15

 

 

To relate the historical events that eventually led to me ending up disgraced and contemplating leaving the Sangha forever would take far more time than is left to me, so I’ll say little more than that both sons of the Tathagata’s devoted kings betrayed their fathers in terrible ways. The Tathagata called it the karma of monarchy, which even at its best was imbued with violence and greed.

In short, the princes Vidudabbha and Ajatasattu staged coups and both kings wound up dead. And that wasn’t the worst of it. In the Tathagata’s seventy-eighth year, Vidudabbha carried out his revenge, sending his army to raze our capital and massacre nearly all of the Sakyan clan. The Tathagata tried to negotiate a peace, but he managed only to buy time, for which I thank him, as most of my family escaped (my beloved Ama had recently died), including one of my sisters, who joined the Sangha. (Since then, the rumor has arisen that she’s me, the Tathagata’s estranged wife who finally made amends by ordaining as a nun. However many times she denies this, such rumors have a way of persisting.)

There were so many deaths! That decade also saw the end of the Tathagata’s beloved chief disciples, Sariputta and Mogallana.When we received the news, the Tathagata’s eyes seemed to mirror the loss itself, and I felt my heart tearing open. “To the Sangha, they were like the largest branches of a mighty tree,” he said. “And now they’ve broken off.” Yet as I continued to weep, the Tathagata’s face clarified into purest compassion—and even joy. “How can you sit there and cry?” he asked me. “They have both attained parinirvana, complete freedom from the prisons of space, time, and emotion.”

We were once again in King Bimbisara’s—now King Ajatasattu’s—bamboo grove, seated in a small pavilion not far from the three-story sal-wood residence hall Bimbisara completed for us shortly before his abdication. We’d returned to Magadha, after traveling from town to town, mostly among the Mallans and Vajjins. They were clan-republics, much like the Sakyans had been, their governments a far better reflection of our Sangha’s organization than the region’s ever more tyrannical monarchies, such as the one presently hosting us. Although the king’s grove was green and shimmery as ever in the late monsoon morning sunshine, it echoed with shouts, grunts, thudding hooves, crashing metal, and all the other noises of warriors training in the fields nearby. Prince Ajatasattu may have knelt at the Tathagata’s feet and sobbed his repentance for, as he put it, his “negligence” toward his father, but it was clear to me that he mostly hoped to glean information from his itinerant spiritual teacher as to how easily the clan-republics we had visited could be subdued, in case he felt like invading them.

“I can’t help but grieve,” I said, weeping anew at the sight of Sariputta’s neatly folded yellow robe and worn acacia begging bowl, returned to us by one of his companions.

The Tathagata folded his arms, gaunt with age, and shook his head at me, the hopeless case. “Consider this,” he said. “Your refusal to embrace the full truth of impermanence is prolonging your suffering in the same way that resistance to pain causes more pain.”

Suddenly, I felt I could no longer bear his calm ability to savor the colors and textures of his life, light and dark, without attachment. “I know, I know,” I said. “Like all beings, I’ll be separated from my body and all that I love. Meanwhile, we’re staying here with a king who’s using you for his own selfish purposes, wasting your energy, and compromising your health when the Sangha needs you. The Order’s future, especially without your chief disciples, is far from certain.”

“What do you expect of me? I’ve taught you monastics everything I know. There are no secret doctrines in the Dharma I teach to be passed along to a select few. As I told Devadatta, the Sangha is perfectly capable of governing itself after I die.”

“The Sangha is not ready for you to die!” I said, my voice jagged with desperation. “And you don’t have to—if you only stopped working so hard and took seriously the tonics I make for you.” I worried particularly about his attacks of dysentery, which seemed to be worsening.

“Oh, I take your tonics seriously, I just don’t take them orally.”

“This isn’t a joke.” Once again, I’d descended into huffiness. I couldn’t help noticing that in his old age, the Tathagata was reminding me more and more of Stick Woman in his offhand comments about his personal survival, and I was reverting to a petulance I thought I’d outgrown years ago.

The Tathagata leaned his chin on his mottled fist, and for the first time I noticed a definite tremor. “So you yourself are not ready for me to die. But how long would you have me live? A thousand years?”

