Miss Buddha (6 page)

Leaving him, they returned to their fields,
their seas, their skies and there danced the day and the night
before they returned to see Nathadeva off, properly this time. But
when they arrived at where they had left him, he was nowhere to be
found.

They called out his name, and then again,
many times. They looked for him some more, but without fruit. Then
they collectively shrugged their shoulders, it couldn’t be helped,
Natha had return to Earth before they arrived to see him off. Oh,
well. We wish him well.

:

During his perfect stillness Natha merged
with and donned the familiar garment of the Buddha, and once so
draped he envisioned as well as he could the task that lay before
him, below him—the crusted earth, the tortured planet rushing,
clearly in his view, toward self-destruction.

Toward Tusita dawn, not quite a terrestrial
year (but a few heart beats in Tusita) before he was to return as
Ruth Marten, Gotama’s thoughts turned to Ananda.

::
8 :: (Tusita Heaven)

My thoughts turn to Ananda. I remember him
fondly.

What set him apart—aside from his dedication
both to me and to his own emancipation—was his prodigious memory.
He remembered everything I said, every discourse I held; and should
he miss one, for any reason—which usually meant that I had sent him
on some errand or other, he had made me promise to repeat it
privately to him on his return so that he may hear and so remember
it for posterity.

He was the Holder and Guardian of my
teachings, the Dhamma.

In fact, the Earth has Ananda to thank that
the Pali Canon exists today. But for him, my teachings would have
been lost or hopelessly altered and perverted by now.

But he was more than that. He was also my
closest friend and companion over many, many lifetimes, both in the
human and animal realms, as well as in the Deva heavens. We were
seldom, if ever, apart; and if we were, it was only for an
occasional lifetime. Then we would find each other again, and set
out for adventure anew.

Through all this time as Bodhisatta, my
destiny was always clear: to enlighten the world as to Truth, as to
Dhamma—and so was Ananda’s. He had long ago chosen to do what he
could to help me, and so, by his own choosing, he shouldered that
destiny as well.

Thus he became Gotama Buddha’s personal
attendant for over twenty-five years in those far away Indian days,
and he mourned my physical passing—and return to Tusita—more deeply
than any other.

Feeling perhaps that his destiny had now
been fulfilled, Ananda did not follow me to the Tusita heaven upon
his own Parinibbana, but took a different path. The grieving Ananda
by my deathbed was the last I saw of him.

And now that I am soon to return to Earth, I
wonder where he is, my always friend and companion. For I could use
his help again.

::
9 :: (Ancient India)

Buddhist Legend has it that Ananda also, like
Gotama Buddha, descended to Earth from Tusita Heaven. This is not
so.

Ananda—as karmic reward for much accumulated
merit in service of the Bodhisatta—had, before again joining the
Buddha—spent his last two lives in the Nimmanarati Heaven, where
he, like so many other devas on this plane, had enjoyed his arts
(for at heart he was a musician) and delighted in his
creations.

The Legend—being legend, after all—is not
clear on precisely how Gotama Buddha got word to Ananda from Tusita
that it was now time to return, that the darkness of the world had
reached such depth that they could not tarry longer, but word was
given and word was received.

The truth is that Ananda was not so pleased
to hear from his old friend just then. He was mid-symphony, a
two-year long multi-colored and many-harmonied tribute to creation
itself, mirroring, to the best of his recollection and abilities,
the ascent of the potential of life into life itself.

In fact, he was—if only briefly—tempted to
feign deafness, or ignorance, or absence, anything to allow him to
work his creation to conclusion. And had he not already promised to
perform this symphony once finished? It would not do to break
promises, now would it?

This line of reasoning, however, did not sit
well with his conscience, for he had already, and priorly, promised
Gotama Buddha to return to Earth when the Bodhisatta deemed the
time was right; and now he deemed it so, though it could hardly
have been more ill-timed, at least not by Ananda’s reckoning.

