Buddha

by Deepak Chopra

  The five monks said nothing, which Gautama took to be assent.

  “In time I concluded that my struggles could last a lifetime, and to what end? I will still be a slave to karma and a prisoner in this world. What is this karma that visits us with so much suffering? Karma is the body’s endless desires. Karma is the memory of past pleasure we want to repeat and past pain we want to avoid. It’s the delusions of ego and the storm of fear and anger that besieges the mind. Therefore, I have resolved to cut karma out by the roots.”

  “How? You think you know something that no one else knows?” Assaji asked. His rail-thin body already showed the effects of years of austerity.

  “Myself, no. But you live the ascetic’s life. Haven’t you already spent years sitting in silence, repeating your prayers, contemplating images of the gods, reciting a thousand and eight names of Vishnu?” The eldest monk nodded. “Has any of it made you free?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should you continue to do more of what doesn’t work in the first place? The temple priests taught you how to reach God—priests who have not found freedom either, but who claim title to the holy teachings the way a farmer puts a brand on cattle.” Gautama had eaten nothing for days and barely slept. He wondered briefly if he sounded delirious.

  One of the younger monks interrupted. “Tell us your way.”

  “On the road I met an old sannyasi named Ganaka, and he told me something important. Let the world be your teacher. I couldn’t understand what he meant at first, but now I do. Every experience that traps me is a worldly experience. The world is seductive and hard to interpret for what it really is. Yet this world is nothing more than desire, and every desire makes me run after it. Why? Because I believe it’s real. Desires are phantoms, concealing the grinning face of death. Be wise. Believe in nothing.”

  It took many nights around the fire, but Gautama and the five monks came to an agreement. They would give their bodies nothing to live for in the world, no desires to fulfill, no cravings to become a slave to. They would sit like statues facing a wall, and no matter how many desires arose, each one would be coldly turned away. “Even if we are tied to our karma by ten thousand threads,” said Gautama, “we can break them one at a time. When the last attachment is gone, karma will be dead instead of us.”

  He believed every word. Perhaps the five monks didn’t, but they followed him. They sat like statues facing a wall and waited. Gautama was so fervent that he expected to reach his goal soon. Assaji wouldn’t commit himself. “Unhappiness is born of expectations that don’t come true,” he reminded his brother monk. “Even to expect nothing can be a trap.”

  Gautama bowed his head. “I understand.” But this gesture of humility disguised the fire he felt inside. In legend, other yogis had found immortality. They were great aspirants, and Gautama saw himself as nothing less. He chose a spot away from all shelter, sat down on a patch of rocks without clearing them away, and waited.

  “IF YOU MUST GO, then go. I don’t need a reason,” said Assaji. He looked on Kondana with mild eyes that held no reproof. Kondana was the youngest of the five monks, but he had proved the toughest in the end.

  “You already know my reasons. Look at him,” Kondana protested. He pointed at a gnarled carving lying on the jungle floor, which was so close to looking like weathered wood that at times he had to remind himself that it was actually a living person—Gautama.

  “I can’t stay and watch him kill himself,” said Kondana. “It’s like watching a corpse decay while it’s still breathing.” He had already stayed longer than three of the five monks. None were impatient. Since vowing to follow Gautama, they had pursued enlightenment for five years.

  “He never moves anymore. I wonder where he is,” said Assaji.

  “I think he’s in hell,” Kondana said mournfully.

  The years of austerity had caused many things to happen. They had all gone through experiences in meditation that they never dreamed possible. Assaji himself had visited the home of the gods. He had watched Shakti, the sinuous consort of Shiva, dance for him, a dance where every step shook the worlds and the tinkle of ankle bells turned into stars. He had conversed with the greatest sages, like Vasishtha, who had been dead for centuries. Only Gautama never told such tales, and after winter settled in among the Himalayan peaks, it was a matter of survival to force him to find a place where they could be more protected. Reluctantly Gautama agreed, but only on the condition that he would continue his austerities and that the five monks would make no contact with other human beings.

