Wake Up (10 page)

Authorship of various important sections of the Sacred Canon, has now been ascribed to these two brilliant saints. With all their followers they took refuge in the Order.

There was a Brahmin Sage of immense wealth, Mahae Kasyapa, a wise philanthrophic priest whose renown had spread far, who had just renounced his handsome, virtuous wife and all his estate and possessions to find out the way of salvation. Much disturbed, like Yasa the wild boy, he wandered into Buddha’s camp in the middle of the night.

“Having rejoiced in the true law, and being humbly desirous for a pure and believing heart, thou hast overcome desire for sleep, and art here to pay me reverence,” spoke the Buddha gently. “Now then will I for your sake discharge fully the duties of a first meeting. Famous for your charity, now take from me the charity of perfect rest, and for this end accept my rules of purity.”

The All-Knowing One wished to quiet the rich man’s contumacious exercise of the distribution of unneeded largesse, to teach him needed rest foremost. “The restless busy nature of the world, this I declare is at the root of pain.

“Seeing the constant toil of birth and death we ought to strive to attain a passive state: the final goal of Sammata, the place of immortality and rest.

“All is empty! neither ‘self,’ nor place for ‘self,’ but all the world is like a phantasy; this is the way to regard ourselves, as but a heap of composite qualities.”

Mahae Kasyapa understood that there is no “I” in the matter of charity.

“Now you have seen the true doctrine, your guileless heart loves to exercise its charity; for wealth and money are inconstant treasures, ’twere better quickly to bestow such things on others.

“For when a treasure has been burnt, whatever precious things may have escaped the fire the wise man, knowing their inconstancy, gives freely, doing acts of kindness with his saved possessions.

“But the fool guards them carefully, fearing to lose them, worn by anxiety, pestered by imaginary fears in his nightmare that he may lose ‘all,’ yea, even him-‘self.’

“The charitable man suffers no repentance, no tormenting fear! this is the opening flower of his reward, the fruit that follows—hard to conjecture! This wisdom leads the way to fixed composure without dependence and without numbers.

“Hear!

“And if we even reach the immortal path, still by continuous acts of charity we fulfill ourselves in consequence of kindly charity done elsewhere.

“Know then! the charitable man has found the cause of final rescue; even as the man who plants the sapling thereby receives the shade, the flowers, the fruit of the tree fullgrown; the result of charity is even so, its reward is joy and the great Nirvana.

“Giving away our food we get more strength, giving away our clothes we get more beauty; founding religious rest-places we reap the perfect fruit of the highest and the best degree of charity, without self-interest or thought of getting more; and so the heart comes back and rests.”

This was the preaching of what was later known as the Dana Paramita, the Ideal of Charity, one of six such ideals fitting into the last six steps of the Eightfold Path like a beautiful ornament. They are the Dana, Ideal of Charity; the Sila, Ideal of Kindness; the Kshanti, Ideal of Patience; the Virya, Ideal of Zeal; the Dhyana, Ideal of Meditation; and the Prajna, Ideal of Wisdom. The great Brahmin, having received this sermon and becoming converted, sang this song:

 

After the death of Buddha, Mahae Kasyapa became the First Patriarch of the Buddhist Church and organized the all important compilation of the Buddhist Scriptures, the Sacred Canon (the
Tripitaka
, or, Three Baskets) without which none of the Blessed One’s words would have reached us 2,500 years beyond. But in the mind of the Buddha, the Awakened One, these 2,500 years are just a dewdrop. “The line of the law forms an unbroken continuity. In all directions of space are standing Buddhas, like sand of the Ganges: these also do, for the welfare of all beings in the world, expound superior enlightenment. And myself also, am now manifesting, for the welfare of creatures now living, this Buddha-enlightenment by thousands of ten millions of various directions. I reveal the law in its multifariousness and dispositions of creatures. I use different means to rouse each according to his own character. Therefore try to understand the mystery of the Buddhas, the holy Masters of the world; forsake all doubt and uncertainty: you shall become Buddhas: rejoice!”