Still, maintained his conscience, a prior
promise is a prior promise, and so Ananda—in synchronized cessation
of a million energies in as many vibrations—dissolved his symphony
into the nothing it had sprung from and then left Nimmanarati for
the Indian subcontinent.

:

Ananda’s father, Amitodana, was the brother
of Suddhodana, Gotama’s father (both of the royal warrior caste
family of the Sakyans) so they were—in an act of beautiful
synchronization—to be first cousins this life.

And not only that: they were born on the
same day, Siddhattha Gotama and he; Ananda in Kapilavatthu—where
they were to grow up together—and Siddhattha in Lumbini, in a
garden beneath a Sal tree, where his mother, Queen Maha Maya, on
her way to her father’s kingdom to give birth according to Sakyan
tradition, were to rest for the night. For that was the night
Siddhattha (and so, too, Ananda) decided to arrive.

Siddhattha’s birth was quite an occasion,
sages and seers from all over arrived to pay homage and predict
futures. Of all the holy men that foretold Siddhattha’s life,
however, only one, Kondanna, got it unequivocally right: this boy,
he said, will become a Buddha.

Kondanna’s prediction,
however, did not sit well with the Gotama’s father, King
Suddhodana, who preferred to believe the predictions of the
remaining lot of holy men, all of whom gave Siddhattha a
fifty-fifty future of growing up to be either a great king, or a
great holy man; the King’s preference coming down on the side of
“great king.” Queen Maya, however, wished with all of
her
heart that Siddhattha
would indeed become a great holy man, if not a Buddha.

Unfortunately, Queen Maya, did not live to
see her wish come true, she died within a week of Siddhattha’s
birth; welcomed to Tusita by many a deva singing her praises.

:

He lived a sheltered life,
did Gotama Siddhattha, much too sheltered for Ananda’s liking—for
he always had to go to the palace to visit
him
, since
he
would never leave his luxurious
seclusion to see Ananda, and would never accompany Ananda on his
expeditions into the fields and forests surrounding
Kapilavatthu.

Strange.

And stranger still: his uncle Suddhodana had
told him, and in no uncertain terms, that Ananda was not to, under
any circumstances, describe or even mention to Siddhattha anything
about life in the city or surrounding country, unless—and only
if—it was to tell his son how beautiful the city and its land was,
and how happy was its people.

Siddhattha was to become king, and his mind
and heart were not to be sullied by the mundane, is how Ananda’s
father explained this to him when one day Ananda asked. And being a
good son, a good cousin, and a good nephew, Ananda complied, and
would never—although Siddhattha at times asked—demean the city or
the country, but would always, and quite cleverly, either praise
their beauty or steer the conversation back to the palace and its
grounds and the many places to rest or hide or eat or enjoy the
blessings of either the sun or its shadow.

Ananda, and many others, carried out the
concealment so well that Siddhattha spent his first twenty-nine
years well shielded from the mundane.

He was a true prince.

At twenty-nine, however, Siddhattha had had
his fill of secluded luxury and insisted (and not for the first
time; in fact, this was the third time) that his father let him
leave the palace and visit his subjects.

Give me a week, said his father, though not
in so many words. What he said was, “Uposatha,” meaning the next
full moon, a week away.

And this was a busy week for his father who
ordered a massive all-hands on deck to clear large parts of the
city—those along Siddhattha’s path—of any sign of misery, that’s to
say, any trace of age, sickness, or suffering; sights unsuitable
for the prince and king-to-be.

In fact, considering the time constraint,
they did a remarkable job, for riding down the prescribed route
(which Suddhodana insisted Siddhattha take—that and none other) all
the prince saw was young, healthy, smiling faces, greeting their
prince.

“You are right, this is a beautiful city,”
said Siddhattha to Ananda who came along for this ride. “It’s all
like the palace, though larger.”

Ananda, biting his tongue, agreed.

At the end of the prescribed route,
however—where they were meant to turn around—Siddhattha spotted a
multi-colored fountain through the foliage to his right and asked
his charioteer Channa to go there.

When Channa did not answer, or show any
indication of carrying out the prince’s wishes, Siddhattha asked
again. “Channa, take us to that fountain.” Now pointing to it.