I concentrated on my breathing, trying to return to a reasonable state where the Tathagata wouldn’t need to mock me. “You know how I feel about supernatural feats,” I said. “I truly believe that the best way to gain enlightenment is with the help of a teacher with human limitations, not a god with special powers. Otherwise, one just ends up worshiping the god.”

“Very well, then I won’t choose an unnatural life span,” he said cheerfully. I had no notion of the future consequences of our little exchange. I’d simply tried to disguise my personal distress by stating an intellectual argument. Nor did I particularly notice the novice, a pale, spindly twenty-year-old with a premature furrow between his eyes, who suddenly appeared in front of us and heard our conversation, or at least the last part of it.

The young monk cleared his throat. “The Venerable Kassapa the Great will give the Dharma talk tonight.” Kassapa had joined the Sangha several years before, boasting of his spiritual knowledge and hinting that he was being groomed as the Tathagata’s successor. I’d been too caught up with the recent tragedies to worry about whether he would turn out to be yet another Devadatta, poisoning the Sangha with elitist views.

The Tathagata cocked an eyebrow. “Kassapa will give the talk?”

The novice looked down. “Requests to.”

The Tathagata stood. “Fine, if the other monks agree. But I’ll be presenting the talk tomorrow.” He smiled at me. “It will be my last one here. We’ll be leaving Magadha within the week.”

As the novice bowed and took his leave, I stared at the Tathagata, my surprise mixed with a new apprehension. Kassapa would remain in this area along with most of the other monks. Was the Tathagata departing from here to be with followers he could trust? How much influence did this great kassapa have, anyway? Surely the Sangha had not rid itself of Devadatta only to face another threat from within. “Why are we leaving so abruptly?” I asked.

“You were right. I need to make some preparations before I die, and I can’t do it here. We’ll spend the next rains retreat in Vesali.”

“Why Vesali?” My feeling of danger was in no way assuaged by his choice. During our last stay in the republic of Vesali, a former member of the Sangha had denounced the Tathagata in front of the Vajjin parliament for promising nothing to his adherents except to teach them how to end their suffering. The Tathagata merely chuckled and thanked his denouncer for the compliment, but there were now those in Vesali who had become disillusioned with the Tathagata for failing to reassure them that he would use supernatural powers to save Vajji from military attack.

For the first time, I felt, like the sudden stab of a needle, the possibility that everything the Tathagata had tried to do in his life could fall apart.

At the very least, in Vesali our selections of lodgings would be limited. “Do you care nothing for your safety?” I asked him.

“Safety?” He gestured, the loose skin on his arm’s underside swaying, toward the sunny fields beyond the trees, where metal clunked against metal and the warriors’ cursing and laughter filled the air. Again he smiled. “One of the greatest sources of suffering is the craving for safety.”

“Very well,” I said. “I’ll suffer for us both.”

 

The next day the Tathagata gave the last talk he would ever give in the Magadha Kingdom, on the hunched gray shoulder of Vulture Peak, speaking to the Sangha from the granite cave that had been carved years before into a vast cube-shaped enclosure able to accommodate a hundred monks. “Be a lamp unto yourselves,” he said. “Live with the Dharma as your only refuge.”

His Dharma talk made clear, as I remember it, that we were to make the teachings part of ourselves and not seek an authoritarian leader to rule over us. After his death, we were to govern ourselves in a democratic way, similar to the Mallan and Vajjin republics, where we were headed. But not everyone agreed with my interpretation, and even then I wanted a more definitive statement from him, explicitly forbidding anyone from taking his place.

But now we were on the road again, wandering from town to town with a company of forty other monks, including my old friends Kavi and Naveen, my little-boy students who now were nearly fifty. At first everything seemed to go well. The Tathagata’s health stabilized, and even though we were no longer staying with kings, our hosts owned estates that allayed my fears that we would end up sleeping on rock piles and eating cow fodder. The Tathagata still had plenty of followers among the Vajjins, who were a cheerful if decadent lot, dancing and singing at the slightest pretext and decorating everything in sight—sewing spangles on their clothes, artificially gilding the spokes of their carts’ wheels, and even painting pink or blue polka-dots on their cattle. “We don’t need to visit the deva realms!” the Tathagata joked. “We have them all around us.”