  An emaciated man whose skin has toughened into cracked brown hide and who has subsisted on a tenth of the food given to a newborn baby is not a sight for ordinary eyes. Some people would consider him a fraud, others a madman. The superstitious few would call him a saint. “I do not know who I am anymore,” Gautama said. “But I am blessed, because it has taken me only five years to know who I am not.”

  Now Assaji walked over to Gautama and with Kondana’s help set him upright again. He had fallen over during the night, and these days he was lost in a samadhi so deep that nothing registered from the outside world. It was up to the other monks to feed him by opening his mouth and placing a handful of chewed rice in it. They carried him to the river to bathe him and moved him out of the worst of the searing sun. All this made it appear that Gautama was helpless and paralyzed. But Assaji knew that appearances were deceiving. Gautama was on a quest the likes of which went back almost before time.

  Kondana put on his sandals and tucked some dried berries into the corner of his shawl. “Will you come?” he asked Assaji.

  “No.”

  “You still think he has a chance—he might succeed?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  There was nothing more to talk about. Kondana bowed down before Gautama and placed a pink wild orchid at his feet in reverence. He no longer felt guilty over losing hope; he was too exhausted to feel much of anything. As he left camp, Assaji touched him on the shoulder.

  “When the time comes I’ll send for you. The five of us should carry the body back to his people.”

  That was the last word Assaji said or heard for the next three months. Spring came, and every day brought a shower of creamy white blossoms falling from the sal trees that blanketed the northern forest. Gautama had not altered. At times he showed more signs of life than at other times. Assaji would hear him at night walking out of camp for the call of nature, but that was rarely. The water level might dip in the gourd Assaji placed by his side.

  What eventually broke was Assaji’s own body. He got sick alone in the jungle; for all he knew it was a sign. Wrapped in his shawl, he suffered the delirium of fever for five days and nights. When the fever broke, he shivered with cold sweat. Slowly his body returned to health, but with it came an unexpected change. Assaji grew hungry again. He craved a real meal and would scour the jungle floor for a dead parrot to take back and cook.

  If I am reduced to unwholesome food, my quest is over, he thought. He wasn’t willing to sink to a subhuman level, no matter how enormous the goal of enlightenment might be. He decided to tell Gautama. One morning he crouched in front of his motionless brother, wiping away the dirt from his face with water from the gourd.

  “I’m going,” he said. Gautama showed no signs of hearing him. “I must think about my soul. If you die and I let you, my sin is as great as murder. You shouldn’t be responsible for that. I’m ashamed to speak of sin to someone like you, but there’s no shame in it if you decide to come with me.”

  Assaji’s guilt made him feel that he’d said too much already. Like the others, his faith had been worn down too far. Assaji lingered around camp a few more days. He piled fruit next to Gautama and a week’s supply of water. How strange that this immobile icon should still be alive and that behind his mask he was fighting such a huge battle. Face the wall like a statue and give them nothing. Assaji remembered Gautama’s rallying cry, but he couldn’t follow it anymore. He left camp before
dawn without a sound.

  Gautama didn’t hear him depart; he had heard nothing since he became aware—and then only at the farthest edge of his mind—that Kondana was gone. It didn’t matter. He had come to realize that he was walking the path alone. Two journeys had to be made without companions: the journey to your death and the one to enlightenment.

  In his meditations he had arrived at heaven before the others, but he said nothing about it. There was dazzling beauty; golden celestial beings materialized all around him, but then he took a route the other monks would not. Gautama turned his back on the celestial beings. “I’ve already known pleasure. What good does it do me to feel more?”

  “This is heavenly pleasure,” the celestial beings said.

  “Which I can enjoy forever only after I die,” said Gautama. “Therefore it’s as good as a curse.” He walked away and asked to see more suffering.