After the conversion of Mahae Kasyapa, walking in the path of earth Gotama Sakyamuni returned to the country where he was born, Gorakpur District, where his father King Suddhodhana reigned. Followed by his numerous Men of Saintship, yet advancing with the grave mysterious loneliness of the elephant, he came to within several miles of Kapilavastu where the sumptuous palace of his youth still stood, as unreal now, in his enlightened mirror-like reflection, as an indicated castle in a child’s tale designed solely to make children believe in its existence. The King heard of his arrival and came at once, eagerly concerned.

On seeing him he uttered these mournful words: “Thus, now I see my son, his well known features as of old; but how estranged his heart! There are no grateful outflowings of soul; cold and vacant there he sits.”

They looked at each other like people thinking upon a distant friend gazing by accident upon his pictured form.

Buddha: “I know that the King’s heart is full of love and recollection, and that for his son’s sake he adds to grief further grief; but now let the bands of love that bind him, thinking of his son, be instantly unloosed and utterly destroyed.

“Ceasing from thoughts of love, let your calmed mind receive from me, your son, religious nourishment such as no son has offered yet to father; such do I present to you the King, my father.

“The way superlative of bliss immortal I offer now the Maharajah; from the accumulating of deeds comes birth; as the result of deeds comes the recompense. Knowing then that deeds bring fruit, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage, how diligently should you be to rid yourself of worldly deeds! how careful that in the world your deeds should be only good and gentle!

“But not for the sake of a heavenly birth should you practice gentle deeds but that by day and night, rightly free from thoughts unkind, loving all that lives and equally, you may strive to get rid of all confusion of the mind and practice silent contemplation; only this brings profit in the end, beside this there is no reality.

“For be sure! earth, heaven, and hell are as but froth and bubble of the sea.

“Nirvana! This is the chief rest.

“Composure! that the best of all enjoyments.

“Infinitely quiet is the place where the wise man finds his abode; no need of arms or weapons there! no elephants or horses, chariots or soldiers there!

“Banished, once for all, birth, age, and death.

“Subdued the power of greedy desire and angry thoughts and ignorance, there’s nothing left in the wide world to conquer!”

Having heard from his son how to cast off fear and escape the evil ways of birth, and in a manner of such dignity and tenderness, the King himself left his kingly estate and country and entered on the calm flowings of thoughts, the gate of the true law of eternality. Sweet in meditation, dew Suddhodhana drank. In the night, recalling his son with pride, he looked up at the infinite stars and suddenly realized “How glad I am to be alive to reverence this starry universe!” then “But it’s not a case of being alive and the starry universe is not necessarily the starry universe” and he realized the utter strangeness and yet commonness of the unsurpassable wisdom of the Buddha.

Accompanied by Maudgalyayana, the Blessed One visited the woman who had been his wife, the Princess Yasodhara in the Palace, for the purpose of taking his son Rahula on the road with him. Princess Yasodhara pleaded for the inheritance of the boy, who was now nineteen years old. “I will give him a more excellent inheritance,” said Buddha, and bade Maudgalyayana shave his head, and admit him to the Sangha Brotherhood.

After this they started out from Kapilavistu. In the pleasure gardens they came upon a party of Sakya princes, all cousins of Gotama, among them his cousins Ananda and Devadatta, who were to become, respectively, his greatest friend and his greatest enemy. Some years later when the Blessed One inquired of Ananda what it was that had impressed him in the Buddha’s way of life and most influenced him to forsake all worldly pleasures and enabled him to cut asunder his youthful sexual cravings so as to realize the true Essence of Mind and its self-purifying brightness, Ananda joyfully replied: “Oh, my Lord! the first thing that impressed me were the thirty-two marks of excellency in my Lord’s personality. They appeared to me so fine, as tender and brilliant, and transparent as a crystal.” This warm-hearted youth ranked but next to Maudgalyayana in brilliance of learning, but it was this combination of near-infatuated love for the Master and the superior erudite sharpness that prevented him from attaining to the states of equal-minded bliss experienced by the least of the bhikshus, some of them uneducated antiquity hoboes like Sunita the Scavenger, Alavaka the Cannibal (he had been an actual cannibal in Atavi prior to his enlightenment), or Ugrasena the Acrobat. Ananda became known as the Shadow, ever following the Blessed One’s footsteps, even when he paced, step for step and right behind, turning where he turned, sitting when he sat. After awhile it became habit for Ananda to serve his Master, such as preparing his sitting place, or going ahead to make arrangements in towns, providing him with little kindnesses when needed, constantly a companion and personal attendant, which the Blessed One accepted quietly.

