Barlaam and Josaphat: A Christian Tale of the Buddha (10 page)

Aracin was on the mountain with a great company of men. He followed the hermits into their wooded hermitage. They did not flee from him, and they rejoiced when Aracin and his men captured them. They were taken to the prince. One of the hermits was old, white haired, and dressed in a rough garment. He carried holy relics in a pouch around his neck. Aracin looked at him and knew that he was not Barlaam. Aracin knew Barlaam well, and he looked everywhere but did not see him. When he saw that Barlaam was not among them, Aracin cried out, “My lords! I have captured you. Tell me now, where is my enemy? Tell me, for he has deceived the king's son.”
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The old man who carried the relics was master of them all, and he responded gently, “There is no enemy among us. He dwells with you, I believe, and leads you astray. We are not against you, for we live with God.”

“Listen to me,” Prince Aracin demanded. “Show me Barlaam. You know him well, I believe. He has deceived our king's son.”

“He has not deceived him,” the old hermit responded. “Barlaam never preached in order to deceive the prince or take him away from you. He wanted only to teach him God's law. Barlaam taught him, and he learned. Barlaam came to free him from his false beliefs, and he has surely succeeded.”

“I seek Barlaam because he most certainly has done the king and all his people a great wrong,” Aracin said. “Show me the way to his dwelling.”

“I will not do it,” said the hermit. “If he wanted to talk to you, he would have come here voluntarily. Our religion forbids us to take you to him. Our love and fear of God command obedience. Do not interfere in our affairs.”

The prince grew angry when he heard himself so easily dismissed. “Understand this,” he said furiously, “if you do not take me to Barlaam immediately, you will die. The pyre is ready, and you will suffer the most painful death possible. No doctor will be able to cure the wounds I will give you.”

The old man responded, “We do not fear death, or threats, for we know that whoever wishes to leave this life need not fear death. This life is the true death, and whoever lives in the world does not really live. The threat of death is double in this world. Death ends life, but life itself is like death. Whoever lives in sin is dying and does not really live. Whoever does not repent unceasingly of his sins dies even as he lives. Whoever would live in this sinful world cannot expect to live, for when he begins to sin, then he dies, for sin makes him die. This man is full of death and sin, and sin is the death that will take him without recourse. Sin and death wound his heart and his understanding. No one can sin without death.

“We live in repentance and purify our thoughts. We do not fear death, for no one can escape it, and your threats mean nothing to us. We do not fear the sword you raise against us, for we have forsaken this life. We came to this path through repentance, but your journey leads you away from it. Do whatever your false heart tells you to do, for none of us is ready to do what you command. You seek Barlaam. We know where he lives, but no matter what threats you make we will not reveal it to you.”

Aracin understood that his threats would not make the hermits tell him where to find Barlaam. He was livid, and in his rage he had them tortured. He had them beaten with straps until blood dripped from their wounded flesh. The Saracens tortured the holy hermits, and Aracin beat and cursed them, but he could not make them speak.
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(What was it worth in the end, when it was all for nothing and he could not make them reveal where Barlaam dwelled?) Unhappily and against his will, Aracin decided to take them to King Avenir. He and his men continued to strike and torment the hermits, and forced their abbot, the old preacher who carried the relics, to lead them across the wilderness.

Aracin and his men cursed God and his servants as they traveled, and finally they arrived at the king's palace in the city. Aracin presented the captives to King Avenir. The uncomprehending king looked at them with fury, for he saw a people he did not love. (In fact he hated them, though this was wrong.) He decided to take vengeance on them since he could not find Barlaam, and this decision revealed his character and made his sin even worse. He commanded his men to torture the hermits: he had them beaten without pity and showed no compassion for their pain. He believed he would gain honor by beating and insulting them.

Then he stopped the torturers. “My lords,” he said, “come forward and tell me the truth about Barlaam. I have sworn that if you do not tell me, you will die shamefully today.”