  Thus he arrived at the gate of hell, where Gautama saw the terrifying torments that lay beyond. But no demons came for him. Instead he heard these words: “No sin brings you here. Do not pass.”

  He entered anyway, of his own free will. I’ve known fear, he thought. And fear is death’s chief weapon. Let me experience the worst torment, and then fear will lose its hold over me.

  The phase of hellish torment lasted a long time because every morning his broken bones and flayed skin grew back. “Where is Mara?” Gautama asked. “I need to see the worst that he can do too.” But for some reason Mara hung back and never appeared. Gautama wondered if this was a trap, but after a while the torments became routine, and his mind grew bored. One morning the demons failed to appear, and then the scenes of hell disappeared, giving way to dark, motionless silence.

  Gautama waited. He knew he had defeated every form of suffering he could imagine. His body no longer felt pain; his mind gave rise to not a single desire. And yet no sign came that he had reached his goal. Like an endless, calm night, the silence bathed him. Gautama decided to open his eyes.

  At first there was only a dim sensation of being wrapped in a blanket, which after a time he realized was his body. He looked down. It was midday, but someone had positioned him under the jungle canopy where no sunlight ever penetrated. Surveying himself, Gautama saw two crossed sticks. Legs. Two dried monkey paws. Hands. He noticed a pile of rotting fruit beside him, covered with ants and wasps. Suddenly he realized that he was thirsty. He reached for his water gourd, but the last inch of liquid inside was green and filled with mosquito larvae.

  He could feel, as he grew used to being in his body again, that it could endure no more. Yet all he could think about was finding the five monks to tell them that he was enlightened. Gautama tried to uncross his stick legs and get up, but when he moved them an inch, the wasted muscles screamed with pain. He stared at them with a slight frown of disapproval, like a new father who feels helpless when the baby cries.

  Gautama felt no sympathy for his body, but it would have to be dealt with. He willed his limbs to move, and slowly he began to crawl along the forest floor. It felt damp and hot; there were vermin that slid under his skin, and fungi and rocks. He could hear running water nearby. He sensed his body’s desperate thirst. Maybe he would get to water in time, maybe not. He kept crawling, but the forest floor barely crept beneath him now. He could practically count each beetle that his weight crushed. A small snake, colored brilliant red, slithered away at the level of his face. The air became very still, and moving any farther, even at a crawl, became impossible.

  Lying there, he never expected that enlightenment would be the last thing to happen before he died.

  PART THREE

  BUDDHA

  16

  While he lay motionless on the ground, Gautama became dimly aware that a shadow had fallen over him. When it moved, he assumed it must be the outline of a large animal, a predator drawn by his smell. The animal would most likely be hungry, yet it made no difference to Gautama how his time on earth ended.

  “Please don’t die.”

  The girl’s voice caused his eyes to look up, almost against his will. She was startled and moved back shyly. She must have been all of sixteen, and alone. Gautama closed his eyes and waited for her timidity to send her away. Instead, he felt soft warm hands on either side of his face. The girl raised his head slightly and wiped the grime away from his cheeks with a corner of her sari. It was faded blue and threadbare, a poor girl’s sari.

  “Here.”

  She pressed something to his mouth. A bowl, and its edge hurt his cracked dry lips. Gautama shook his head, and a croaked word came out of his throat.

  “No.”

  The girl said, “Are you a god?”

  Gautama felt a wave of delirium; her words sounded meaningless. The girl said, “I’ve come to the river to be blessed by the god who lives there. It’s my wedding day in a month.”

  A god? Gautama couldn’t even smile. He shook his head slightly and let his face fall back to touch the warm jungle floor. But from wasting away he had become weaker than the girl, so he couldn’t resist when she turned him over and held him upright in her arms. She did this effortlessly.

  “You must.” She held the bowl to his mouth again. “Don’t be stubborn. If my offering is good enough for a god, you’re not better than him, are you?”