 

For a couple of months, it almost seemed like old times, the Tathagata teaching in pleasure parks or dining with some, if not all, of the town’s notables and discussing the Dharma, always encouraging the servants to listen in. He spoke often about how mindfulness and virtuous behavior fortified each other, teachings that suited the Vajjins, who lacked the discipline to pursue deep meditation.

Then one morning, under a sky packed with ominous purple clouds, the Tathagata announced to the monks that they were on their own for the rains retreat. He and I were leaving for the tiny nearby village of Beluva for an indefinite time. When I asked him why the change of plans, he replied that Beluva was a good source of lemons and water.

My fear for his life reawakened, clawing through me and shredding the foolish complacency that had lulled me over the past months. Lemon juice and water were treatments for dysentery. The Tathagata was predicting that his illness would return.

 

Beluva was a dank little hamlet of fewer than five hundred people. In the rainy season it seemed to generate its own darkness full of miserable little teakwood cottages black with rain and cringing under banyans and huge oaks that creaked and shuddered in the constant wind. But lemon trees flourished on the hillsides, and rivers and streams skipped and glittered everywhere. The Tathagata’s lay followers procured a cottage for us—two dim little rooms next to a private wash house—and set about supplying us with curries and rice.

Almost immediately, the Tathagata fell ill.

As he had in the past when sick, he spent much of the time in deep meditative absorption, far from whatever pain his body might otherwise have suffered. But this time, his body seemed far more tortured, either rigid or quaking, moans echoing out of his dry and cracked mouth as if with a life of their own. Yet even when his mind was not absorbed, his words remained calm. “It would be good if you recited some Dharma,” he said, his face a gray cadaver’s but for the foul breath that hovered over it. “It will help me meditate.”

A sick dread dragged through my body day after day as I performed the necessary tasks to keep the Tathagata alive, reciting whatever of his teachings came to mind while supplying him with water and dosing him with lemon, ginger, yogurt, and alkaline drinks, most of which he refused. For hours he just lay there, dry and shaking. My meditation practice barely kept me from caving in to the increasing terror that the Sangha would not survive.

Then one morning the Tathagata arose from his bed and went to the wash house. He returned in a fresh robe, emaciated but with the light back in his eyes. I was not shocked at his quick recovery—it was always so when the Tathagata was ill. Once the illness passed, he didn’t prolong the symptoms by telling himself stories that he was still sick.

At the sight of his revived self, I wept with relief, telling him how terrible I had felt and how grateful I was for his revival.

“Not again!” he said. “This respite is temporary. How many lessons do you need to understand impermanence?”

But I wasn’t going to hang my head. “I fear for the Sangha. Without your guidance it could very well fall to the Devadatta surrogates—such as Kassapa—who think that the heart of your teachings is to practice spiritual acrobatics.”

He smiled. “That’s where you come in. You know all my teachings. It will be up to you to ensure they survive.”

Now I did hang my head. “I haven’t even awakened.”

“Well, then, awake! You have the power. You’re loving and kind, and you’ve done so much for the Sangha over the years. Everyone delights in your presence and benefits from your recitations.”

Flattered though I was at his praise, hopelessness weighed me down. So often in my life anger had ruled me. “I’ve never thought of myself as kind.”

“That’s because you don’t cling to your kindness to define yourself. This is all to the good.”

“I’ve practiced deception, I’ve indulged in grief,” I said. “I’ve meditated all these years but don’t seem able to get beyond this karma.”

The Tathagata was silent for a moment, and our little hut seemed to open to the cries of the cuckoos and the wind in the trees. “Perhaps you need to confess.”

I blinked, completely perplexed. “To whom? I already confessed to you.”

“Maybe you need to confess to the world.” In the dimness of the hut, I couldn’t read his eyes. Was this more of the cryptic mischief of a man who considered himself beyond death?

“How could I tell the world the truth? The Sangha would be completely discredited; the teachings would be mocked.” I studied the shadows gathered in his face. Maybe his illness had deranged his mind.

“Not that sort of confession,” he said. “Write it down. There must have been some reason why you learned this skill.”

“What would I do with such an account?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps you’ll burn it. Perhaps you’ll give it to a trusted friend. Have faith that the Dharma will guide you.”

