Barlaam and Josaphat: A Christian Tale of the Buddha (11 page)

While the king's son prayed, his father sought some trick or plan he could use to change Josaphat's mind. He sent for Aracin and asked him how he could draw his son away from his belief and his love for God. Aracin came to him in friendship and counseled him: “He is sensitive and harsh words offend him. You should coax him with soft words for he cannot bear anger. Speak sweetly to him and you will bring him back to your love—otherwise you will accomplish nothing.”

The king took Aracin's advice and went to talk to his son again. He kissed and embraced him and drew him close. “Beloved son,” he said, “I felt great anger and pain when I saw that you were lost to me through your belief. Dear son, leave your foolishness and come sacrifice to the gods. Listen to reason and do not argue with me, for I am your aged father. You should be a king! You should rule my lands for me and end my wars, but instead, sweet son, you abandon me. You give me more pain than the entire rest of the world, and it hurts me that you resist me and will not do anything for me. Son, what I ask will bring you honor. Submit to me here and show respect to me, for you owe me your obedience. You should try to make me happy rather than angering me.

“Dear son, do you not know that I have heard many Christians speak about their lives? But I saw little good in their foolish belief: it was nothing but a lie. I have known some wise and learned men in my time. If they had thought this faith was a good religion, they would not have remained with our own. Son, I think you are mistaken when you anger the gods who raised you up so high that all Indians and Persians recognize you as their lord. You have made your father into a sorrowful man, for it makes me sad to see you deceived by a bad religion. Listen to my advice and follow it as you should. Good son, come back to me. Accept my counsel and I will give you great honors.”

The young man was wise and brave, and he saw that this was not good advice. He knew in his heart that his soul would be in danger if he obeyed his father. He responded sensibly to the king: “All that I should do, I would willingly do if I could. If I had a good father who believed in God and worshipped and served him, and devoted all his thoughts to him, then I would be eager to do his will and follow all his commandments. But, Father, your actions and your refusal to believe prevent me from obeying you, for I must not damn my soul just to do your will. And if your demands were reasonable, then I would be wrong not to grant them with my whole heart. Good father, if I did not love you, I would be disloyal. But we are separated because you would imperil my soul and set me against God and his law by asking me to do your will. I must not obey you, and it is not wise to ask me to do so. Father, I have never had such happiness as I have found as the servant of our Lord. It is right that I turn away from my family if you forbid me to serve he who is Lord over us all.

“Father, I do not care about your empire. If I wore a crown, I would soon lose it. My reign would be short and my crown ill gained. The gods worshipped in your court are deaf and mute, and there is no power in them. Your belief in them is wrong, and you are wrong to blame me for the good belief I have found. This world will not endure. You know that we all die—think about what will happen to you after your death! Father, all our ancestors are dead, but they will be raised up when they hear the holy angels' horn on Judgment Day. What will happen to you at that hour? Do not believe that your gods will help you then. You will be condemned to dwell forever in pain, without relief or succor. Good people will go to enjoy the happiness they deserve, but you will take another path, and the way you have chosen will cause your soul to be lost. If you delay too long, you will be too late. Father, for God's sake, make haste! You wait too long to go to God. I will not leave his light because of your orders or entreaties, or because of anything you say. This is what our Lord demands of me.”

The king was sad and angry because he saw that his son's resolve would be hard to weaken. He tried many approaches, but could not find a way to bring his son back to his faith. Neither prayers nor promises could change Josaphat's mind. Then the king remembered the disputation Aracin had proposed. “Son,” he said, “you have reasoned with me about your belief. But let it be debated before the people so they can judge by reason and right which belief is better, mine or your master's. I have captured this Barlaam who taught you the misguided belief that causes me such pain. I have him in my prison. He will be brought to my palace and heard by all my people. I will send for the Christians who abandoned my country so they too will come. I will offer them safe passage and receive them with honor. I will also send for the grammarians, the rhetoricians, and all my astronomers. Then you will hear their disputation. If your man speaks reason and shows me true faith, I will believe in your God. But if my clerics show that the Christians are wrong, then I want you to agree to come back to our faith and leave the false belief that brings you such dishonor.”

