The Dhamma Man

by Vilas Sarang

  The more he pondered, the more troubled his mind became. Sudatta knew enough about life. He knew that a woman giving birth to her first child so late in life was likely to have problems with the delivery. And now, there was every likelihood that it was going to be a difficult delivery. The constant bumping and lurching of the cart was catalytic. Added to it was the fierce heat of the summer noon. Things couldn’t have taken a more portentous turn. It was as if the child that was striving to be born was already, in the womb, enveloped by extremes of anxiety and suffering. Such was the child’s primordial experience of coming into the world. Perhaps the memory of the prenatal experience of his mother’s suffering survived long in that incipient mind. Was all his life a quest to understand and overcome his mother’s agony, a mother of whom he was not likely to have any memory?

  The maid had been fanning Maya ceaselessly. After a while, Maya opened her eyes. The tall tree above her head reassured her. She watched the tree, which, from where she lay, looked huge and all-encompassing. A movement caught her eye—a bird. In the tall branches, she could not make out what kind of bird it was. It moved silently, among the branches. Was it an omen? A good omen, or bad?

  Just then, cataclysmic pain brutally shook Maya’s whole body. Waves of pure pain tossed her body around, never letting up.

  The maid was alarmed. She threw the fan down and held her mistress by both shoulders. The convulsions grew more severe and the maid found the task to be beyond her. She thought of calling one of the men in the retinue, perhaps Sudatta. But it was not proper to call a man with the princess in such a state.

  Then Maya herself knew that her moment of truth had arrived. Summoning all her strength, she turned around and clasped the bole of the tree. Holding on to the great sal she slowly, with great difficulty, raised herself up. And though Maya could not even stand properly, she held on to the tree with determination. Through all the pain she remembered the custom of the land: women gave birth standing up; perhaps to harness gravity as an aid to parturition.

  A forty-year-old woman, giving birth to her first child, all alone on a barren plain, far away from her husband’s royal abode and also from her parents’ house where her mother was anxiously waiting: this was by no means a common situation to be in, even in those rough, fate-flung times, when a man or woman might be indefinitely buffeted about.

  Embracing the sal tree desperately, as if the tree were a lover, or a saviour, Maya waited.

  I, who was Sudatta in that existence, was witness to that uncommon unfoldment of becoming. Through the haze of innumerable cycles, that particular image shines with undiminished clarity. Time and space have together distanced the image, and I see on the colourless plain that single tree with the woman clinging to it, unclothed for delivery. The brownish shade of the bark of the tree merges seamlessly with the colour of the skin of the human figure so that the woman’s body seems part of the tree, a natural growth of the vegetative organism.

  If 2500 years ago this was the custom of giving birth in India, it must have been followed for many centuries. One imagines the women of India embracing trees at one of the most critical moments in their lives. Woman and tree bound by a tie more precious and intimate than the woman’s bond with her husband. The tree has been midwife to countless women in India. Trees had a far more primal bond with humans across India, in villages, towns, the wide provinces with changing climates, and occasionally with a pregnant woman who was fortunate to find a tree en route to her parents’ house.

  ‘Force! Force!’ the maid encouraged, holding Maya’s waist to support her. The maid had no experience with this kind of work, and she was herself fearful and apprehensive.

  Something broke loose. Maya, in spite of the unbearable pain, made a cohesive movement of the muscles of her body, more instinctive than conscious, and something seemed to happen at the lower end of her torso.

  ‘Yes, come on! Come on! It’s coming out!’ the maid shouted excitedly.

  Slowly the child came out, head first. The maid had the presence of mind to ease the infant’s egress, and to hold it gently as it emerged.

  The child was out. Maya knew it instinctively. She let go of the tree and collapsed. The woman had accomplished her goal, thanks to the tree. It was as if the infant had smoothly emerged from the bole of the tree. It was a child of the tree, like, no doubt, countless other human offspring of the time.

