Buddha

by Deepak Chopra

  “Is this the knowledge that set you free?” said Assaji.

  “Do you ask me that because you really want to know or because you feel worried and insecure?” asked Buddha.

  Assaji looked uncomfortable. “Your feat seems superhuman,” he said. “If it takes something like that to reach enlightenment, what hope do we have? We’re just ordinary monks.” The others murmured in agreement.

  “I didn’t return to discourage you or to awe you. You asked me who I am, and now I can tell you. I can also tell you who you are. You are not the separate self. You have a name that you answer to, but you have also answered to ten thousand other names. Which one is the real you? None of them. You identify with a set of memories. You know who your father and mother are. You set your sights on a goal that you cherish.

  “But you have done exactly the same thing ten thousand times before. Therefore your memories, your parents, and your cherished goals are transient. They change as swiftly as mayflies, which are born and die in a single day.”

  The five monks were riveted by Buddha’s talk, but more than that, his words drew them deep inside themselves. It was almost like going into samadhi with one’s eyes open. They saw exactly what he had described. But Assaji was still worried.

  “I would be wasting my life to try and unravel ten thousand past lives,” he said. “And if you want me to renounce this lifetime as a phantom, haven’t I already renounced it by becoming a monk?”

  “You renounced only the outer trappings,” said Buddha. “A saffron robe doesn’t make you free of desire, and desire is what has kept you a prisoner.”

  “You already told us that on the mountain,” Kondana said. “But in six years we never rid ourselves of desire. Our karma still follows us and makes us obey its commands.”

  “Which is why I have come for you instead of going first to my family,” said Buddha. “What I urged you to do on the mountain was a mistake. I want to make amends.”

  “You owe us nothing,” Assaji said quickly.

  “I’m not speaking of a debt,” said Buddha. “Debts end when karma ends. My mistake led you into a trap. I believed that I was in a war with desire. I despised the world and my own body, which craved all the delights of the world.”

  “Surely that’s not a mistake,” said Assaji. “Otherwise it would be pointless to take vows. The holy life must be different from the worldly life.”

  “What if there is no holy life?” asked Buddha. The five monks became extremely uncomfortable, and none answered. “You see,” said Buddha, “even holiness has become food for your ego to feed on. You want to be different. You want to be safe. You want to have hope.”

  “Why is that wrong?” asked Assaji.

  “Because these things are dreams that lull you,” said Buddha.

  “What would we see if we weren’t dreaming?”

  “Death.”

  The five monks felt a chill pass over them. It seemed pointless to deny what their brother said but hopeless to accept it. Buddha said, “You are all afraid of death, as I was, so you make up any story that will ease your fears, and after a while you believe the story, even though it came from your own mind.” Without waiting for a reply, he reached down and picked up a handful of dust. “The answer to life and death is simple. It rests in the palm of my hand. Watch.”

  He threw the dust into the air; it remained suspended like a murky cloud for a second before the breeze carried it away.

  “Consider what you just saw,” said Buddha. “The dust holds its shape for a fleeting moment when I throw it into the air, as the body holds its shape for this brief lifetime. When the wind makes it disappear, where does the dust go? It returns to its source, the earth. In the future that same dust allows grass to grow, and it enters a deer who eats the grass. The animal dies and turns to dust. Now imagine that the dust comes to you and asks, ‘Who am I?’ What will you tell it? Dust is alive in a plant but dead as it lies in the road under our feet. It moves in an animal but is still when buried in the depths of the earth. Dust encompasses life and death at the same time. So if you answer ‘Who am I?’ with anything but a complete answer, you have made a mistake.

  “I have come back to tell you that you can be whole, but only if you see yourself that way. There is no holy life. There is no war between good and evil. There is no sin and no redemption. None of these things matter to the real you. But they all matter hugely to the false you, the one who believes in the separate self. You have tried to take your separate self, with all its loneliness and anxiety and pride, to the door of enlightenment. But it will never go through, because it is a ghost.”

