“Again, much worse, Anuruddha. Molten copper. But Asipattavana Hell is still not as bad as Vetarani Hell, bikkhus. Disagree with the Buddha’s ideas in Vetarani Hell and you will end up walking a trail of razor blades where you will be sliced up like a piece of meat before being brought back to life by a sort of ‘magic wind,’ only to instantly be sliced up again.” (OJO, Hells)
“And then brought back to life with more magic wind, Tathagata?”
“No, Moggallana. The second time you die someone will simply command you to come back to life. ‘LIVE!’ they will scream at you and you will live—only to be sliced up like a piece of meat again! Below Vetarani Hell lies Black Rope Hell, bikkhus. Here the demons will chop you up with hatchets into 100,000 tiny pieces—yes, they will be very small pieces. After that, the magic wind will blow you back together and the demons will force you to walk a tightrope and when you fall (which you will, do not doubt that), it will be directly into a hot cauldron and as you roast in your hot cauldron, do you know what the demons will say to you, bikkhus?”
“Burn, fool?”
“That is a decent guess, Sariputta, but no. What the demons will say is, ‘You did this to yourself, sinner, now suffer.’ And so you will, for billions of years perhaps. Beneath Black Rope Hell is—yes, Ananda?”
“Does the ‘Black Rope’ refer to the tightrope, master?”
“Yes, obviously.”
“Why is it not called ‘Tightrope Hell’ then?”
“Because it is called ‘Black Rope Hell,’ alright, Ananda? Continuing: Beneath Black Rope Hell is Compounded Hell. Here, once again, you will find trees made of knives, bikkhus. But this time there is a cruel twist. This time, at the top of these trees wait nubile young women. When you frantically scramble up a tree to get to one of the women you will be sliced to pieces. Then, when you finally get to the top you will look down and see that same lovely woman on the ground, calling up to you, ‘Come to me, my darling, come and embrace me.’ So you will scurry back down the tree, being cut to pieces once again as you do, but when you get to the bottom of the tree, where do you think the pretty woman will be, eh, bikkhus?” (OJO, Hells)
“At the top of the tree, Tathagata?”
“Exactly right. And this up and down will go on for something fairly close to infinity, bikkhus.”
“Will the men never figure out what’s happening to them, Tathagata?”
“No, Assaji, they will not because they are blinded by lust.”
“You’d think they’d figure it out eventually.”
“Well, they will not.”
“What about the women in the trees, master?”
“What about them, Moggallana?”
“How are they being punished?”
“They are women, Moggallana. That is punishment in itself.”
That night at bedtime, as we laid in the darkness: “Master?”
“What is it, Ananda?”
“Is it bad that I don’t hate the idea of the cold Hells?” I half-turned, looked at him. “What I mean is, being frozen doesn’t sound that terrible to me. Being a block of ice and then maybe being reborn as a talking tree or a two-headed horse—”
“First of all, Ananda, I never said anything about two-headed horses. Secondly, you wouldn’t be a ‘block of ice’ in a cold Hell. You would be in frozen agony, covered with open blisters, naked and shrieking in pain for billions of years before you were reborn, not as a demigod perhaps, but as a Hungry Ghost or even a demon.”
“Yes, master. Thank you, master.”
“Now go to sleep.”
“You are so very good to me, master.”
16
Sometimes during these sangha-building years I would venture into a village to speak to the people who lived there, the “householders,” as I called them. These conversations, I will not lie, were at times frustrating. I had known from the beginning obviously that there would be many people who would have far too much “dust in their eyes” to grasp my profound ideas. I had expressed that very misgiving to Brahma, in fact, so many years before. It was never easy dealing with such debased souls. I remember one particular householder, a man in his late forties, stocky and broad-faced, looking at me one day and saying, “But there are people who enjoy children, sir.”
“They may think they enjoy children, but they are mistaken. What they are experiencing is not ‘joy,’ you see, but rather misery. I repeat, do not love your children, my friends, rather detach from them; detach from everyone beloved to you, in fact.” (RH)
“But what exactly is wrong with love, sir?” the stocky man continued.
