A bit later, the four of them landed directly in front of me. Mara, not wasting any time, instantly aimed his bow and arrow at me. “Rise, sage!” he demanded. “Abandon your search immediately or I will shoot you with this love-tipped arrow! Rise, I said—RISE!!” I sat motionless, my hands gently folded before me, my eyes lightly closed. When Mara shot his love-tipped arrow at me, I did not even flinch. Seeing that, Mara slowly sank to the ground and muttered to himself, “The sage does not even notice the arrow I shot him with, does he have no feelings?” Suddenly his face darkened with rage. “He is not even worthy of my arrows, nor of the temptations of my three lovely daughters!” (Who were not, by the way, all that lovely. Lust was pudgy, with a moon-face; Appetite was bony, with an oversized nose; Desire had bad teeth and was slightly cross-eyed.) “What he deserves is to be destroyed!! DEMONS, ATTACK!!” Mara now shrieked and in an instant I was surrounded by demons waving clubs, swords and (weirdly, I thought) trees at me. (ASV 13:14–18)
These demons were hideous-looking creatures. There were three-headed fish with spotted bellies and one-eyed horses with elephant ears. There were cat-faced demons with messy, unkempt hair (sickening) and goat-faced demons who were balding (even more sickening.) Many of the demons were nude. They all hopped around in front of me, trying to scare me. But I sat motionless, calm in the face of the storm. “Terrify him, you fools!” Mara screamed at his demons and now they all stopped dancing around and started making scary faces at me, rapidly opening and closing their mouths and bugging their eyes out. One of the demons (a three-headed goat with messy hair) rolled his eyes around in his head and raised a heavy club as if he was going to bash me. Instantly I paralyzed him with love, however, and he stood there frozen, club in mid-air, blinking in confusion. A female demon named “Megahali” (and why I knew her name I’m still not exactly sure; none of the other demons even had names to my knowledge, but “Megahali” definitely did) grabbed a skull and started gyrating around with it in front of me. I’m not sure what she was trying to achieve, kind of a mix of “scary” and “sexy,” I guess, but when I ignored her, she had to slink away ignominiously. (ASV 13:49)
At that moment, a god bellowed down from the sky: “Give up, Mara! Your attempts to stop this sage are ignoble and your greatness is being compromised by your pride!” (ASV 13:69) I liked everything about what this god said except for that last bit about Mara’s “greatness.” Mara was not great; Mara was an impotent, blustery fool. In any case, the gods’ words only seemed to inflame Mara, who now marched on me with an Army of Demons which was mind-bogglingly huge, like literally extending to the edge of the universe. Mara was now riding on a 50,000-foot-tall elephant named “Girimikhala.” (How he got onto a 50,000-foot-tall elephant, I’m still not sure.)
As all this was happening, the gods gathered in heaven to gaze down on the battle. They started singing fight-songs to me, led by a giant snake named Makahala. This was going to be a rout and the gods all knew it: An army of demons the size of the entire universe led by a devil-king riding a ten-mile-tall elephant versus one man, sitting quietly under a tree. No contest. As Mara’s army drew nearer to me, however, for some unknown reason the gods all suddenly panicked and began to sprint away in every direction. (NK) You’d have thought that scaring the gods this way would have given Mara a boost of confidence, but it definitely didn’t. “Men,” he suddenly called out to his giant army, “we cannot possibly defeat this sage in a fair fight. Let us therefore attack him from behind!”
