an all-purpose slave-face, created from his need to justify his own image in the silver mirror of his upper-class life.

  By now I’d followed the path leading from the concealed door and reached the privy, a wooden shed about half the size of the palace kitchen, in a grove of acacia trees not far from the river, doves cooing in the branches, rust-colored chickens pecking in the dirt. I planned to change into my monk’s robes here, then return to the dry-season residence, where the monks were staying. I wasn’t worried about being late; the Dharma talk I was supposed to memorize wasn’t until the late afternoon, and I wasn’t scheduled to teach the younger monks until after sunset.

  I didn’t realize I had more to learn about being a slave.

  Just as I opened the warped balsa wood door into dimness and privy-reek, I heard behind me a chicken’s panicked cackling, followed by a young man’s heavy laughter and a sudden flutter of wings. I froze, cursing my luck. I couldn’t risk having anyone see a slave woman walk in and a monk walk out. I’d have to find somewhere else to change my garments. As quickly as possible, I dumped the torrent of waste down the privy hole, hung the buckets on a wooden peg, and returned to the tangled sunlight of the acacia grove, the pollen-scented air all the sweeter for the contrast with the privy smell. The young man had disappeared and the chickens had fled into the underbrush, but I secured the bundle around my waist and retied the scarf on my head, pulling it tightly against my brow to minimize the danger of it falling off, in case I needed to run.

  I took the privy path back to where it branched off to a main road leading away from the summer residence. Almost as soon as I’d passed the oleander-concealed doorway, I heard the young man’s laughter again, just behind me. Before I could even turn around, the man, bare-chested and in a worker’s dhoti, grabbed me around the shoulders, still laughing. “You’re not allowed on this path!” he said. “You’re fair game!”

  Once again terror whirled inside me. I couldn’t afford to struggle and risk him tearing the rag off my head or discovering the robes under my wrap. “Please,” I said. “I need to get back to work.”

  “This won’t take long!” Digging his fingers into my shoulders, he shoved me against a tree, a strip of pain igniting my whipped back as he ground his pelvis against mine. In horror, I stared into his grimacing long-chinned face with its bent nose and missing front tooth. One of his eyes floated off to one corner, giving him the look of a panicked horse, despite his high humor. His rotten-meat breath enveloped my face. “Lie down,” he said, pressing down on my shoulders and forcing me to my knees.

  “Stop!” A tall man in a gold-edged lapis blue paridhana was striding toward us. My heart gave a little leap. Was he coming to my rescue?

  “I get her first,” he said, shoving the first man aside, crushing all hope. This second man was in his thirties, his oily face hard-seamed, his heavy-lidded eyes swimming in scarlet, strands of black hair smeared over his forehead. He stank of perfumed sweat and stale wine, and his garment was wrinkled and stained, as if he’d been up all night, but now he’d seen fit to exercise his aristocratic privilege. Casually, he pulled out his sword and touched the point to my chest. “On your back,” he said, pressing his sword until I had no choice but to lie down.

  How was it that I was too polluted to touch, yet not exempt from being used for sex?

  Now both men were holding me down, but it was fear that was overwhelming me, a Mara-self paralyzing my reason and plunging me into its own terrifying thoughts. At the very least, my attackers would expose me. They’d impregnate me or kill me, and living or dead, I would disgrace the Sangha and destroy the lives of those I loved most, including my son. At best I would live out my life as a slave.

  Unless I got free of this fear, I had no chance to save myself at all. Taking a breath, I turned my attention toward my emotion—as I had done so many times in practice—and slowed down time.

  Mara was far stronger than usual. I understood now why the Tathagata used the words “Mara’s army” to describe the thoughts and sensations assailing me: confusion tumbling behind my eyes, a sense of danger stabbing in my heart, a deadly weakness clawing my abdomen, a craving to run away from my own life pounding in my throat.

  These are only sensations, not me or mine. Even thoughts are sensations, coming and going. And as I watched them, they dissipated, receding in all directions.

  But Mara hadn’t finished with me.