The wise young man was not deceived. By divine commandment, he agreed. “I will do as you wish,” he said. “May God give us victory and help us by his mercy. I give myself to him and trust in him.”

King Avenir's summons went out through the country. He called for both the wise and the foolish in his letters, epistles, and messages. He invited Christians, Chaldeans, and Indians. He assured the Christians safe passage, promising not to cause them harm. The king summoned many people, and a vast multitude came. Never had there been such an assembly in his country, but the story tells us that the only Christians present were Josaphat and Barachie, a wise and respected man.
1
Only these two took the side of our Lord to defend him (Nachor was not a believer; he was a false Barlaam). The other Christians stayed in the wilderness hermitage. They did not dare to come argue the points of their religion, because they feared the king. They knew that a man who will not listen to reason will try to dominate reasonable men when he sees he cannot prove his belief to them.

The king and all his council came to the richly covered tents and pavilions erected a short way outside the city. The sides of the tents were raised so that the disputation could be heard by all, and the people assembled around King Avenir to listen. First the king imposed silence, so no one would interrupt the proceedings. He sat on a throne richer and more precious than any ever seen. As the story tells it, King Avenir did not have enough silver or gold in his treasury, nor was there enough anywhere in the world, to match the value of his throne. The rhetoricians, princes, nobles, knights, and high clergy all had rich seats molded from gold and embellished with more emeralds and precious stones than I can name. Never in Athens or Troy was such a rich gathering held (if the story does not mislead me), nor so many wise people ever assembled. I tell you the truth; I do not lie. John, a bishop from Damascus, knew the story well and translated it. Another John loaned us the book, and we borrowed it from Arrouaise. This John was dean of Arras and was a good Christian. He was a nobleman, from a great and noble family, and he loved the story of Barlaam. So the story came here from one John through another.
2

Gui de Cambrai, who translated this story into French and put it into verse, says the king was seated at the parliament when Josaphat arrived. The king welcomed his son and had him seated beside him on a rich throne. Everyone admired Josaphat's beauty, his manner, and, most of all, his wisdom. King Avenir called for silence, and the people quieted. Nachor was brought forward. He pretended to be anxious and sad. He called himself Barlaam, and the people thought he really was Barlaam, but they were badly deceived. The disputation would be great, and the betrayal would be painful. The traitors were wrong and they would suffer, for their false belief would fail them. The nobles were apprehensive, and King Avenir studied his son closely; he thought he could use the disputation to deceive him, but God gave Josaphat true understanding.

The people sat down. The king stood before them and spoke loudly enough to be heard by all. “Now hear me, my lord rhetoricians, grammarians, and philosophers! Today we have assembled for an important debate and to put forward claims and arguments that will defend our laws and faith so a false religion is not promoted. If you win, each of you will wear the crown of victory and receive honor, glory, and acclaim. If you do not win, you will all die. I will have you hanged or burned, and I will have your ashes thrown to the wind. I will seize all your possessions and sentence your heirs to eternal servitude. Now I have told you my intentions. I am emperor and king, and my words have been heard here before you all.”

The king's son then declared so all could hear: “King, you have spoken with royal authority and justice. The judgment will be respected no matter who loses here. You have spoken as a good lord should, and I will do the same in addressing my master, whom I see here before me.

“Barlaam,” Josaphat continued, turning to Nachor, “when you came to find me, I had many privileges and pleasures and I was happy and at peace in my palace. Then you chastised and counseled me until I left my parents' religion and became a Christian in exchange for the rewards God promises to those who love him. Barlaam, you promised me these rewards, and I left my religion because of them. Now I say to you that you must defend our religion against those assembled here. I do not want your lessons to be hidden. Let them be heard openly so your opponents will be confounded. At the close of their disputation, let them perceive without doubt that their belief is false. Let our glorious and precious light appear today. Let the holy spiritual sun appear.