“Love is nothing but a trap, my friend. (MJ 39: SZJ 21) Consider the following situation, if you will: You have a beloved. ‘How I hope my beloved doesn’t die,’ you think to yourself. Then, not long afterwards, ‘Oh, now my beloved is dead and I am so terribly sad.’ Cut off all your feelings for this person, however, and you will not fear their death, nor will you grieve it. For the man set free of love in this manner (and I am speaking now of love for a specific person obviously because it goes without saying that you should love all living beings in the entire universe just like I do), for this liberated man, there is no pain. ‘Let my beloved get sick and die, I feel nothing,’ is what he will think.”
“Are you saying that it is wrong to care for others, sir?”
“I am saying that it is right to care for yourself and to let others do the same.” (SY 47:9–13)
“I have a child, sir, a son,” interjected a second, taller householder. “It is very important to me that he be well and happy. I cannot understand what is wrong with that feeling.”
“Let me ask you this, friend,” I replied. “If your son was killed tomorrow, would you be sad about it?”
“I would be utterly bereft, sir.”
“And this is because you are attached to your son, correct?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But tell me, my friend, before your son was born were you attached to him?”
“Was I—? Well, no, because he didn’t exist yet.”
“So it was only once he existed that you became attached to him, is that right?”
“Ye-es.”
“But if he was killed then he would not exist anymore, would he?” (SY 42:11)
“What? I don’t …”
“My son Rahula could be slowly and horribly tortured to death and I would not even care. This is what you should aspire to, friends.”
The stockier householder piped up once again. “I for one quite like life, sir.”
“I’m sure you think you do.”
“No, sir, I do like life. I like sunshine, for instance.”
“Ah, but what about rain?”
“I like rain too. I like the cool water.”
“Ah, but what about scalding hot water?”
The taller householder spoke up. “You are the most negative person I’ve ever met, sir.”
I smiled, bemused. “I tell you that life is pain and love is a trap and that the only worthy goal is death, and you find these ideas negative?”
“I think life is wonderful,” the taller householder suddenly announced, and now he and the stockier man started going back and forth. “I love my wife, for instance …” “Yes, and our children and our little house …” “I love to eat …” “And to sleep and to bathe …”
“Shut up, you defiled imbeciles,” I thought to myself.
“I love to laugh,” the stocky man proclaimed. “I even love to cry sometimes,” the taller man added. Another man, small and wiry, joined in. “I like singing and dancing!” Then a fourth man: “I like being with my friends.”
“You are all delusional morons, all of you.”
The householders looked at me. “We all love being alive, sir. For whatever time we get.”
“Yes, we don’t want life to end, why would we want that?”
“Because what if this life is all there is? Why would we want to shut it down?”
“What I am
telling you, my friends, is that the one thing that truly matters is pain.”
“But what makes you think that is true for everyone, sir, what makes you think it’s not just true for you?”
I stared at the householders for a moment, unsure how to even respond to such a ludicrous question. “Wicked men abusing good men are spitting up at heaven,” I finally said. “They’d better be prepared to be drenched in spit.” (SOA; SZJ 7)
The tall man looked at me, clearly surprised. “Are you saying that we are wicked men and you are a good man, sir?”
“I am not saying that I am a ‘good man,’ no, I am saying that I am a ‘perfect man.’”
“Is that really for you to say, sir?”
I rose to my full height and faced them all down. “I am worth sixteen times what any of you is worth.” And with that, I turned and walked away. (DP 5:70)
Later that night, as he finished massaging my scalp, Ananda looked at me nervously. “Master?”
“Yes, Ananda?”
“Do you remember when you asked me to more fully articulate your perfection?” (DG 14; ACC 3:118–24)
“I do.”
“I have written a story attempting to do so. May I read it to you?”
“That sounds lovely, old friend, go ahead.”