Mara created a massive tornado and flung it at me. Gale-force winds, powerful enough to blow mountains to pieces, rumbled towards me. My majesty was so profound, however, that the winds calmed before me, in the end not even stirring the hem of my garment. Next Mara tried to drown me, causing a sudden massive downpour, so much rain that it literally hollowed the earth out. Almost instantly the water all around me was a hundred feet high. Like the wind, however, the rain quickly receded before my virtuousness and in the end did not even dampen the hem of my garment. I could tell that Mara was getting frustrated now. He picked up a bunch of mountains (I think they were volcanoes—they were definitely fiery) and flung them at me. Before my bottomless goodness, however, the volcanoes turned to flowers. Shaking his head in disbelief, Mara hurled swords, daggers, darts and spears at me. Once again, I turned them to flowers. Cursing now, Mara threw a bunch of burning coal at me; needless to say, I turned it into flowers. (NK)
Mara’s next move was a sandstorm. “He’s getting desperate,” I remember thinking to myself. “If fiery mountains didn’t scare me, I’m not sure why he thinks a sandstorm is going to.” I quickly turned the sand into (what else?) flowers. Then Mara tried mud. “Mud?” I remember musing. “Mara thinks he can destroy me with mud?” To be fair, it was flaming mud, which was slightly disconcerting because, well, it didn’t make sense to me. “How can ‘flaming mud’ even exist?” I remember thinking. “It’s an oxymoron.” No matter though, I turned the flaming mud into sweet-smelling ointments.
Mara’s last move was fog, which I felt was frankly embarrassing because how do you kill someone with fog? “Mara’s sense of rhythm is atrocious,” I remember thinking at the time. “He should have started with fog, then built up to volcanos, not vice versa.” Finally, sputtering with rage, Mara charged me on his giant elephant and screamed, “Get up from under that Bodhi tree, sage, that is MY spot!” This comment irked me. For the first time, I opened my eyes and looked straight back at him. “You are sadly mistaken, Mara, this spot is not yours, this spot is mine.” His eyes flashing with fury, Mara hurled a razor-edged disc at my head. Did he not realize by this time that I would instantly turn it into flowers, which would then hover prettily over my head? If he didn’t, he should have, because that is exactly what I did. In heaven, where the gods had by now regathered after previously running away, they all craned their necks for a better view and someone cried out, “Has Siddhartha’s handsome body been harmed?” Of course it hadn’t been harmed in the least and I honestly have no idea why they thought that. (NK)
At that point I pointed down at the earth and demanded, “Are you or are you not my witness?” and the earth responded with a giant series of echoes, as if to say, “I AM your witness, Exalted One!” That seemed to do it. Hearing these mighty echoes, Mara’s demons sprinted off in a tizzy, some of them stripping off their clothes and shrieking in terror as they dashed away. The cheer “Mara is defeated, Siddhartha has triumphed, let us now serenade him!” went up in heaven. Shortly thereafter, a bunch of gods marched towards my tree, singing, “Hooray for the illustrious Buddha! Farewell to the evil Mara!” They all threw flowers at me but honestly, flowers were about the last thing I needed at that point, I was half-buried in flowers. A few of them dumped fancy powders and ointments on me, which I liked a bit better. Some of the gods waved banners reading, “HOORAY FOR THE BUDDHA!” which I did like. Overall, it was a moment of unlimited glory and splendor, never to be forgotten. (NK)
8
After the gods departed, I sat in silence for a long moment, unsure what would happen next. Then, in a flash, and for the very first time, I remembered all of my previous lifetimes, stretching backwards over many “kalpas.” (ASV 14:4) What is a kalpa, you ask? Imagine an enormous, rocky mountain. Now imagine a small bird landing on that rocky mountain once every hundred years with silk shoes on its tiny little feet. A kalpa is how long it would take that little bird to wear that rocky mountain down to nothing with its silk shoes. (SY 15:5) This is to say that a kalpa is essentially “infinity.” I will refer to other significant past lives later in my story but for now it will suffice to describe the following highly meaningful one.
Once I had been a rabbit. Not just any rabbit, though; I had been a marvelously strong, kind and wise rabbit. I was so wise, in fact, that all the other animals in the forest elected me as their king. I was also such a magnanimous rabbit that I literally sacrificed my life simply so that I might be eaten. (The moment I decided to sacrifice myself, by the way, three th
ings happened: (1) There was a massive earthquake; (2) Heavenly music played; (3) I was showered with pollen.)