In grievous contrast was the other cousin Devadatta. Jealous and foolish he joined the Order hoping to learn the Transcendental Samapatti graces that come after highest holy meditation so he could use them as powerful magic, even against the Buddha, if necessary, in his plans to found a new sect of his own. The Samapatti graces included Transcendental Telepathy. Devadatta’s evil avarice was not apparent in that first meeting in the gardens of Gorakpur. Looking upon all beings as equally to be loved, equally empty, and equally coming Buddhas it made little difference to the Blessed One what Devadatta harbored in his heart in the moment of ordination. Even later after Devadatta had made attempts on his life, as will be shown, with mighty sweetness the Exalted One blessed his inner heart.

The Teacher and his disciples moved on to Rajagaha where they were greeted by the immensely wealthy merchant Sudatta, who was called Anathapindika on account of his charities to the orphans and the poor. This man had just bought at an enormous price the magnificent Jetavana Park from a royal prince and built a splendid monastery of eighty cells and other residences with terraces and baths for the Buddha and his ordained disciples. The Blessed One accepted his invitation and made his abode there, right outside the great city of Sravasti. During the rainy seasons he came back to Rajagaha to stay in the monastery of the Bamboo Grove.

Most of the time he spent in solitude in the forest; the other monks sat apart, also practicing meditation, drinking in the example of the tremendous love-filled silence that emanated from the part of the forest where the Buddha sat meek on a throne of grass, long-suffering beneath the patience of the tree that sheltered him. Sometimes this life was pleasant (“Forests are delightful; where the world finds no delight, there the passionless will find delight, for they look not for pleasures”); sometimes it was not pleasant:

“Cold, master, is the winter night,” sang the monks. “The time of frost is coming; rough is the ground with the treading of the hoofs of cattle; thin is the couch of leaves, and light is the yellow robe: the winter wind blows keen.” But these men had roused and awakened themselves, as their forefather saints in the long tradition of the Indias, to the incomparable dignity of knowing that there are worse things than the stinging fly, the creeping snake, winter’s cold rain or summer’s scorching wind. Having escaped the grief of lust, and dissipated the clouds and mists of sensual desire, Buddha accepted food both good or bad, whatever came, from rich or poor, without distinction, and having filled his alms-dish, he then returned back to the solitude, where he meditated his prayer for the emancipation of the world from its bestial grief and incessant bloody deeds of death and birth, death and birth, the ignorant gnashing screaming wars, the murder of dogs, the histories, follies, parent beating child, child tormenting child, lover ruining lover, robber raiding niggard, leering, cocky, crazy, wild, blood-louts moaning for more blood-lust, utter sots, running up and down simpleminded among charnels of their own making, simpering everywhere, mere
tsorises
and dream-pops, one monstrous beast raining forms from a central glut, all buried in unfathomable darkness crowing for rosy hope that can only be complete extinction, at base innocent and without any vestige of self-nature whatever; for should the causes and conditions of the ignorant insanity of the world be removed, the nature of its non-insane non-ignorance would be revealed, like the child of dawn entering heaven through the morning in the lake of the mind, the Pure, True Mind, the source, Original Perfect Essence, the empty void radiance, divine by nature, the sole reality, Immaculate, Universal, Eternal, One Hundred Percent Mental, upon which all this dreamfilled darkness is imprinted, upon which these unreal bodying forms appear for what seems to be a moment and then disappear for what seems to be eternity.