  The umbilical cord was still to be dealt with. The maid found a jagged stone and severed the cord. The child was free, a free being endowed with the power to go forth in the world. And he, himself born in transit, would go forth to preach the transitoriness of the world.

  The ears of the small group of men standing around the cart were expectant and with the clear cry of the infant, they experienced a sudden sense of release. A variety of cries of joy emanated from them.

  ‘Bring the child here! Quick!’ Sudatta shouted.

  The maid carried the child, still covered by the blood and debris of birth. Sudatta took the child in his hands and checked its breath and pulse. What water there was in store was brought, and the child clumsily washed.

  ‘Go and attend to the princess,’ Sudatta ordered the maid. ‘See that she is all right. Clean her as best you can. Put on her clothes.’

  The maid returned to her mistress.

  ‘Is the child all right?’ Maya managed to speak these few words.

  ‘Yes, queen, the child is perfectly all right! It’s a boy! A handsome, robust boy!’

  There was a faint smile on Maya’s face. She seemed finally to relax. While the maid carried out her ministrations, Maya didn’t bother about them. Overcome by fatigue she closed her eyes.

  The men comprising the retinue had a brief discussion. It was decided that there was little point now in proceeding to Devadaha. It was more important, and urgent, to return to Kapilavastu, to convey the good news to the royal household. The king had, after many years, been presented with a child by his favourite wife, and to crown it all, it was a male child, an heir to the throne.

  The assemblage returned. The good news spread. There was general jubilation in the royal household. The entire royal building complex was illuminated with little clay lamps.

  Maya, the newborn child’s mother, was still weak and exhausted. The royal vaidyas examined her. She seemed to have a slight fever. Potions were prescribed for her. It was thought that with proper rest and care, she would get well soon. As for the newborn, it was handed over to the care of the nurses, some of whom could breast-feed the royal child. Nobody knew at that time that the wet nurses would be needed for much longer.

  And, in the rush and precipitance of the delivery of the child and the subsequent return journey, nobody noticed the nail marks Maya had left on the bark, like the claw marks which tigers score on trees. The mute sign of the desperation of the pregnant woman was borne by the tree uncomplainingly for a few days before the injury healed. Trees are forgiving.

  Thus he came.

  He became.

  He is endlessly becoming.

  This might sound like heresy. Didn’t he attain nirvana? Become free of the cycle of rebirth? In an exalted sense, yes. Yet, the wheel of becoming has not stopped. There were many Buddhas before his coming and there are many Buddhas yet to come. In that sense, his becoming is never ending.

  I too have understood it. Far back in the cycle of becoming, I was Sudatta. I was part of that brief journey to escort Princess Maya. I was witness to the birth of her son. I escorted her, with her newborn son, back to the royal palace.

  What did I understand of it all? Very little at that moment. Only in my subsequent existences did I gradually understand the full meaning of what I saw, what I experienced. There was nothing wondrous, or so I thought anyway, in the events of that day. Some anxiety, some sadness, the consolation of a royal birth. But all the same, children are born every day, pregnant women have suffered. Many have died.

  On that day, there were no heavenly signs. No stars, no comets, just the merciles
s May sun. The modest shade of a tree. Was the tree a sign? Yes, why not? The tree of life. It’s interesting; the tree has one great virtue which the child that was born that day extolled above everything all his life: compassion, ahimsa, non-cruelty. Trees don’t eat anyone. All other living things, fish, flesh or fowl, eat other living beings, including vegetation. Unlike man and other animals, trees do not prey upon anything. Trees obtain their sustenance directly from the elements of nature: from air, water and sun.

  But the child that was born that day is associated with another, more famous tree: the tree under which that child, many years later, attained enlightenment. The Tree of Birth and the Tree of Enlightenment: it was a great leap between those two trees. And, in fact, the second, iconic tree was a negation of the tree of birth. That famed tree signified the extinction of birth.