“King, you should not expect us to follow such an order. You cannot make us take you to Barlaam by beating or torturing us. No pain will make us tell you where he is.”

“Tell me, then,” said the king, “how do you dare to carry bones around your neck?”

“We have faith in the holy bodies we carry for remembrance,” the master replied. “Those who now dwell in glory will help us reject this world and be saved, and for that we owe them reverence and honor. Any man who would live according to the good religion should honor the saints. Whoever would keep his house clean and free of filth can see the standard by which he must measure himself if his false heart does not falsify the standard. The sinner chooses a standard and then decides what he can do to change it so he will measure up. The house that should be kept clean is a man's body. The body takes the soul to a dangerous crossing where the roads and tolls belong to the devil. This is why we carry the bones of the dead, to remind us that the body must die and rot in the putrid ground.

“Pagan king, this is the wager you have made, and you are already losing. King, you will die, do not doubt it, and in fact you are already dying while you live. You cannot escape death. You do not believe, and that is the cause of your death. You are dying and you do not know how you should die or how you should live, because you are drunk on the pleasure of the sins that kill you. You think you have lost your son, but he has been led into the way of salvation. This is a straight way, and whoever follows any other direction strays from it. Now do what you will with us. We do not fear your threats or your tortures.”

The king was enraged and commanded that all the hermits be killed. And I will tell you exactly how. First he had their tongues cut out, and his men did it without sparing any pain. He treated them vilely. He had their holy eyes gouged out, and then, to assuage his anger, he had their hands and feet cut off. He made them suffer a grievous martyrdom. He took angry vengeance against those who had done him no wrong, but they willingly received the pain and the martyrdom. They offered the pain to their Creator, for they suffered the pain for him, and they exchanged their suffering for joy, since God gave them their reward and they would have it forever. Their souls are in paradise—whoever loses in this world gains much in the next. The saints who lived in the wilderness merited the crown that God gave them for their torture and martyrdom. There were twenty-seven of them.

Gui has told the story to this point and translated it into French, and here he finishes the story of the hermits' martyrdom.
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The story says that our Lord received their souls well, because the pains they had endured had brought them to their Creator. The martyrdom they suffered here below made them emperors and lords in great glory above.

King Avenir sent for Aracin. “I am very disappointed that Barlaam cannot be found,” he said. “Go find your master Nachor and bring him to me. I want to know if he can return what Barlaam stole from me. I will ask Nachor if he can break my son away from the false belief that causes fear in my heart. Go quickly, good councilor.”

“Sire, right away.” Prince Aracin went to Nachor, who dwelled in the wilderness (not to serve God, though; he served the devil and devoted his wisdom to the devil's ends). Nachor was skilled in divination and lived by art and trickery. He was knowledgeable about evil but knew little about the good. Aracin told him about his plan and asked him to use all his skill to bring the king's son back into the right path. Nachor agreed, and Aracin returned to the king. “Nachor has agreed to come and he will be here tomorrow,” the prince reported, and King Avenir thanked him.

Aracin was impatient. He rose early the next day and called for the king's knights. “My lords,” he said, “I have news of Barlaam. Last night one of my sergeants saw him in the wilderness. He fled there to hide because of the crime he committed against the king. Get ready and come with me. We will use my man's information to find him, and then we will take revenge for the wrong he has done to us.” The knights were happy to hear the news and they assembled as Aracin had commanded. They entered the hermitage and combed the woods, seeking the hermit who had converted the king's son to the good faith.

Nachor came out of his cave as though he was lost and confused, and he pretended to be sad and mournful. He listened for the cries of those who sought Barlaam, and when he heard them, he fled through the wilderness where the hermits lived. First he ran to one side, then another; he showed himself, and then he hid. He pretended to be angry, and Aracin was very pleased to see that his men believed Nachor was the man they had come to capture. “Stop him! Don't let him escape!” they cried. “If he escapes, the king will be angry, and we will suffer for it!” Aracin's men pursued Nachor as he ran from bush to hedge. They spurred their horses in pursuit and captured Nachor, but they thought they had taken Barlaam. Nachor did not know what to do, so he pretended to be sad and hid his pleasure with the appearance of fear. The soldiers treated him badly, and he pleaded Aracin for mercy.

