by Ulf Wolf
Ananda, agreeing with the deity that, yes, something must be done, took this advice and disappeared deep into the forest.
Even now, however, left to himself, and while meditating constantly with only a few hours a sleep a day, Ananda could not overcome his lasts fetters and attain arahanthood.
He was nearing despair when a messenger from Kassapa, now the leader of the Sangha, found him to say that Kassapa had called the council of monks to recite and strengthen the Dhamma. Ananda was to come, but only if he had attained arahanthood.
“Where?” asked Ananda.
“In Rajagaha.”
“When?”
“By the next full moon.”
The fading sliver in the western sky told Ananda that this was only a little over two weeks away.
“What if I don’t reach the other shore?” asked Ananda.
“Then don’t come,” said the monk.
“But I am the Guardian of the Dhamma.”
“Then come.” With that the monk bowed and turned.
Ananda now saw that he must attain arahanthood, not only for himself, but for the sake of the Dhamma, and with renewed urgency he thrust himself into the task with a resolve equal to the Buddha’s own.
So it was that the day before the first council of Buddhist monks, Ananda, through clarity of eye burnished by urgency, finally severed the final strands that anchored him to samsara—the seemingly endless cycle of birth and rebirth—to finally reach Nibbana for himself.
Legend has it that Ananda, in order to demonstrate to one and all that he was indeed an arahant and so was to be admitted, arrived at the council through the air.
He was admitted.
The next many months saw, first, Upali—the Guardian of the Vinaya, the Sangha Rules as laid down by the Buddha—recite the Vinaya to the council, after which Ananda was asked to recite the Dhamma—now consisting of the Sutta Pitaka—the basket of Suttas, the Buddha’s teachings. Individual portions of both the Vinaya and the Dhamma were assigned among the five hundred monks attending, each charged with the duty to commit to memory his portion of the Vinaya or the Dhamma. Thus it was that by the end of the council, the entirety of both the Vinaya and the Dhamma lived within the memory of not only Upali and Ananda, but of the members of the council as well, and would from there on be passed down, monk to monk for over five hundred years before the Dhamma and Vinaya were finally committed to written Pali.
Ananda, now satisfied that the Dhamma would survive, himself lived for another forty years, always available to be consulted about the Dhamma, always there to reinforce and strengthen it in the memory of the Sangha.
He lived to be 120 years old.
But upon his death, he did not follow the Buddha to the Tusita heaven, not right away. Instead, in order to do what he could to guard the Dhamma, he chose rebirth instead, and spent many a lifetime in and around the Indian, Chinese and Japanese Sangha, never letting on who he was, always helping; seeing, however, that despite his best efforts, the Dhamma was gradually altered by embellishment, interpretation, forgetfulness, and opinion. Also, he himself grew less aware lifetime to lifetime—for that is the curse of Earth—and in the end, over two thousand years later, it was only by the help of several Devas that he finally arrived in the Tusita heaven, only to then find that Gotama Buddha had just left, and was now back on Earth, wearing Giordano Bruno.
Ananda waited a while for Gotama’s return and then waited some more, but impatient and restless now he soon, despite the danger, left Tusita again in search of his friend.
For yes, there is definite danger. Earth is not a light adventure, not a safe place to visit.
He remembers leaving Tusita in search for Bruno. He remembers the blue and white of Earth, and approaching its surface. He remembers being met there by a forest of miasmal fingers looking for hairline rifts in his armor. He remembers fighting them off, but they were too many, and too successful and so managed to enter and to seep him in forgetting, in bright lusting, in many darknesses. Then he remembers no more.
So it was that Ananda lost sight, not only of Gotama Buddha, but of himself.
Finally, on a cold October evening sixty-odd years ago, he caught a fresh glimpse of the way things are, just as he was about to enter his current abode: then a soon-to-be-born male. Catching this glimpse checked him long enough to not enter that body pre-birth, but to wait and let the blinding pain and its many forgettings wash over the arriving infant, sans Ananda. Better that way, oh, so much better.
:
And so, in this current life Ananda again remembered.
All through those toddler years in northern Sweden, raised by aging and white-haired (as well as husbandless—one lost to death, the other to a dash for freedom) grandmothers as much as by parents. Winters, long and cold at those latitudes, filled his lungs with clean, crisp air, though also with the dying screams of another World War just ended, pain still lingering in the atmosphere, falling like invisible flakes to the Earth.
His maternal grandmother feared “The Russian” more than the Devil, and informed the young Ananda (who was not named Ananda then, but that is another story) often, and convincingly, that it was just a matter of time, and not very much of it, before Sweden was overrun by hungry, baby-eating, devil-worshipping, mother-and-child raping Russians.
Ananda used up much salt growing up, many grains.
Whatever mysterious dealings kept his parents in the southern part of the country while he remained up north eventually sorted themselves out and Ananda was then not so much collected, as cargoed by train to a waiting mother at Stockholm station. Four years old then, and bemused. Where was Gotama? He calculated, by Earth years, Bruno was nearly five hundred years dead, surely Gotama Buddha was back in Tusita by now.