  Now a smile rose inside Gautama. “Go find your god,” he mumbled. He clenched his jaw so that she couldn’t pour the contents of the bowl into him. There was no purpose in her being there.

  “I won’t leave you here,” she said. “I can’t have people saying that Sujata did something like that.”

  In the midst of his torpor, Gautama’s mind suddenly became alert. What she said didn’t seem possible. “Tell me your name again.”

  “Sujata. What’s wrong?”

  The girl saw tears streaming down the dying man’s cheeks. His emaciated body began to tremble in her arms. She felt terribly sorry for him. Weakly he opened his mouth, and Sujata poured a little food into it. She had cooked sweet rice in milk for the river deity. The dying man accepted more. His stubbornness had vanished, though the girl had no idea why.

  In a stricken voice he mumbled, “What have I done?”

  “I don’t know,” said the girl, confused. But she was no longer shy or frightened by him. “We have to get you home. Can you walk at all?”

  “In a little while.” Gautama ate the rest of the sweet rice with painful slowness. Then Sujata left him for a moment and returned with some water. He drank it greedily, his cracked lips bleeding slightly as he opened his mouth.

  “I’ll carry you as far as I can, and then I’ll get my brother,” Sujata said. Gently she lifted Gautama to his feet. His brittle legs looked like they might snap. He couldn’t walk, but he was light enough so that the girl could prop him against her shoulder. Together they hobbled their way up the narrow trail she had taken to the river. They arrived at a road, and Sujata placed him under a tree, propped up against the trunk like a limp doll.

  “Wait here. Don’t let anyone move you.”

  Tears started rolling down his cheeks again. Sujata found it hard to watch; she hurried away and soon disappeared around the bend. Gautama wished she hadn’t gone. He suddenly felt alone and desolate. Sujata. He hadn’t heard that name in fifteen years. But he had not forgotten her. This was the cause of his weeping, because five years of austerity hadn’t wiped out his memories. It all came back in a flood: his first sight of Sujata on his eighteenth birthday when his robes were gaudy enough for an elephant. Winding his red turban. The excitement he suppressed when he felt stirrings of desire for her. As soon as he recalled these things, it was as if a dead flower in the desert received the spring rains. His mind unfolded in layers, bringing back image after image from the past, and with them the emotions he had wanted to extinguish. He was badly dehydrated, and soon his tear ducts had nothing more to offer.

  Gautama rolled his head back and stared at the jungle. It gave back nothing. It was neither a friendly haven nor a dangerous wildernes
s. The flowers weren’t smiling, the air was not luxuriously moist and enveloping. The blank face of Nature was all he saw, and a surge of horror ran through Gautama. He wanted to vomit, but with all his will he forced the sweet rice and water to stay down. Weak as he was, he could dimly hear his thoughts, and they told him he had to survive. Karma hadn’t died, and neither had he.

  The light began to fade. Gautama knew it was close to noon, so he must be fainting. His head grew light; a cold sweat beaded his chest. It was a relief to lose consciousness, so he allowed himself to sink into the sensation of falling and falling. Scarlet parrots scolded loudly overhead; he lay so still that a couple of curious monkeys began to advance down the tree trunk with caution. Gautama wasn’t aware of this. His mind was captured by the face of Ganaka, which he saw clearly. It wore an expression he couldn’t read. Grief? Contempt? Compassion? Blackness swallowed up whatever it was.

  SUJATA’S HUT WAS FLIMSY, its mud walls cracked. There was almost no protection from the weather, which meant that spring could enter as it pleased. Gautama lay in bed, weak and feverish, for some weeks before he noticed this. One morning a white sal blossom floated down from the trees, slid sideways on the breeze, and came in through a large crack in the wall. It landed on Gautama’s face and rested there. The fragrance opened his eyes.

  “Aren’t you pretty?”

  Sujata laughed and lifted the flower to her nose. “Thank you, noble sir.” She pinned it behind her ear. The girl took her nursing duties lightly, hiding any worries she might have from her patient.