Without revealing anything about his plot, Aracin asked the captive his name. “My name is Barlaam,” Nachor responded. “I am a Christian and I believe in God, who created everything, including you and me.” Aracin was very pleased by this response (he knew who Nachor was, but none of the others recognized him and that pleased him). He went quickly back to court and had Nachor brought before the king.

King Avenir addressed the false Barlaam. “Show me what kind of man you are. Why have you treated me this way? Why have you separated me from my son? Evil Barlaam, the devil is in you and you have done me a great wrong. Why have you taken my son from me?”

“King, you have not lost him,” Nachor responded. “He is not lost if he believes in God, and he will receive a rich reward for his belief. I thought to do a good deed when I made your son a Christian.”

“I wonder why you do not fear death,” said Avenir. “You have spoken treason and you will die in great pain and without redemption if you do not renounce this error.”

“You are foolish to threaten me,” Nachor responded. “What you call an error, I consider a good deed. I do not fear your threats or judgment.”

The king pretended to be very angry. He sent for his master councilor and commanded him to take Nachor away and have him closely guarded. The councilor locked him in prison.

News of the hermit's capture spread quickly throughout the country. When the king's son heard it, he cried tenderly. He spent the whole day praying to God that he would spare his master from martyrdom. Josaphat was overcome with sorrow. But God sent his angel to protect him from the deception and change his sorrow to happiness. The angel revealed the king's betrayal to Josaphat and told him about his father's efforts to deceive him. Then the angel left the prince.

The king sought to trick his son by any means, to make him renounce God. He was grateful for Aracin's advice and thanked him generously, for he did not care about the means as long as he could accomplish his end. But his elaborate plans would be undermined by divine commandment.

Two days after Nachor's capture, the king considered how he might make his plan work better. He went to speak with Josaphat, and the young man came out to meet him. King Avenir was so angry that he did not deign to approach his son, though he had always kissed and embraced him when they met. He sat on a royal couch and spoke angrily to Josaphat. “Son, what is this? Explain what I have heard about you. I loved you more than anything, and now the Christians have misled you. Never did a father love a son so much—you were treated more royally than I myself am. You were my sweet son, my joy and my solace. You were my legacy and you were the staff that would sustain my body weakened by old age. Son, what have you done? Consider it carefully! I was you and you were me, and my love was doubled in you. All my thoughts were for your honor and your good. You were my wealth and my love, my power and my succor. You were the best thing in my kingdom.

“Now you have blinded me, and this is how: my light has been extinguished and I am in darkness. My measure is unmeasured. My sweet water has turned bitter—it was clear but now has become cloudy. My honor has turned to shame, and my nobility has been lost. My wealth has become poverty, my gain turned to loss. My ancestral tree is dead at the roots, and my love has turned to hatred. You claim to be wise, but you know nothing. I am your friend, but you despise me. You disinherit me of my own land, for you go to war against me in my own country. You cause me to lose honor, and you make me suffer when before I was happy. Good sweet son, dear sweet friend, you have become my enemy! I have lost all my happiness! That which I most feared has come about. You have never doubted my love, yet you have given your body, your heart, and your thoughts to a stranger. Sweet son, this is most certainly a foolish bargain. The gods are very angry about it, for it has greatly pained them that you have given yourself to another.

“Josaphat, my son, how can you forsake our gods for some unknown man who was hung on a cross? Surely you can understand that if he were God, he would not have allowed himself to be hung. This is just a story that people tell. Good son, amend this shame. Listen to my advice and I will try to appease the gods. Come now and sacrifice to them. They will have mercy on you, and I will be happy. Come willingly to them so they will forgive you.”