  As he spoke, Buddha knew that this sermon would be the first of hundreds. It surprised him that words were so necessary. He had hoped to heal the world with a touch or simply by existing in it. The universe had other plans.

  “How can I see myself as whole,” asked Kondana, “when everything I call ‘me’ is separate? I have only one body and one mind, those I was born with.”

  “Look at the forest,” Buddha replied. “We walk through it every day and believe it to be the same forest. But not a single leaf is the same as yesterday. Every particle of soil, every plant and animal, is constantly changing. You cannot be enlightened as the separate person you see yourself to be because that person has already disappeared, along with everything else from yesterday.”

  The five monks were astonished to hear these words. They revered Gautama, but now his beliefs called for a revolution. If what he said was true, then nothing that they had been taught could be true at the same time. No holy life? No war between good and evil? None of them spoke for a long while. What was there to say to a man who claimed that they didn’t even exist?

  “I’ve brought agitation with me,” said Buddha. “I didn’t mean to.” He said this sincerely, after due consideration. He hadn’t realized that being awake would create such a disturbance to other people.

  In the blink of an eye, as quickly as he had seen ten thousand previous lifetimes, he saw the human predicament. Everyone was asleep, totally unconscious about their true nature. Some slept fitfully, catching scattered glimpses of the truth. But they quickly fell asleep again. They were the fortunate ones. The bulk of human beings had no glimpse of reality. How could he tell them what he really wanted to say? All of you are Buddha.

  “I realize that if I stay here I will only agitate you more,” he said. “So help me. Together we must devise a Dharma that will not frighten people. Beginning with you, my frightened brothers.” The five monks smiled at this, and they began to relax a little. Buddha pointed to the trees in bloom all around them. “The Dharma should be this beautiful, and just as effortless,” he said. “If Nature is awake everywhere we look, then human beings deserve the same. Waking up shouldn’t be a struggle.”

  “You struggled,” said Assaji.

  “Yes, and the more I did, the harder it was to wake up. I made my body and mind into an enemy. On that road lies only death and more death. As long as your body is your enemy, you are tied to it, and the body has no choice but to die. Death will never be defeated until it becomes unreal.”

  Years later Assaji would remember that a rainstorm began to pass through the forest as Buddha spoke. Lightning punctuated his words and lit up his face, which wasn’t the fiercely zealous face of Gautama but something unearthly and serene. They heard the patter of raindrops on the forest canopy, which increased to a steady drumming, yet no rain fell on the five monks, not even a stray drop sizzling in the campfire. In this way Nature was telling them that Buddha was more than a man who had become enlightened. They followed him devotedly after that night.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in six years Buddha’s feet touched the road to Kapilavastu. He traveled with the five monks, who gradually lost their anxiety but not their awe. They ate and slept beside their master. They bathed with him in the river, but he no longer meditated or said prayers. One at a time he took each of his brothers aside and gave them private instructions. They were overjoyed to b
e told that they were very close to enlightenment and would achieve it very soon.

  There was one monk who never spoke up. His name was Vappa, and he seemed the most insecure about Gautama coming back to life. When he was taken aside and told that he would be enlightened, Vappa greeted the news with doubt. “If what you tell me is true, I would feel something, and I don’t,” he said.

  “When you dig a well, there is no sign of water until you reach it, only rocks and dirt to move out of the way. You have removed enough; soon the pure water will flow,” said Buddha. But instead of being reassured, Vappa threw himself on the ground, weeping and grasping Buddha’s feet.

  “It will never happen,” he moaned. “Don’t fill me with false hope.”

  “I’m not offering hope,” said Buddha. “Your karma brought you to me, along with the other four. I can see that you will soon be awake.”

  “Then why do I have so many impure thoughts?” asked Vappa, who was prickly and prone to outbursts of rage, so much so that the other monks were intimidated by him.