After I made the decision to sacrifice myself, I instantly hopped into Brahma’s fire and cooked myself. Did the flames hurt? No, they did not, they felt cool and refreshing, in fact. After I was cooked, Brahma escorted me up to heaven. (Brahma’s hands, for those who are curious, were milky-white, very soft and covered with rings; they were, in short, exquisite.) In heaven, Brahma informed the other gods of my profound sacrifice, built some statues of me and then, rather remarkably, drew a picture of me on the moon! This drawing of rabbit-me on the moon is, in some sense, one of the great wonders of the universe. Anyway, that’s the kind of being I was, a rabbit who ends up with his image on the moon because of his vast generosity and bottomless compassion. (I don’t remember, by the way, whether Brahma actually ate me, but I think he did and I presume that I tasted utterly delicious.) (HJAT)
At that moment, after all my endless searching, awakening finally occurred. Like a flash of lightning, insight came. (ANG 5:146) Life was pain … of course life was pain … and there was literally no way to avoid that pain … except one.
Stop life. (ASV 14:56; SY 12:65) “For where there is no life,” I whispered to myself, “there can be no death!” By undoing the cord, I suddenly grasped, one could achieve the true goal of existence: Non-existence.
The final veils of ignorance dropped away at that moment. I knew Absolute Truth. There was nothing, literally nothing, that I did not understand at that moment. I grasped everything that had happened in the past, everything that would happen in the future and everything that was happening at that moment. Some people have said that I “woke up” in that moment and I think that is a fair way of putting it. I had been asleep and now I awoke. (ASV 14:66–68; ITI 112)
“Dump more flowers on him!” I heard a god yell, which was followed by another god yelling, “No, don’t dump more flowers on him—there’s no reason for it!” I thought this second remark was rude, because there definitely was reason for dumping flowers on me, I had just attained Absolute Knowledge, after all! On the other hand, I was glad not to have more flowers dumped on me; I was getting pretty sick of it by that point.
Suddenly I was lifted a hundred feet in the air. Glancing down, I noticed that I was sitting on a throne. I yelled up at the gods, wanting to get their attention. “Ho!” I cried up to them. “I have attained perfect knowledge, I am pure-hearted and wise, the destroyer of all pain, HO, I AM THE BUDDHA!” The gods dumped a bunch of flowers on me and my throne was lowered back to the ground. “What exactly was the point of that?” I remember wondering to myself. (ASV 14:70–76)
“He is like a cloud,” I heard one god say about me. “No, he is like a thunderbolt with a hundred edges,” another god offered. “I think he is like a gem,” a third god insisted, followed by: “a tree,” “a jar” and “a cow.” “They should have stopped with saying I was like a thunderbolt with a hundred edges,” I remember thinking. “Because I’m not like a jar and I am nothing like a cow.” (ASV 14:80–84)
At that point, the giant snake Makahala showed up and wrapped me in his coils, apparently believing he was protecting me from gnats. (MV 1:3) I tried to tell him to let me go, that I had been enlightened and needed to save the world, but he was squeezing me so tightly that I couldn’t even make a sound. He held me like that for a week, until the gods then started pouring jugs of water over us and he slithered away.
After that, who should come shambling up to me but Mara, once again accompanied by his three daughters. “You’ve accomplished your goals, sage, why don’t you go straight to nirvana?” Mara asked me, apparently thinking he was being clever. “First I must save the world,” I replied and Mara shrieked and ran away. (SY 4:1) (My god, he was feeble.) His daughters, however, remained behind and started trying to seduce me. Appetite, with her long, bony face, whispered, “I am Appetite, sage, worship me or I will hug the life out of you.” She tried to hug me but I side-stepped her a few times until she eventually gave up and trudged away. Then Delight, who had a shrill, nasal voice, droned, “I am Delight and I offer you delight, sage, bringing within your reach … delight.” Did she feel embarrassed to have used her own name three times in one sentence? I don’t know, but she definitely should have. When I didn’t respond to Delight, she started cursing at me and stormed away. (ASV 15:13–22)
Off a look from Lust, Mara’s three daughters stepped a few feet away from me and conferred in low voices. A moment later they returned, having given themselves “make-overs,” looking slightly better than they had previously. (“I’m not sure why they didn’t start off looking that way,” I remember thinking to myself.) “Dear Tathagata,” they said to me in unison (“Tathagata” was my new moniker, by the way, it meant “Perfect One,” because that’s what I now was), “please allow us to be your devoted followers.” When I ignored them, they transformed themselves yet again, this time into three old crones. “We are old, sir, pitiful and terrified of death, please help us,” they croaked. This request I agreed to and before long Mara’s daughters were worshipping me. (ASV 15:30–36)
Mara himself, shameless creature that he was, took one last shot at me. “I knew you would become a Buddha!” he yelled down from heaven. “By my actions today, I have helped you!”