  Looking back at that day, after opening and shutting the eyelids on more rebirths, I can now see it differently. A day, a life, they do not become frozen in time, do not instantly turn into being. The day that is past, a life that is past, does not become unalterable. It continues, many centuries later, to unfold its mystery. That’s one thing I have learnt over the cycle of births and exits: never cast anything into the dustbin of being.

  Elevating the dustbin of history, however, to absurd heights and treating every relic as though it were forever is silly. Clinging to the transitory was not our way; that we have received from alien ways of thinking. Great temples, palaces, opulent towns and cities have vanished, leaving no trace, or very little. ‘How shocking!’ the cry goes up in this age of the tourist. It is strange, it is perverse, this desire to preserve what is essentially perishable. Let the wind and the dust rightfully claim what is theirs. Illiterate villagers, perhaps instinctively, know better.

  The countless rivers and mega rivers that course through this land have taught us to flow and float. The corpses sail upon the waters and rise up again, leaving turtles dumbstruck in the midst of their feast. The sati hoisted upon the pyre duly gives birth to her child. Born with the dead, we are accustomed to indifferent impermanence. All things pass away. And return. ‘See, they return, and bring us with them.’

  I am happy, though, that the moment has not been erased completely. Twenty years after the event, an emperor visited the place. At Lumbini today, there is a small temple. In it is a stone tablet: it shows Maya giving birth, standing and holding on to a branch of the sal tree. I have visited that temple. The depths of memory and the shadowy stone images merged so effortlessly that it didn’t matter to me which was which. And it was much more decent than the vulgar, instant pictures of today. Such small signs are enough; the enormity of the signification is beyond signs, be they great temples or caves or tombs.

  It strikes me that Siddharth had not seen what I had seen: the course of his nativity, the agony of his mother, the travails before the moment of deliverance. He had lived it; I had seen it. But I understood it with some lucidity much later as his life unfolded. I understood what now seems to be an elementary truth: birth is suffering. And birth, at times, resonates with death, as it did with the birth I had witnessed. Birth and death, they are an equal pair, going hand in hand. But it is foolish of me to say that I had seen what he hadn’t. He had seen it all along.

  Siddharth, after his metamorphosis many years later, saw this lacuna. The Vedic age didn’t see it this way. In the Rig Veda, the poet prays: ‘Deliver me from death,’ and he doesn’t forget to add, ‘not from immortality.’ The Vedic ages coveted immortality, though, in their eyes, immortality was reckoned as no more than a hundred years. If Siddharth later did not forbid and frown upon derisive and ironic comment, he would have treated with disdain this kind of abject, pitiful beggary.

  Later, when death turned into Maar, it became a more complex phenomenon. The new religious order adopted a more perceptive and comprehensive view. It is said of Maar: ‘Just as he is death, so is he sex, the ungovernable urge that leads to yet more life and yet more death.’

  So, when Siddharth became Buddha, he gave voice to a startling, amazing thought: ‘It is not death that is at the root of misery, it is birth.’

  If there were a goddess of birth, as there is of death, that goddess would have been greatly perturbed and filled with dread. ‘Kill that child who is born to take away my vocation!’ she would have screamed. And she would have employed every stratagem to get rid of that child.

  For the nascency that was the result of a late conception and the only fruit of Maya’s womb—some might call it providential—was no less; the birth of a child who was destined to preach the extinction of birth.

  I am Maar.

  Many of you may not even know my name, overshadowed as it is by the cursed name of my enemy. I confess he has earned fabulous fame. Millions of people are devoted to him, they say. To hell with them.

  I have a large family—three sons: Flurry, Gaiety and Sullenpride. And three daughters: Discontent, Delight and Thirst. And their mother, she is long gone. All I remember is that our life together was bitter, constant bickering. That is the price you have to pay for love. Love is war; everything is war.

  Actually, people follow me. Not for nothing am I called the god of love, that is, sex. It’s just that they don’t say it. If I took it into my head, I could gather thousands of followers. The strange thing is, people are ashamed of their hankering after me. After all, it is the pleasure principle that is the cause of life on earth. That is how life over millions of years has developed. The urge, the urge, the urge. The urge to copulate, above all. The urge for food. For better and varied foods. A thousand urges. Life teems with urges.