  “Don’t trust your thoughts,” said Buddha. “You can’t think yourself awake.”

  “I have stolen food when I was famished, and there were times when I stole away from my brothers and went to women,” said Vappa.

  “Don’t trust your actions. They belong to the body,” said Buddha. “Your body can’t wake you up.”

  Vappa remained miserable, his expression hardening the more Buddha spoke. “I should go away from here. You say there is no war between good and evil, but I feel it inside. I feel how good you are, and it only makes me feel worse.”

  Vappa’s anguish was so genuine that Buddha felt a twinge of temptation. He could reach out and take Vappa’s guilt from his shoulders with a touch of the hand. But making Vappa happy wasn’t the same as setting him free, and Buddha knew he couldn’t touch every person on earth. He said, “I can see that you are at war inside, Vappa. You must believe me when I say that you’ll never win.”

  Vappa hung his head lower. “I know that. So I must go?”

  “No, you misunderstand me,” Buddha said gently. “No one has ever won the war. Good opposes evil the way the summer sun opposes winter cold, the way light opposes darkness. They are built into the eternal scheme of Nature.”

  “But you won. You are good; I feel it,” said Vappa.

  “What you feel is the being I have inside, just as you have it,” said Buddha. “I did not conquer evil or embrace good. I detached myself from both.”

  “How?”

  “It wasn’t difficult. Once I admitted to myself that I would never become completely good or free from sin, something changed inside. I was no longer distracted by the war; my attention could go somewhere else. It went beyond my body, and I saw who I really am. I am not a warrior. I am not a prisoner of desire. Those things come and go. I asked myself: Who is watching the war? Who do I return to when pain is over, or when pleasure is over? Who is content simply to be? You too have felt the peace of simply being. Wake up to that, and you will join me in being free.”

  This lesson had an immense effect on Vappa, who made it his mission for the rest of his life to seek out the most miserable and hopeless people in society. He was convinced that Buddha had revealed a truth that every person could recognize: suffering is a fixed part of life. Fleeing from pain and running toward pleasure would never change that fact. Yet most people spent their whole lives avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. To them, this was only natural, but in reality they were becoming deeply involved in a war they could never win.

  As the gates of Kapilavastu drew close, Buddha prepared the way. He sent his presence ahead, and he could feel a growing excitement in Yashodhara. She ordered her servants to throw away the somber saris of a widow; she brought out old portraits of Siddhartha to show their son, Rahula, who might be frightened to see the return of a father he knew only in the cradle. Every day Yashodhara performed the same ritual. She would gather Rahula by her side and sit in the gazebo by the lotus pond, the place where Suddhodana’s pleasure pavilion used to stand. The old structure had been torn down and the courtesans given honest places as serving women. Siddhartha had never visited them. It was one way he could show his fidelity to Yashodhara. Now she waited there to show her fidelity to him.

  Buddha knew that feeling his presence was not enough, though. His wife was still young; for that matter, Siddhartha would be only thirty-five. There was time for more children. Buddha’s presence couldn’t reach this part of Yashodhara’s nature. How could he change her mind without crushing her? The bliss of wedded life was what she lived for.

  His mind was preoccupied when the five monks began to stir with agitation. Buddha looked up the road where they were pointing. A horse lathered with sweat and streaming with blood was running toward them in a panicked gallop. The five monks scattered to get out of the way. It was a powerful black stallion. None of them dared to pull Buddha from harm’s way; he stood his ground, and as the animal got near, it reared, slashing out with its iron-shod front feet. For a second the huge animal balanced in midair, thrashing. Then its hooves came to earth without hitting their target. The stallion trembled with pain and terror, but it didn’t rear again and slowly began to calm down.

  “What happened?” asked Assaji, pressing the cloth of his robe to the horse’s worst wound. “Where did this come from?”

  “Only one thing is possible,” said Buddha. “War. We’ll be in the thick of it soon enough.”