Ananda smiled, stood up. He closed his eyes and started reciting his story, speaking in a stiff, overly formal way and punctuating his words with self-conscious arm movements. “Hear me now! The Buddha is like a thousand suns, each one more perfect than the last! The Buddha’s eyes are large and pure, like two beautiful pools of flower-filled water! The Buddha’s teeth are white like rice and also they are perfectly even, very nice and close together with no unsightly gaps at all!”
“That’s charming, Ananda, thank you.”
“The Buddha is like the ocean! Infinite jewels reside within him, fish and clams and lobsters and starfish and many other aquatic creatures reside within him!”
“Wonderful, thank y—.”
“The Buddha’s webbed hands are elegant, as are his webbed feet! The Buddha is like a king, to be specific, a Goose King!”
“Thank you, Ana—”
“The Buddha is like a mountain, grand, lofty and monumental! Bow your head to the magnificence of Buddha Mountain!”
“Ananda, stop …”
“You could not possibly understand the Buddha’s greatness because it is far too vast for you to comprehend! Bow down to Buddha Mountain, I say again, bow down to this holy mountain of a thousand perfect suns!”
“Is that … it?”
“Do you like it, master?”
“I do, Ananda, thank you. But now we need to rest, my friend.”
“Did you like how I filled your bath with lotus flowers earlier this evening, master?”
“I did, Ananda, yes.”
“Did you like how I covered your bed with lotus flowers too?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice that I rubbed lotus flowers into your robe, to scent it with their delightful fragrance?”
“Yes, that was fine.”
“I could think of no other place to put lotus flowers, master, but now I am wondering, would you like me to rub some in your hair?”
“No, Ananda, and that’s enough, now stop talking.”
“Yes, master, I’m sorry. I love you, master.”
17
At this point in the story something unfortunate happened: Women took center stage for a while.
The first thing I had to deal with was several of my students struggling to resist, shall we say, “feminine charms.” (ATT 7:9) “I have heard, bikkhus, that some of you have been struggling with lustful thoughts,” I told them. “I wish to help you with this. In order to do so, I need you to please close your eyes. Good. Now please imagine a sixteen-year-old girl. Imagine that this girl has exquisite form and shape, that she is lovely in every conceivable way. Do you have this girl in mind, bikkhus? Excellent. Now please think of this exact same girl at ninety years of age. Ah, not so attractive now, is she? Crooked, isn’t she? Hunched and toothless, with milky eyes and thin grey hair, withered and blotchy, frankly a hag, isn’t she? Do you have this hag in mind, bikkhus? Good. Now please imagine her as not only old but also sick. Imagine her laying in a pool of her own urine and excrement and please tell me: Do you desire her now? If so, please imagine this sickly crone a few years later still. She’s dead now, bikkhus, a corpse dumped on the ground, three days dead, bloated and oozing fluid, picked at by both dogs and birds. Do you still desire her? How about a few days later when she’s nothing but a bloody skeleton? Or a few weeks after that when she’s a pile of bones? Or after that when she’s nothing but a pile of dust? What do you think of your lovely sixteen-year-old girl now, eh, bikkhus?” (SP; MHD 1:84–90)
As I walked among my monks, I continued: “The desire for sexual pleasure is like the desire which lepers, covered with sores and eaten by worms, feel to scratch their foul-smelling wounds, bikkhus. The more the lepers scratch, the more infected the wounds get, yet they continue to scratch anyway and why? Because they are unable to stop themselves. Listen to me now, bikkhus, and listen well: There is no disaster in the world worse than sexual pleasure, none.” (DP 14; MGD 1:504–08)
From the back of the group came a small voice: “Have you yourself ever had to overcome lust, Tathagata?”
“Of course I have, bikkhu, I understand lust extremely well. To illustrate, let me tell you a story about one of my previous lifetimes. I was a golden peacock, so beautiful that I was frankly disconcerting to others. One day I remember drinking from a pool, looking down and seeing my own reflection in the water and thinking to myself, ‘It’s true, I really am the most stunning peacock in the world. My beauty could literally be dangerous to others. I should hide myself away.’ Which I did, bikkhus—but sadly I was spotted by some greedy humans who quickly became obsessed with the idea of catching me. But they always failed to do so and do you know why, bikkhus?”