When the rules of the Earth were written one of them said that once you adopt a body, you must not kill it, and you must stay with it until its natural demise; meaning: Ananda now had some living to do.
He stayed with his parents in Stockholm for a year or so, before they moved south to a small town where he had the worst handwriting of any first or second grader two years running. His inky, scribbled pages were held up by well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) teachers as short, visual cautionary tales and as warnings: if you don’t practice boys and girls, this is what you might end up with; this to many shocked oohs and aahs, especially from impressionable six- and seven-year-old females. Ananda, rightly, took offense, and to get even never did acquire a legible hand; it was not until the invention of the computer and its smoothly cooperative keyboard that he felt empowered to communicate in writing with the world.
When he was eight, Ananda’s family—now including a small sister—moved north again, though not all the way to that land targeted by the evil Russian. Still, north enough. Winters were cold and starry; summers cool with as much sun as rain. All in all, several pleasant years in which to grow.
So pleasant, in fact, that there were times that Ananda chose to forget who he was and fell in with the identity of his current garment. For he had always had a sweet spot for the arts, especially music, and the 1960s shaped up to be a very special time, music-wise, what with the Beatles and all those who rode into prominence on their coattails, and what with the growing use of mental stimulants like cannabis, something Ananda tried and soon got very used to.
Perhaps, he thought more than once, perhaps he could wait until next life to look for Gotama. This was too much fun. Far. And in all this fun Ananda drowned. For three years, as a late teenager now living alone in Stockholm, Ananda did little else than reveled in cannabis-magnified music. Almost as good as Nimmanarati Heaven, what little of it he glimpsed now and then in what had to be dream, surely.
But all things are impermanent, and his delight in the nearly boundless freedom to imbibe and listen did wear thin, and slowly the true Ananda began to percolate to the surface, arriving one raining morning with a rush of insight that almost blinded the nineteen-year old boy.
Looking back
years later, Ananda knew it had been a close call. He could as easily have drowned as risen. But he didn’t drown, he did rise, and in that rising awoke again to the reason for his visit to Earth: to find Gotama Buddha.
Many years later, he had established that Gotama was not on Earth; he had scoured it and would have recognized him had he been here.
Then, at his keyboard in his little cabin one morning, the call. As clear as any voice whispered in stillness, the wondering of Gotama Buddha: “Ananda, where are you?”
:
“I waited for you,” Ananda said. “In Tusita. I waited for you. When I was no longer sure you would return, I returned to Earth to look for you.”
“I know,” said Gotama.
“Where will you be born?” asked Ananda.
“In a place called Pasadena.”
“I know of it.”
:: 11 :: (Ancient India)
The following morning Ananda, who had not slept much in the night, asked the Buddha: “Venerable Sir, you said last night that the ocean can only be emptied drop by drop. Why is this?”
The Buddha nodded that he had heard. Thoughtfully, he finished his morning meal of rice and mango, then handed the empty bowl to his friend. “Sit down here, Ananda,” he said, sweeping his open hand over the ground to his right, “and I will tell you.”
Ananda put the Buddha’s empty bowl aside, and sat down. You could hear the breeze of myriad morning tasks among the Sangha a little distance away and the morning calls of many birds. The scent of dew and many plants rose to fill his nostrils as he focused all mindfulness upon the answer to come—for as with all other things the Buddha said, he had to remember it verbatim: he was the Gatherer and Guardian of the Dhamma.
“Kings and rulers make laws,” began the Buddha. “Such laws are made for groups of men and women. Such laws are like tethers which rein and prod and steer oxen from without. Thus you can prod and steer manifold beings, a city, a society, but you cannot wake them.
“In truth, Ananda, only the being himself, or herself, can wake the being—and only from within.
“Men’s laws are like walls or fences which contain the herd, and keep it from straying. They are like the banks or levees of a river to guide its course or prevent its overflowing.”
“We have many rules for the Sangha,” said Ananda. “Many banks.”
“These are to keep the bhikkhu from straying,” said the Buddha. “And to calm him so that he, guided by his own pure light, may still his mind and see himself clear to awakening.”
“Only drop by drop, then?” said Ananda, still privately despairing at the uncountable number of drops in the ocean of humanity.
“Awakening happens drop by drop.”
After a brief silence, Ananda asked, “How are we to reach so many?”
Gotama Buddha did not answer at first. Instead he looked up at the sky, at the golden ribbons of cloud, then over at the Sangha, busy preparing for their morning alms-gathering. Then he turned to his friend and said:
“I reach you and one more. You and one more reach two each. Those all reach two each.”
“But some sleep so deeply.”
“Most sleep so deeply,” said the Buddha.
“How are we to reach them?”
“With metta. With compassion. With patience.”
“And with the Dhamma?”
“And with the Dhamma,” confirmed the Buddha.
“It will be a long journey,” said Ananda.