“Today is like a precious stone: it should be glorious and full of great strength. This day is your shield. If God gives you the honor of victory today, I will serve him forever as best I can and with a true heart. But if you are vanquished, I will not hesitate to take immediate vengeance for my shame. I alone will act, and by the Lord I serve, no king or count or sergeant will touch you. I will tear your heart from your body with my own hands. If your words are struck down, the disputation will have mortal consequences for you. I will allow dogs to eat your body, and I will cut out your tongue to show that no one should be so presumptuous as to mislead the king's son and dishonor him.”

When Nachor heard Josaphat's words, he began to feel shame, for he was a wise and learned man. He understood that the king's son threatened him harshly, and he wanted to defend Josaphat's position, no matter how it might end. God caused his change of heart and made him defend our faith.

The king sat on his throne and the crowd was silent. The son who caused him so much worry sat beside him, along with Barachie and Nachor. The king could see the treasure to be found in the truth that he wished to dispute.
1
The pagan philosophers, grammarians, and rhetoricians were lined up against Nachor, and they sharpened their wits, ready to destroy the good faith. The Indians waited to hear the disputation and see which side would win. The king commanded the arguments to begin. Each of the clerics should use his wisdom to try to best his opponent.

One of the rhetoricians rose to defend his religion in response to the king's command. He called proudly to Nachor and spoke haughtily: “Do not lie to us: are you this Barlaam who challenges us, along with the king and his son whom you corrupted and whom you taught to worship the crucified one? Are you the one who shamed our gods?”

“I truly am Barlaam,” Nachor responded, “and your gods mean nothing to me. I converted the king's son and brought him into the good faith. I delivered him from death. All those who worship your mute gods are foolish and deceived. Our Lord, who dwells on high, will reward us for our faith.”

The rhetorician responded, “Why then did our worthy ancestors, the wise rhetoricians, keep our faith? We are learned men, and we do not worship other gods because there are not any gods better than ours. Do not hide it from us: how do you dare to say there are other gods or another lord besides our gods, whom our religion commands us to love and worship? Our gods make counts and kings. They rule over all people, but your God was taken and bound and later crucified. Why do you believe in him? Why do you serve him? In serving him you abase yourself and become a servant. You are wrong to believe in one who could not prevent his own death.”

Nachor responded in a reasoned and learned way.
2
He waved his hand to silence the people, and said to the king, “I came to you for God's sake and to save you from danger by showing you that this belief is false. Consider the earth and the sky, the sea and the sun. Look at the moon and all the elements—the air, the stars, and the winds. They must all move against their own will. A god who must move and cannot be still; this is not a true god. When he moves against his will, something makes him move, and the thing that makes him move has greater power than the god. Of what value is a god who moves, when he is not powerful enough to hold himself still? This is not a god, according to my belief. The one who makes him move, he is the god, for he has the strength to make the elements move.

“Let us consider more closely the ways in which we believe. The Christian fears God, but the pagan is blind and does not acknowledge him. Christians love the pious Jesus, but the Jews worship in error: they recognize the Creator but they are lost in their religion and do not understand the good faith. They remain in sin because of it, and they too are blind. Their religion is like a covered cup. Under the cup's cover there is good wine, but they believe it holds only dregs. They are deceived, and they do not taste the wine. They do not understand that the scriptures gloss their holy book, and that their religion is written figuratively.

“There are three kinds of people who worship false gods (the gods are false because they cannot think and they are not alive), and I will name them to you: the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Chaldeans. They invented their religions from their own foolish ideas, and they defend them out of habit. They are masters of the false religions they themselves created.

“Now let us consider these false religions and whether there is any truth in them. The Chaldeans were the earliest, and I will first speak about how they began to worship the elements. They made statues of them, using rich and valuable materials. They used their own craft to make gods, and they held the gods they made dearer than their own Creator. They made their lords out of molten gold. It is fitting that such gods be guarded carefully, for they could be stolen! There is no intelligence in these gods if they have to fear for their theft. How can these gods save me when they cannot save themselves from others? How can they care for others when they cannot care for themselves? There is no reason in these gods. They are full of corruption and have corrupted many others. So I say to you by clear reasoning: these gods know nothing and they are worth nothing since they cannot save themselves. You should know that whoever makes a church or altar for them is foolish.