  They hadn’t gone another mile before his prediction came true; the din of battle could be faintly heard in the distance. “I am the cause of this,” said Buddha. The five monks protested, but Buddha said no more. The group had their hands full keeping the wounded stallion from bolting when he caught the scent of death. More than once Buddha had to pause and look the animal directly in the eye. “The only way to convince him that he doesn’t need to be afraid is to show him that I am not. Animals are wiser than us in that regard. If they don’t feel peace, they aren’t fooled by peaceful words.”

  The monks knew that Buddha did not make casual remarks. His every utterance was dedicated to teaching them the truth. Very soon the noise of battle grew loud enough that they could hear steel striking against steel and the anguished cries of dying soldiers. Buddha stopped and listened. “Words of peace fooled my father. Devadatta has tricked him into war.” Then he pointed away from the conflict. “Home first.” An hour later they saw the towers of the gates to the capital city. The road widened, and the last hundred yards were paved with cobblestones.

  “Who’s there?” a sentry cried.

  “One you called Siddhartha,” said Buddha.

  “I can’t let anyone in who isn’t a citizen, and I don’t know that name,” said the sentry, peering through a slot above them. He was young, almost a boy. The real soldiers were all away to do the king’s killing.

  “Send for Princess Yashodhara’s maid. She will recognize me,” said Buddha. The sentry’s face vanished from the top of the gate. They waited, then the great wooden gates opened just wide enough to admit them and the stallion. Buddha saw where his wife was. Having heard the name Siddhartha, she sent her maid scurrying to the gates while she hurriedly examined herself in the mirror and wrapped herself in a sari threaded with gold.

  She was panting and sweating slightly when she seated herself in the gazebo. Rahula was taking a nap, and Yashodhara almost woke him up, but she didn’t want him to see her weep uncontrollably, so she came alone. The wind was light, but whenever it turned slightly she could faintly catch the sounds of war, which increased her anxiety.

  “My dear.”

  She had been so distracted that he was there before she heard him. With a cry, Yashodhara jumped to her feet, ran to Buddha, and threw her arms around him. She was sensitive to his slightest response, and her heart swelled when she felt his arms hold her without hesitation. This came as such an enormous relief that she began to sob. A husband would have said, “There’s no cause for that. I’m home n
ow. It’s all right.” Yashodhara’s husband said none of those things.

  Buddha let go of her, and for an instant Yashodhara felt completely abandoned. She wanted to clutch at him, but he raised a finger in a small gesture, and her arms fell to her sides. “You are my beloved wife. It’s your right to embrace me,” said Buddha. “No one shall ever do that again. Not even you.”

  Yashodhara trembled. She had spent years blocking out of her mind any image of Siddhartha as a monk. Even at that moment she kept her eyes fixed on his face, refusing to see his saffron robes. His features began swimming before her, but she wasn’t fainting—no black curtain descending over her eyes, no cold sweat and chill moving up toward her head. Instead, Yashodhara felt warm, and the warmth began in her heart. It radiated outward. What was happening to her? The world disappeared from sight, not in blackness but in the glow of a white light that had no source. She caught one last glimpse of the sun, but it was pale compared to the light that now filled up her whole being. Now she was certain that the light came from this man who used to be her husband.

  “This is your time, Yashodhara. Surrender and be free.”

  19

  Buddha didn’t spend the night in Kapilavastu but took the five monks and headed for the battlefield. It was near sunset when they arrived at a hilltop overlooking the fighting. In the waning light neither side was leading a charge. Elephants and horses had been pulled back from the front. All that remained of the din of war was the clash of swords. Foot soldiers fought in bands with the enemy, raising dust around them.

  Buddha sat down on the ridge. From above, every soldier was like a frantic puppet flailing away. Some puppets ran around, bumping into other puppets. They bounced off each other, then one would fall and not get up again. Many puppets littered the field, some writhing a little, others very still.