I still feared for the condition of his mind. “I need to know something of why you would have me do this.”

The Tathagata sat down on the clean bamboo mat I had put out for him when he was in the wash house. He may have recovered, but he was still weak. “You yourself once quoted me comparing my knowledge to the innumerable leaves in a forest and my teachings to only a handful of them. For that handful is all that’s necessary to end human suffering.”

I nodded.

“Beyond that handful, I know some of the future—not what will come but what may come—knowledge that would not benefit an unawakened being. So you must have faith in the Dharma and ask me no more.” Just then the sun came out, whitening the muslin screens over the windows and suffusing the room with feeble light. Now I could see his eyes, serene and compassionate as ever.

“I’ll need something to write on.”

“Palm leaves last longer than birch bark, I’ve heard.”

It was then, in that sad little black-walled hut, that I first conceived of this confession, which you now have in your hands. But I had no idea that I might have to commit the most difficult crime of all to confess, one I wasn’t sure even the Tathagata could forgive.

 

We spent the remaining two months of the rains retreat in Beluva, the Tathagata regaining some strength, meditating in the dank little hut or, on sunny days, under the oak trees. Then, on the day we were to rejoin the monks and go back on the road, the Tathagata turned to me, as if to make some pronouncement. We stood outside our hut, carrying our bowls. It was early morning, sun plashing through the greenery and birdsong embroidering the soft summery air. In a sling on my back I had my growing collection of marked-on palm leaves and all of our spare robes, including my white death robe, patched and repaired since I’d used it as a demon’s costume.

“When I was ill,” the Tathagata said, “I spoke with Mara.”

This disturbed me. “You know I don’t think of Mara as a separate person.”

“You know I don’t think of anyone as a separate person.” His gaze focused and for a flicker of an instant I slipped out of time, merging with him into a single flow of purpose. Almost immediately, this experience faded into abstract memory, as it always did.

“What did Mara say to you?” I asked.

“He tried to convince me to die on the spot. Enter my parinirvana there and then. But I refused.”

I knew not to feel relief but rather to feel the opposite. His health hadn’t improved all that much. “And?”

“I told him he didn’t have to wait long. Three months. Now we have two months left.”

Along with the expected shard of dread, I felt a jolt of anger, as if Mara indeed were standing there, dangling the Tathagata’s remaining time in front of me, daring me to look away. But more accurately, Mara was inside me, directing my anger at the Tathagata, who had presented me with this prophecy without my asking. “Why did you even listen to him?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you just send him away?”

“Mara doesn’t upset me,” he said. “But it seems that because you’re resisting him, he is always with you.”

I had to swallow the corrosive mix of my feelings; the monks were arriving, the usual yellow procession flickering through the trees. As they lined up before us and bowed, I noticed that several of the younger ones carried poles and heavy cloth, which could be made into a litter if the Tathagata needed it.

An awful memory overtook me, of the donkey cart transporting my sister’s body to the charnel ground.

 

In our travels we were accompanied by fewer monks than before (perhaps twenty-five), and most of the time we stayed in villages not much larger than Beluva. Why was the Tathagata taking us into these remote places? He refused to say. At the same time, I was heartened by the villagers’ enthusiasm for the Dharma. “We have waited years for your presence, Blessed One!” The cry went out, a welcome relief from the jaded, quarreling adherents we had left behind in Ajatasattu’s kingdom.

Our group reached the little village of Pava perilously close to the time that the Tathagata had predicted he would die. We settled down in yet another mango grove, belonging to perhaps the most enthusiastic villager of them all, a goldsmith named Cunda, a name that even now many followers of the Tathagata refuse to speak aloud. At the time, Cunda hardly seemed the type whose name was headed for such an unfortunate future. He was a plump man with delicate fingers and secretly pleading eyes. That day he wore a big purple paridhana and couldn’t stop smiling and bowing. “I’m so honored to have you, Blessed One!” he kept repeating as he conducted our saffron-robed procession through the fruitless trees to our lodging, individual kutis of bricks painted red and yellow in the Vajjin-Mallan fashion. Cunda gave us one last bow and invited us all to dinner the next day. At the time, I thought nothing of it. I was just grateful to be settled and, for the Tathagata’s sake, hopeful that we wouldn’t have to move soon.