“Father,” Josaphat replied, “listen to me. I am right to believe in God. I have come out of the shadows and into the light. I have left unbelief to make an alliance with God. I have yoked myself to my Creator and given him all my love. He formed and made me. I am his servant, for he taught me to serve him, and I will do so as long as I live. He made Adam, our first father, by whose fault we live so wretchedly in this world. Adam did not obey his law, for the devil tricked him, and he was judged harshly. But God looked on man and took pity on him and was born on earth to save him from sin. He became a man to free us from our prison and was born—do not fail to believe it—of a virgin, Saint Mary. He was betrayed by his disciple in exchange for money, and then he was hung on the cross, where he willingly suffered death for our salvation.

“Our nature was ennobled when he took our form. We should be grateful to our Father who became our Brother. He promises us an everlasting glory, which we should remember and contemplate in our hearts when we come to God. I worship and believe in him, I serve him, and I am baptized in his name. I know no other god besides the Lord of righteousness and justice, and at Judgment Day he will render to each the reward he has earned. Whoever dwells with him will be richly rewarded. Father, consider whether you might attain this reward. Leave your belief, for it is despised on high, before our Lord. Believe in the Savior, for he made every creature. If your thoughts were clean and pure, you could attain heavenly glory.

“Father, your gods are powerless. They do not know good or evil, and they have no strength. Look at them. Do you not see that there is no value in them except in their adornment? And if they have no knowledge, what are they worth to me? If they cannot hear me, what do I gain if I pray to them for forgiveness? They are worthless gods since they have no knowledge or power. They are the devil's creations, and no one should believe in any god who is not Jesus Christ. The holy hermit taught me this, and I learned it well. I believe in God and in his power, for he is a true God and a true Lord. No tongue can speak the strength of his divinity. He became human for our sake and came down into this lost world to free us from peril.

“Father, I feel great sorrow because you do not believe in the Creator. I have often prayed that he would take pity on you. I suffer for you because I know that you will be shamed if you do not wish to love God. I see that obedience has no place in your heart—you are hard set against conversion, and God will not accept such stubbornness. You resist the good faith and make yourself into a murderer, for you kill yourself with your sins. Your body enjoys its pleasures, but your soul is in danger as long as you refuse to believe. You do not believe in God who created you.

“King, you do not know what will happen to you, and your lack of belief will earn you the harsh pains of hell. I have sworn my allegiance to God, and I do not fear irons or nails, for imprisonment would free me, and the tortures of martyrdom would earn me a royal crown. It used to be true that I was your son, but the natural law that made me your carnal son has been superseded by spiritual laws. The Holy Spirit will not descend to a man of bad faith who does not love God and his law. Now hear me, I tell you the truth. I have left you because you have separated yourself from me. You yourself split us apart. Do you know how? Because you remain in foolish devotion to your gods while I follow the good faith. You separate yourself from God, the all-powerful Lord. You owe your rank to him, but you turn it to shame and destruction instead of thanking him for it. Father, you have gone to war against yourself—you are your own enemy. King, become a king and a friend, a friend of God, who is King of your soul! God is courtly in all things and will be pleased to help you rule this kingdom. Then I will be your son twice over. But if you do not believe, you will no longer be a father because you will lose your son.”

You need not ask how the king responded. He was furious and spoke angrily to his son. “What have I done wrong? What have I ever denied you? No father ever did as much for his son as I have done for you. And the only result is that I suffer greater misery. Good son, the astronomers prophesied well when they said that no good would come to me from you, and they were right to predict that you would destroy me and my kingdom. Never did any father love a son as much as I loved you, but now love must turn to hatred, for you are proud and presumptuous and accuse me of many wrongs. I tell you truly that I will hate you more than anything in the world, for your belief confounds me.

“I ask you, without anger, to take mercy on me because I am your father. And if you will not, then you betray me. Good son, think carefully about what you should do. You are my son. I am your father. Consider what that means. I seek no other joy but that you leave the error of your belief.”