“It will last as long as there is time to last it.”
“Please explain.”
“When the last drop leaves the ocean, there will be no ocean. There will be no time.”
“Only Nibbana?”
“Only Nibbana.”
“I understand,” said Ananda.
:: 12 :: (Tusita Heaven)
I hear Ananda reply from his little cabin among the trees, as he dreams my return into being in short spurts of pleasant keyboard clicks. A writer now, ensconced in his little town, writing and waiting, and now listening—and hearing—as well.
I have found him. And I have found him in good time. And I know what to ask. “Ananda,” I say.
“Friend,” he answers.
“How far is Still River from Pasadena?”
“A thousand miles.”
“Can you come?”
“Of course.”
“Can you come now?”
“Of course. But why now? You are yet to be born.”
“I want you to befriend her.”
“Her?”
“My mother. Her name is Melissa. She needs a friend. Someone she can trust.”
“She has a husband, surely?”
“Of course.”
“Then why me?”
It is a good question, but the truth is that I see an unreliable father in my future. “Her husband is not her friend. He will not do,” I answer.
“Will not do for what?”
“Will not do for my arrival. For my rearing.”
“I see.”
“Go to her now that she will know you well before I arrive.”
“How?” Ananda asks, with another rush of soft clicks.
“Go there,” I say. “We will think of the best approach as you drive.”
:: 13 :: (Ancient India)
Toward evening the following day, Ananda brooding still and not saying much, the Buddha said, “You have other questions, Ananda. What are they?”
Ananda nodded, yes, he had other questions. At least one:
“How many oceans are there in the universe, Gotama?”
“There are as many oceans in the universe as there are drops in our oceans.”
Ananda, for all his usual equanimity appeared—was, in fact—shocked. But still he dared to ask, “And each drop has to waken from within?”
“Yes.”
“How many universes are there?”
“Many.”
“We will never be done,” said Ananda, his voice broken by despair.
The Buddha smiled. “Never is a very long time, Ananda.”
“Some drops sleep very deeply and will take many lives to stir.”
“I know.”
“Many drops are animals now; many more are plants. They each have perhaps a thousand lives to live before they are born human and so can even begin to walk this path.”
“I know.”
“Are we to wake them all?”
The Buddha looked at his friend, then toward the setting sun. He then gazed up into the oncoming darkness, now scaling the sky from the east. He then looked at Ananda and lowered himself to the ground.
“Sit, Ananda,” he said.
Ananda complied.
Then the Buddha said: “We are not to wake them all. They are all to wake themselves.”
Ananda felt that perhaps his friend and teacher was using a very fine sword to split his words. “They cannot wake on their own,” he said. “We need to help them.”
“My task, Ananda, is to formulate and finalize the Dhamma,” answered the Buddha. “Your task is to remember it and pass it on. That is all we can do. The rest is up to each drop of animal, plant, human, asura, or deva.”
“But with no one to stir them, perhaps they never will. Perhaps they will stay asleep.”
“There is no such thing as permanent sleep.”
“But there is such a thing as deep and very long sleep?”
“Yes, Ananda, there is.”
“Is it enough, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is the Dhamma, and passing it on down dawning ages, sufficient? Will life recover?”
“What choice do we have?”
“I don’t know.” Again, Ananda’s voice cracked with a compassion that bordered despair.
“We can only point, Ananda. Each drop has to do its own seeing, its own walking, its own arriving.”
“But you stir so many with your words.”
“As do you.”
“But you grow older each d
ay and Parinibbana awaits you.”
The Buddha did not answer right away. Instead he shifted, and looked up again at the darkening sky, stars beginning to emerge. “I will return,” he said finally.
“But you are fully enlightened.”
“Yes.”
“There is no return from Parinibbana.”
“You know this for a fact?” said the Buddha.
“I have heard it said.”
“I will return,” said the Buddha again.
“Then,” said Ananda after some silence, “so will I.”
:: 14 :: (On the road)
It took Ananda a few days to arrange everything. To find someone to keep an eye on the cabin, not that it needed much looking after. A full service of his car—best to be safe, it was a long drive. Then packing for not quite sure how long he would stay, not that he had many things to pack.
He set out early one morning in June, heading south on the I-95.
Gotama had spoken no more, and there was a small voice within that suggested—more like a suggestion of a suggestion—that perhaps he had dreamed him. But a larger part of him knew, as if by the timbre of Gotama’s voice-less voice, that his friend and mentor, his Buddha, had found him and called upon him again to help.
Towns marched past the road; some small—barely a gathering of houses to his right, others large enough to sport tall motel signs and arrows pointing to swift and very unwholesome foods.
Another town—mainly to his left this time, another motel—no, two—and three more gasoline stations. He checked his fuel gauge just to make sure: plenty to go. His little car gave him nearly forty miles for each gallon of gasoline, and on longer trips, like this, even more. He liked his little car, had even named it. Frugal, he called it, for obvious reasons. Happily, Frugal. It had been a prudent purchase.