  “Open your legs or you’ll die right here on your back!” the aristocratic man said, straddling me and waving his sword. The fear returned.

  I had to expand my awareness further, beyond time and body. I inhaled again, and suddenly I was watching countless emotions arising and all sorts of beings grabbing onto them, taking them for the truth.

  My fear had never held me. I had been holding it. And it was not truth, only an emotion. Breathing out, I let it go.

  In the space it had vacated were all the possibilities that had been there all along.

  I let out an unearthly howl, opening my throat to the demon-wolf voices in my lungs, arching my back and jerking rhythmically, my fingers bending into claws. “Owwooooooooh!” cried the wolf. Then I called forth the serpent from the Gorge, hissing and writhing, rolling my eyes back in my head, not in terror but in the ecstatic throes of a demon-possessed corpse, even as I made sure to writhe about in a way that wouldn’t tear off my scarf. I whooped and shrieked, foaming at the mouth, a living celebration of death.

  The men recoiled, their grip slackened. “She’s possessed!” said the walleyed man, stumbling backwards. “The asuras are rising out of hell.”

  If only for a moment, they released me.

  I surged to my feet and streaked toward the river. Behind me I sensed the men gathering up their thoughts, starting after me. In front of me the river flowed past like a glittering milky brown goddess proceeding to some distant sea, happy to carry me if only I could swim.

  I had no time to worry whether I’d remember what Bahauk had tried to teach me over that last summer. I plunged into the current, ordering myself to keep my head above water. As my feet lifted out from under me, my arms panicked, they had nothing to hold on to. I know you, fear. I know you, Mara. I moved my arms and legs the way I remembered and took a gulp of the rivery air. The water was not nearly as cold as the Gorge River; it was a pleasant contrast to the earth’s hot, dry breath. The current eased me along, spinning me out into the river’s middle, trees and fields flowing by, my waterlogged clothes dragging me down but not yet so much as to pull me under. My head scarf unraveled and the knotted rag around my head floated off like a hat, exposing my baldness but too far away from my assailants for them to see. The river goddess held me in all her splendor. Now all I had to do was somehow steer myself to a deserted beach.

  The river carried me past Kapilavatthu, where I couldn’t have beached myself in any case, and finally turned sharply into a wild jungle of mostly palms half-sunk in tangled vines and other shrubbery. Aiming myself toward the small bay formed by the bend in the river, I kicked and paddled with all my strength until I could reach down and grasp the black river stones, tumbling over themselves in the water as I claw
ed my way to where the surface was nearly still and I could float to shore. Still prone in the water, I checked for people, but all I saw were black and white shelducks bobbing in the shallows, and all I heard were the ducks quacking and the loud murmur of the river. Crouching in the knee-deep water, with the stones bruising my feet, I untangled my sopping monk’s garments, fought my way into them, and staggered forward. As I stood up, my yellow robes adhering to me like an oversized, wrinkled second skin, I finally allowed myself to celebrate. I’d persuaded Pajapati to confront the Tathagata. A bolt of joy shot through me even as I realized I was much farther from the monks’ residence than I’d expected. I probably wouldn’t get back until late afternoon, but at least the day was sunny, good for drying my robes in the now welcome heat.

  A narrow path led through the jungle patch to the hard clay road heading back to Kapilavatthu. As I walked along, passing amber barley fields rippling in the wind, I realized that my practice made it possible to see my attackers not as evil but as asleep, and slaves to their own suffering, and that to view them in this compassionate way was to be free of them forever.

  But I couldn’t have gained this freedom without faith in the possibility of awakening, where my body was other than some essential self that would be irreparably damaged by forced sex. This was the faith the Tathagata had bestowed on me by allowing me to become a monk. Not that all women needed to turn themselves into monastics, but I truly believed that nothing other than the existence of fellow women seeking full enlightenment could give them the confidence that they, too, were other than their bodies; they were part of the mystery that all beings shared. How could the Tathagata talk of faith and yet be blind to this truth?