“Because you outsmarted them, Tathagata?”
“I did outsmart them, Moggallana, that is definitely true, but they also failed to catch me because I was holy and my holiness protected me. (I was also extremely charming, I forgot to mention that, but I was.) But—and this is the relevant part of the story for you, bikkhus—I had one weakness: Females. A human hunter took advantage of this weakness by tempting me with a peahen (the hunter actually taught the peahen to dance, which was undeniably impressive, just not something you see very often), but when I approached her, he quickly captured me. That’s right, bikkhus, the Buddha was captured.”
“What happened then, Tathagata?”
“I had a long talk with the hunter, Sariputta. We discussed right and wrong, morality in general, and before long he understood that killing me would be wrong. He renounced being a hunter, but that was not good enough for me; I told him that he needed to perform an Act of Truth (that’s how I put it, an Act of Truth) by freeing ALL birds, which he did. All birds have been free from that day forward, all animals have been free in fact—there has never been one single captive animal since then, thanks to me, bikkhus. Then in the end the hunter and I flew away together.” (GPJAT)
“The hunter could fly, Tathagata?”
“Oh yes.”
There was a long moment of silence before: “I’m sorry, Tathagata, but I don’t quite understand what harm lust did to you in that story?”
“I was captured, Mahanama. As great and holy and beautiful and charming as I was, I was captured and nearly killed and all because of an attractive dancing peahen. Now granted, in this particular story, it all turned out for the best but still, the point is that lust is very bad, bikkhus.”
Now another voice from near the back of the group: “But women can be so attractive, Tathagata.”
“Indeed they can, bikkhu, very attractive and very tempting. Here is the story of another previous lifetime, relating to that very point. This story is called ‘Goblin Town.’ Once I was a flying horse wit
h a bird’s head. I was named ‘Cloud Horse.’” (GTJAT; PP 1)
“Did you say you were a flying horse with a bird’s head, Tathagata?”
“That’s exactly what I said, Anuruddha. As Cloud Horse, I lived near an island which was populated entirely by women. These women lured shipwrecked men to the island by telling them that they wanted the men to be their husbands. What these women wanted, in fact, was to eat the men. But do you know who saved the men from these she-demons?”
“You, Tathagata?”
“Correct, Anuruddha, me. I flew over the island and called down to the men, ‘Who wants to be saved?’ The ones who answered yes, I took home. The others, well, I left them to be eaten by the women. So tell me—what is the moral of this story, bikkhus?”
After a brief pause and some sidelong glances: “That Cloud Horse will save you, Tathagata?”
“No, Vappa, that is far too literal. The moral of the story is this: ‘Those who ignore the Buddha’s words will perish, while those who listen to the Buddha’s words will be saved.’” There was silence for a moment as I let this sink in. Then I lowered my voice. “I will not mince words with you, bikkhus: It would be better for your penis to go into the mouth of a poisonous snake or a pit of hot coals than into a woman, and do you know why? Because while the first two would definitely cause you to lose your penis, the third would cause you to lose your soul. This is what you must understand about women, monks: They want to give birth, giving birth is part of their defiled nature. But when they do give birth, what, I ask you, are they giving birth to? To pain and nothing else. Women are not your friends, bikkhus. Loathe them. They are sacks of filth … ogres … demons … hags.” (SZJ 24; IOU)
That night, as we were sipping our tea: “Master?
“Hm?”
“Why was that story called ‘Goblin Town’?”
“What?”
“Wouldn’t ‘Demon Island’ have made more sense? Or ‘The Story of Cloud Horse’? Was there even a goblin in the story?”
“You have, as always, completely missed the point, Ananda.”
“I’m so sorry, master.”
“Yes, well—apology not accepted.”
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