The next morning Cunda led us to an open pavilion in the grove where a long table awaited us, ablaze with scarlet hibiscus arrangements and Cunda’s handcrafted gold plates and goblets. The air smelled of frying yams and cumin, and peacocks strolled about, only occasionally disconcerting me with their ragged cries. Servants in red and green striped turbans were setting out breads, yogurt, and lentil dishes, but the main course, Cunda told us, was yet to come.

Once we were seated on the pavilion’s many silk cushions, he disappeared into the nearby brick kitchen and reappeared carrying a huge covered bowl, all gold. “Allow me to present to you our supreme dish—pigs’ delight, made with mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and soft truffles. It’s a speciality of the region.”

I ordered myself not to jump to silly conclusions at the mere mention of mushrooms. Surely Jagdish could be nowhere near here—if he still even lived, considering he was almost the age of the Tathagata. Still, I couldn’t help myself. I was seated next to the Tathagata. “You shouldn’t be eating such rich food,” I said.

“Nonsense,” the Tathagata said, as Cunda spooned out the ocher-colored mush on his golden plate. When our host garnished the dish with chopped brown mushrooms, terror ripped through me.

“No!” I whispered, leaning toward the Tathagata, preparing to push his plate away.

“Stop that.” His voice froze me. He had never given me so direct an order.

I stared down at my hands, my heart and gut churning with confusion and shame. The Tathagata tasted the dish, and pronounced it delicious. “But this is food that only a Tathagata can digest,” he said. “Serve the rest of the monks more of your excellent dahl.” He ate six or seven more bites, then pushed his plate away. “Bury the remainder of this dish,” he said. “And I thank you very much for it.”

I sat there stunned, thinking that Cunda must have believed that the Tathagata was carrying out some unknown ritual. In any case, he obeyed, his worried eyes only a little more dubious than usual, and then sat down to hear the Tathagata’s Dharma talk, tailored especially for him, comparing the training of the mind to the refining of gold. “One practices with the goal of making the mind malleable by removing all impurities,” he said. “Then, as with gold, it will have many excellent uses. Eventually, it will lead you to liberation.”

I just stared at my golden plate, barely able to listen, unable to eat.

 

Two hours later, the Tathagata and I were meditating not far from our kutis when he fell over. He lay on his back, agony having its way with his face, while his voice remained serene. “I need you to do a few things,” he whispered.

The dread and despair of the past year crashed over me. “They poisoned you!”

He actually smiled. “No, I skipped the mushrooms.”

I had no time to think of the implications of this now. It was all I had to do to ignore my fear and desperation, as I turned him over in the grass and looked down at the back of his robe, which looked like he’d sat in a black swamp, spreading foulness through the yellow cloth. “As soon as this bleeding lets up,” he said, panting a little, “we need to go to Kusinara.”

“Why?” My voice buckled in my throat. Only if he were planning his funeral would it make sense to go to Kusinara, the largest town in the area and a place where he had many followers. Was this his destination all along? “You’re too sick to move.”

“Don’t worry. I’m mindful of what I’m doing.” With that he crawled to his feet and staggered to the river to bathe, waving away my help. As he emerged, I covered the wreckage of his body with a soft sheet, determined to concentrate only on caring for him. He smiled his thanks and sat down, his back against a tree. “Before we go, we need to make sure that Cunda hasn’t blamed himself for my death. He had no idea about the poison, and he needs to be reassured that to serve a Buddha his last meal is a great honor.”

Now outrage joined all my other emotions. “If he didn’t poison you, who did?”

“No one poisoned me. As you well know, this blood is a recurrence of my earlier illness.”

He was right, of course. I knew the symptoms of food poisoning, and they didn’t include bloody diarrhea, especially so soon after the poison was consumed. “Then why did you skip the mushrooms? And why did you have the food buried?”

“Ananda,” he said softly, “they were trying to poison you.”

It was as if a warhorse had kicked me in the chest. “Why?” I managed to ask. I was too shocked at first to be frightened.

“You alone have memorized my teachings. It seems there are persons who don’t want your version passed along.”

“Who?” Now I was frightened, but also angry. “Could my brother somehow have done this?” I shook my head, trying to order my thoughts. “I thought I’d scared him away.”