“King, now let us consider the elements, so that it can be heard before these people what sort of sanctity the elements may have and whether they have any power. I say that those who hold the sky as their creator make a foolish error. There can be no deity in the sky because it turns against its own will, and since it can be forced to turn without ceasing, I submit that anyone who makes the sky his god is foolish and misguided. (It is logical that whatever is made has a beginning and an end, and so this god begins and ends. This is a subtle distinction and important to understand, for a god cannot have a beginning, and my God never began and will never end.) The sky cannot be still since it moves with its light, and the stars that dwell there move from sign to sign. They disappear and then they rise again according to nature's laws, for time is regulated: there are winter stars and summer stars. So the sky turns. In one season it brings heat, and in the other it brings cold. It is constrained to act in this way, and I have proven that for this reason the sky cannot be a god.”

One of the wise and learned masters rose and said, “Now listen to this. We all agree that the earth is a god, and I do not think you can dispute it, for we live from her fruits. She causes the grass to appear, meadows to flower, and trees to bear leaves. She gives us a great abundance of bread, wine, and meat. Without her, we could not live a single day. I submit to you that the earth most certainly is a god that we should worship.”

Nachor responded, “You do not speak the truth. The earth has no power, for men shame it regularly for their own needs. They wound it where formerly it was whole. They have no pity for it and walk on it with their feet. In many foolish ways they take a great ransom from it. They plow and break it, and it seems to me that the earth is often stained with blood. It is a sepulcher for the dead, and it rots with the bodies. It can also die and never again bear fruit. The sower who would spread seed in such a place is a fool. For this reason I rightly prove that the earth cannot be a god—whether or not it wishes, the earth must suffer wounds and die.”

Another cleric rose and spoke eloquently: “Since you have shown the logic by which the earth cannot be called a god or considered divine, then I say that, on the other hand, water is certainly a god, and I will prove it. All people need to wash and to bathe, and they need the fish she gives us. She devotes her power to providing what we need in many ways. For this reason, I say that water is a god, and no master can contradict me.”

Nachor responded: “It is not like that—your false belief has betrayed you. The water that your tongue praises is subordinate to man, for man can easily make it bloody or give it some other color, and it can be corrupted and stained. It can be chilled and frozen or used to clean away filth. The scriptures reveal to us that water is God's creation. And so I prove that it is not a god.”

One of the other rhetoricians was the brother of Plato and strongly opposed to the Christians.
3
He was a tall, thin, white-haired man, and he was richly dressed in silk and wore an elegant hat. His face was ugly and his hair braided; his beard fell to his waist, and it too was woven into many braids. He was faithful to his pagan religion. His eyebrows brushed his eyes, and he had a very proud look. He held a staff in one hand and with the other he arranged his hat. He spoke impatiently to Nachor. “Heed my words,” he said. “Fire is a god, as you know very well. All Christians know it, for they use him daily. No one will dispute this. Fire serves many needs, for he cooks food and warms people. He also makes our courts more beautiful. Fire succors us in a thousand ways. It is then true, do not mistake it, that fire truly is a god, for he helps all people.”

Nachor responded, “Not so quickly. Allow me to respond, if you please. There is no doubt that God made fire so it could serve us. A man carries a flame from one place to another to light a fire, and he cooks meat with it. But I tell you that whoever makes a flame into a god is foolish. Fire was never a god, nor should it be taken for one. Master, reconsider this god. Can one not extinguish a fire? Whoever crowns it puts it out. A god that can be constrained is a bad god, and I do not know of anything that can constrain a real god. And for this reason I prove, according to your logic, that fire is not a god and has no deity in it. Our Lord created it.”