Josaphat said, “Father, you admonish me in vain. If I did your will, I would suffer harsh consequences that you do not understand because you refuse to believe. You suffer because of my well-being. I am the servant of the Lord who created me. This is not wrong—it is right. You were my father, but truly, by God, how can I belong to a father who does not belong to God? I have gained true understanding, and you are not my father—my father has become my enemy. I have lost my father! And yet, no, I have a Father who is a more exalted king and emperor than you are, for this Father is Lord over all the world because he created it. This Father formed you, Father. But you have betrayed him.

“Father, why do you hate the Father who made you my father? He wasted his effort when he made you so handsome and noble, a rich ruler with power over a great land. You offer him hatred and strife in return! It is wrong to go to war against him when he suffered death for you. You offer him hatred because you hate him. Father and not Father, you do not know what his war and hatred are, for your war is the renunciation of the joy of paradise, and your hatred is the refusal to believe. He will take cruel vengeance on you. Do not torment me further, for it would be foolish to try to make me think that I should seek some other kind of happiness. Do not try to make me abandon God's commandments, for no reasonable man should serve any other god.

“Father, for God's sake, beware of this world that flees so quickly. Whoever gives his heart over to it offers his love foolishly and destroys himself. See how the flowers perish—at the beginning of the summer they are born and come out of the earth. The flowers are beautiful then, but they soon fade and disappear. So too with the pleasures of the world and all its creatures. For a short time they are beautiful, but they last only a brief moment. Father, for God and for his mother, let us now become son and father. First become the son of God, and then you will be my rightful father, and I will be your son and companion when I see that you believe in the Creator. Dear friend, how painful it is that we are separated from each other because you will not believe in the One who created us both! We are separated because you refuse reason. We cannot be companions because you are foolish and set yourself against me, against right, and against faith. Father, you will repent in the end, when you see God's vengeance (this will be at Judgment Day). Then you will remember the sweet days of pleasure and the many privileges you enjoyed in this world, but they will be worth nothing to you then. It is true—it will happen! You will be judged harshly, and repentance will come too late, for in hell there is no comfort. You make such great preparations only to put yourself in great danger of being lost! Father, your lack of judgment makes you your own murderer.

“Do not lament for me, for I am on the right path. I lament for you because you stray from it. Your own heart is against you. You think it is loyal, but it has betrayed you. Your guest has treated you badly—your guest is your foolish heart. You have hosted him and he has betrayed you. Saint Paul says in his letter that a man's fickle heart puts his body and soul in peril.
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Do not be afraid because of your sins—you can reconcile yourself with God if you ask for forgiveness. He died for all sinners, and, Father, you would be wrong not to pray to God for forgiveness since he suffered death for you. Father, you believe that you have gods, but they have no power, they know neither good nor evil, and belief in them will bring you nothing.”

The king despaired. He thought his son's disdain for his beliefs and his gods was a poor return for all he had given him. He would willingly have cursed him for it, if nature had allowed it, but he could not curse his own son. Nonetheless, he spoke harshly to Josaphat. “Son, I am sorry that you were born, since you cause me such pain. You have invented very foolish ideas. You stubbornly set yourself against your gods and your father, and you refuse my instruction and my love. I want you to understand that if you will not follow my commands, you will be put to torture, for you speak too foolishly. You are not my son or my friend. You have become my enemy, and I will treat you as one. You act against nature and ignore her laws. I am your father, and yet you do me such wrong! By all the gods, you act so strangely toward me that I could easily believe someone had used a trick to substitute you for my true son. It brings me great sorrow to see you.” King Avenir could bear to stay no longer.

The angry king left his son, and Josaphat knelt in prayer to ask God for forgiveness and for the strength and intelligence not to disobey him. “God, Lord and Father, help me, for I worship you and pray to you. Consider me with mercy and forgive my sins. All my hope, strength, and power are in you. Good Lord, have mercy on me. I am your servant, you are my salvation, and I put myself entirely in your care.”