“You stopped him from assassinating me. But perhaps not from targeting the monk who’s been praised for saving my life and perhaps conjuring up a demon to humiliate him.”

I clutched my elbows, thinning skin sliding over aging joints and tendons. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Forgive your brother, if indeed he advised the poisoners.” He looked beyond me, in the direction of Cunda’s stately brick house. “Our host will make sure that those responsible will be brought to justice. This I know with the Dharma’s eye. They will not live past tomorrow, but this karma does not belong to you.” He turned his face to me, and it seemed cleared of all pain and illness. “My dear Ananda, it’s time for me to die.”

 

I had no time to forgive Jagdish, not then. I had to enter the same mentality that had got me through the death of my son, a state of complete concentration on my duties. The next day, I and the twenty-five other monks accompanied the Tathagata to the outskirts of Kusinara, carrying him on the litter, although he insisted on walking part of the way. At this point my focus was so intense I almost believed the miracles some of the monks were exclaiming about: that the clouded river water had cleared so the Tathagata could drink it, that his skin had turned to the gold of the heavenly realms, that swarms of deities packed every point in the surrounding atmosphere. (The less enlightened devas supposedly protested his death, the more aware ones celebrated his parinirvana.) I do remember a golden clarity in the atmosphere as the monks wept and chanted, but perhaps this was the result of my concentration. The real miracle was how calm and mindful the Tathagata remained. Even his body had abandoned overt symptoms of illness; it didn’t appear to be suffering in the way it had in the village of Beluva. Finally, in the late afternoon we reached our destination, the monks climbing the low hill to the sal grove where he ordered a bed made up for him between twin sal trees. Sal trees, considered sacred by so many peoples, were a logical choice, but I couldn’t help remembering their role in the massacre of Bahauk’s tribe. From now on, I would always associate these trees with death.

The thatched and wattled roofs of Kusinara lay below us already in shadow when the Tathagata motioned me to his side. It was then he told me that I shouldn’t preoccupy myself with venerating his remains, and that after his death the Sangha should abolish those of its rules that were trivial or irrelevant, most of which had arisen on a case-by-case basis.

I glanced up at the swallows ducking through the deepening sky. I had a premonition that these directives would never be carried out.

My discipline gave way. I covered my face with my hands. “I’ve failed you. I’ve not awakened.”

“You will,” he said. He called the monks to gather around him as the sun buried itself in the forest beyond the city. “All past Buddhas have had an attendant like Ananda. These attendants embody kindness. They are also wise. Ananda will direct my funeral proceedings, which will be held in the way of the clan-republics, with celebrating and singing. Ananda will now go into the city and instruct the people how they may view my body. I will reach parinirvana on the final watch of the night.”

My concentration returned, fortified by a sense of enormous responsibility and the power of his will, which seemed to have fused with my own. For now, I had gone beyond personal emotions and did as he asked.

By midnight, hundreds of white-clad mourners were milling around the hillside, their skin the silver of fish scales in the moonlight, their oil lamps bobbing in a stream that led from the town. They kept on arriving, in a din of chanting and weeping that—if one believed in that sort of thing—must have reached up to the realms of the gods. A smell of lamp oil, marigolds, and distressed humanity vied with the damp night air, all overlaid with drifts of frankincense. Still, the Tathagata lived on, answering questions from the monks while I tried to organize the mourners by household, so everyone could pay their respects, especially the women, some of whom were offering their jewels to be burned up along with their teacher. I longed to be at his side, but my duties kept me apart until the monks waved me over. He lay on his side in the lion’s pose, and I would have knelt beside him, but I didn’t want to block anyone’s access to his presence. His voice came out, ageless and pure—or so it sounded to me. “Everyone, I say this to you. It’s the nature of all formations to dissolve. Work for your freedom with diligence. Tread the path with care.”

He entered absorption, then died.

As his final breath left his body, I remembered two other pre-dawns in my life, that of Siddhartha’s desertion and that of Bahauk’s death, where both times I thought I’d never felt so completely alone. Oh, but nothing like this. Then, as I knelt between the sal trees, the crowd all around me, the moon about to set, I thought I heard a sound discernible through all the prayers and weeping. Far off, it seemed, I heard the howling of a wolf.