Varro, a great grammarian (his brother was Caesar), rose upon hearing these words. He was wise and learned, but he was also rash—he trusted so much in his own intelligence that he became impulsive. He began to sharpen his tongue and called for silence. Then he spoke logically: “If you would deny that the wind is a god, then I will prove it using reason. You err when you disparage our gods. You dispute with us before the king who stands here as our judge and lord, but your only argument is to shame our gods. You cannot refute my claim that the wind most certainly is a god, for when the earth is wet and inundated with rain, the wind blows across it to dry it and restore its former beauty. When people are hot in the summer, the wind comes to cool them. If you admit reason, you have to judge that the wind is a god and also one of the elements. He is a true god, as I believe in good faith and so should you.”

“Friend, this is not right at all,” Nachor responded. “You speak against the scriptures' lessons. The wind was made and serves others, and whoever believes that the wind is a god is mistaken and lost, for it does not rule over anything. And since it does not rule, then it was made to serve, and a god cannot be a servant. A god would be shamed by serving others, and so I say that the wind cannot be a god. When the wind is forced to grow strong and weak, then it has no mastery over anything. No one can say that the wind is a lord.”

Amalichon, an Indian who hated Christians, rose to his feet, angry and disdainful of Nachor. He was Aristotle's nephew and companion, and he was cruel and sharp-tongued, but also wise, brave, and wealthy. His learning and his lineage would have given him great authority if he had put his understanding in God. He was lord of a city. He was learned, generous, and noble, and he was descended from Saint Denise. He had one hundred knights with him, and the court was under his control. If anyone made trouble, he would take cruel vengeance for it, and for this reason he spoke without fear.

He began to harangue Nachor (he thought he would win the dispute this way): “We should believe without doubt that we will always be blind if the sun does not shine and give us light. Our eyes are worth nothing to us if the sun does not illuminate us with his light. He lights the day, and day does not dawn if the sun's light does not appear. Your reasoning is completely false if you argue that the sun is not a god. There is nothing to dispute here, for everyone believes it. The entire firmament is illuminated with his precious light. There is no denying it.”

“You have spoken well for someone who is in error,” Nachor responded. “But if you are truly wise, you will see that you are wrong. By your leave, I will show you that you have your argument backward when you make the sun a god because of its light. This cannot be, for notice, dear master, that the sun rises against its will and sets out of necessity. And when its light is brightest, it has to accept that a cloud can cover it. Its rays are hidden when it is cloudy and its strength is compromised. Whoever makes the sun a god has no understanding. The sun was made for man and serves him. Moreover, it is less than the firmament. For this I say with confidence, I have shown the proof, that there is no power in the sun—the sun is not a god and should not be. Whoever makes a god of the sun is mistaken.”

Tanthaplamos rose quickly at these words. He was enraged that Nachor had slandered his gods. He was a Chaldean, born in Lesser India, and he was a good and wise cleric. He knew many languages and all the liberal arts. He had made the moon his god (remember that the Chaldeans worshipped the elements as gods). “I will show you through reason that the moon must be recognized as a god,” he said. “Her divinity is demonstrated in her ability to choose her shape: she is horned when she wishes or round. And yet when she appears there is not less of her, nor is there more. She merely gives less of herself to the world when she gives less of her light. No one can fail to serve her as a god. This is what the Chaldeans believe and anyone who wishes to find true belief should also believe it.”

Nachor responded with reason: “Using your own argument, I will show that the truth is the opposite of what you claim when you make the moon into a god. This cannot be and never will be, and the scriptures do not recognize it. You have deceived yourself. I do not know anything about a god with horns—the moon goes into an eclipse and disappears, when it should be most powerful. According to this logic, the moon becomes both larger and smaller. No one can convince me that a god can wax or wane. Your astronomy is false when it claims that the moon is a god. The moon is a work of God who created it.”

Aradynes suffered when he heard his gods and his lord so strongly slandered, and it is no wonder if he was troubled. He rose furiously and looked angrily at Nachor. He wanted to offer a strong and unforgiving challenge. “Master,” he said, “it is not right to argue with us about such fundamental things. We are all angry about it. We Chaldeans speak now and later the Greeks will take their turn. It is a great endeavor to defend yourself against all of us, but there would be no need of defense if you understood the truth.”