  Secondly, my secret knowledge tells me that in the human brain, below the larger part of the brain, is a tiny part that is different; a vestige of the animal brain. Irrational as it is, from it spring all kinds of blind desires. Rape, incest, murder, war, cannibalism, genocide—in short, all kinds of fiendish behaviour may be attributed to this tiny, dark part of the brain. Fortunately, this explosive dark part is asleep most of the time. But there is no knowing when this part of the brain may wake up and intrude upon the rational brain. Then there is only havoc.

  True, above it all, the superego tries to control human behaviour. But many times, the superego is helpless. It takes true effort to regain control of the brain.

  The child that is born today is said to set up battle with me. He is said to be a powerful boy. When he grows up, he, with his full powers, will wage war with me. Let him do his best. I am more than a match for him.

  What my enemy is trying to do is appeal to the superego of society. He may succeed partly, part of the time. But the irrational part of the brain can never be uprooted. You, and my enemy, have to live with it.

  Yes, in the end Maar will triumph.

  2

  Maya languished in her room with only a maid for company. She lay flat on the bed and hardly moved. All strength seemed to have drained away from her body. She had fever which rose and dropped fitfully. She lived in a kind of stupor, seldom opening her eyes. The maid gave her a little water from time to time, and also liquid food.

  All of Maya’s thoughts—that is, when she was not in a delirious stupor—were focused on her newborn child. For years and years, she had pined for a child and when she was blessed with one, she was now unable to see, to hold and to fondle it. If Maya had not mostly been in a half-awake state, she would have burned with bitterness.

  Pajapati, Maya’s sister, who was also Shuddodan’s second wife, looked after Maya. Pajapati herself was pregnant at the same time as Maya, and the vaidyas had said that the two may deliver their children on the same day, or within a space of one or two days. Eventually, Maya’s delivery left Pajapati somewhat confused. She was glad that her sister had delivered, but the state in which the delivery had occurred left Pajapati apprehensive. She had also planned to go to Devadaha to have her baby there. In fact, the two sisters might have left together for their parents’ home. But the sudden development in Maya’s case had overtaken even
ts and plans.

  The first thing that Pajapati decided was that she, unlike her sister, would not go to her parents’ house. It was clear to her how dangerous a bumpy journey in the middle of the summer was for a pregnant woman. It was better to forfeit the traditional journey in the circumstances. With her belly big with child, Pajapati looked after Maya as well as Maya’s newborn. The child had to be cared for separately, since his mother was not able to do so.

  Whenever Maya was conscious and reasonably wakeful, she asked Pajapati, mainly by signal, to bring the child to her. A maid would carry the child in and hold him up in front of Maya. But Maya was unable to rise and sit. In vain did Maya stretch, strain and make an effort to lift her head ever so slightly. But she was defeated every time by her own body and couldn’t get a good look at her own child. The child remained a vague, indistinct presence in the mother’s mind.

  For many years, Maya had intensely desired this child. The desire was now finally fulfilled, but in such a way that the hapless mother still yearned to physically claim her child, to gaze upon its baby face to her heart’s content. In humans desire is all-pervasive and common, but such searing and desperate desire must be exceptional. Was it some telepathy that this child, when he grew up, spoke all his life against the deadly devastation of desire?

  The birth of a child in India, in a royal household, or even in a family of modest means, brought in its wake sundry wise and holy men, each claiming powers of divination.

  But Shuddodan had no need for such aid. Asit, a venerable wise man, had for two generations been sage and guide to the Gautam family. As a priest of the royal family, Asit had served under Sihahanu, Shuddodan’s father, and then under Shuddodan himself. Asit was old, very old, and had now retired to a hermitage to fulfil the duties of the fourth ashram according to the Vedic way of life.

  The king ordered Sudatta: ‘Go fetch Asit.’