Again Channa remained ear-less, and instead
focused all his attention on some problem with the reins, or was it
his hands?

“Channa,” said Siddhattha. “Why do you
ignore my request?”

Channa, being almost as much a father to
Siddhattha as Suddhodana, finally answered. “By the King’s
wish.”

“What is the King’s wish?”

“That we travel to this place, then turn and
travel back.”

“This is well and good,
Channa,” said Siddhattha. “But
my
wish is to take a closer at that fountain.” And
with that Siddhattha stepped off the chariot and said, “Ananda.
Follow me.”

Thus it came to be that Siddhattha, at age
twenty-nine, for the first time in his life encountered old age,
for resting by the beautiful fountain, wrapped in a much-washed
light-blue sari, was an eighty-eight-year-old woman, as bent and
wrinkly and toothless a thing as you’d ever see, smiling up at the
prince: all tongue, thin lips and gum.

Siddhattha, at first repulsed, but soon more
curious than repelled, looked more closely at the woman and said to
her, “Why have you no teeth?”

“I have not had teeth for one hundred and
twenty moons,” answered the old woman.

“Why is that?” asked Siddhattha.

“Why?” The woman did not seem to understand
the question.

“Yes.”

The woman looked long at the prince—as if to
determine whether or not he was dream—before her gaze slipped past
him to Channa, now approaching with horses and chariot. Ananda and
Siddhattha both turned at the sound of hoofs and wheel.

“My prince,” said Channa. “We need to
return.”

“Not until she answers my question,” said
Siddhattha.

“What question is that?” wondered
Channa.

“The Prince wants to know why an old woman
has no teeth,” said the old woman, as if the question was too
foolish even to acknowledge. As if the prince had asked her why
clay pots fall to the ground when dropped.

Channa said something to his horses, who
came to rest, and then, snorting importantly—one white and one
black, beautiful steeds both—appeared to scrutinize the old woman
as well.

“And what do you answer,” said the
Prince.

“An old woman answers that the Prince is
mocking her,” she said.

“The Prince,” said the Prince, who felt
impatience rise, but reined it in, “is not mocking an old woman.
The Prince does not know the answer and seeks it. Or he would not
waste air to ask.”

Again, the old woman looked at the prince
for a long, silent spell filled with soft splashing of water from
the fountain and impatient scraping of hoofs from the horses. Then
she looked at Ananda, Channa, and the two horses in turn, as if
they might help explain to her this strange, royal question.

Finally, she said, realizing that Siddhattha
in fact did not know, “Leaves turn golden and red in the autumn,
leave their branches and fall to the ground. Teeth are no
different.”

“But you are not a tree,” said the
Prince.

“No,” said the old woman. “But I have my
seasons.”

“But it is spring,” said Siddhattha.

“Not for me,” she answered. “My spring was
many, many moons ago. I have lived a long life, and my autumn even
is soon past, for winter knocks on my door.”

Then she added, as if instructing a child,
“I am an old woman. This is what happens to old women. To all
women, to all men, to all girls, to all boys. Time shows no
mercy.”

“Ananda,” said the prince, still looking at
the woman for a breath or two, time, then turning to his friend.
“Is this true?”

Ananda did not answer, but Channa said, “It
is true, my prince.”

Once they returned to the palace, Siddhattha
asked that Ananda stay with him, which he gladly did. Naturally,
Ananda had expected many questions from his friend, but this was
not the reason the prince wanted his company, for he asked no
questions, and said little else. He simply wanted his friend
nearby.

And wanted him by his side the next morning,
when the prince stirred Ananda from sleep even before the sun
bruised the sky.

“Ananda, wake.” A strong hand on his
shoulder, a gentle shake.

“What is it?” A tired Ananda getting his
bearings.

“Take me back to the fountain.”

Ananda came all awake. “Shall I tell
Channa?”

“No, we walk.”

“But the King,” began Ananda.

“We walk,” said Siddhattha, in so princely a
way that it brooked no argument.