“You have lost, Mara” I responded. “Now go away.”
“I am defeated,” Mara muttered in a maudlin tone of voice and in a flash he was gone, as were his daughters.
Alone under the Bodhi tree, a question popped into my mind: Did I actually want to share these profound insights with the world? Given how irrationally attached to life most humans were, given how many of them actually enjoyed life, even took pleasure in it (or thought they did anyway), what would be the point of speaking to them? How could such limited creatures ever grasp my stupendous insights? “Perhaps I will just stay here under the Bodhi tree and wait for my blissful extinction,” I remember thinking. (SY 6:1)
At that moment Brahma appeared before me, a vision of white and gold, his splendid, silky robe hanging elegantly off one shoulder, his white parasol propped casually on the other shoulder. “Brahma?” I whispered. “What are you doing here?”
“Perfect One,” Brahma replied. “You must teach the world of your magnificent insights, for if you do not the world itself will die.”
When I remained silent, Brahma continued. “You are correct that there are many who will not understand your words, Sublime One.”
“Yes.”
“But there are some, a few, who will understand you, Stainless One.” (I wasn’t sure I liked that nickname very much, by the way; “Who ever said I was ‘stained’?” crossed my mind.) “Only you can help mankind, Perfect One,” Brahma implored me. “Arise, victorious hero! Arise and SAVE THE WORLD!”
When I finally rose to my feet, Brahma yelled, “The Blessed One has agreed!” and instantly disappeared. (AP 1:167–73; MV 1:5)
I looked around, noticing that my mind was purified. “I will be like a pinprick, popping the bubbles of ignorance and delusion, revealing their utter emptiness,” I thought to myself. “Where there is ignorance, I will inform. Where there is darkness, I will enlighten. And where there is conflict, I will bring love.”
Part 2: Middle
9
After I had walked some distance towards the nearest town, I met an ascetic named Upana the Ajivaka on the road. I smiled broadly at him; my joy must have been palpable. Upana looked at me and cocked his head slightly. “You look well, my friend,” he said. “Tell me, who is your teacher?” I was in such excellent spirits that I decided to respond to him in a kind of poem:
I am the one who’s transcended all pain.
I am the knower, I’ll say it again.
I have renounced all the world can give
I am the one who now knows how to LIVE!
When Upana stared at me blankly, I continued.
I am a one-of-a-kind, that is true
No one can m
atch me; oh please tell me who?
Even the gods know that I am their better
I am released now and I have no fetter!
When Upana still stared at me in silence, I raised my voice a little and continued with my poem.
I am the king of the whole universe
I am the teacher and I am the nurse
I am Perfection, Enlightenment, Truth
I am exalted, I tell you forsooth!
Upana finally nodded slightly and said, “You are very confident, sir.”
“Wrong!” I instantly cried. “I am not ‘confident’ in the least! What I am is victorious!”
“Well, good luck,” Upana the Ajivaka said and walked away. As I watched him depart I shook my head sadly, knowing that he would be karmically punished for his rank disrespect towards me. (And also for walking around nude because I forgot to mention that “Ajivaka” means “nude.”) (AP 1:167–73)
As I continued walking, a question entered my mind: “Who should I teach first?” Instantly I knew the answer. “Of course,” I thought, “I will go see my old teacher, Alara Kalama! Alara Kalama is a wise and thoughtful man, he sees things clearly, he is the perfect person!” Feeling excited, I started off towards where Alara Kalama lived, but I hadn’t traveled very far when a god (I didn’t know his name; he was youngish, with a hangdog face and lank hair) appeared before me. “Excuse me, sir,” the god drawled, “but your old friend, Alara Kalama?”
The Buddha's Story Page 4
