by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER SEVEN:
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“It is true that I neither can nor do pretend to the observation
of complete accuracy, even in matters of outward costume,
much less in the more important points.”
Walter Scott, in the dedicatory epistle to Ivanhoe
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The only possible novel about the past was exhausted by Walter Scott.”
Honore de Balzac
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“Do what you will, this world’s a fiction
And made up of contradiction.”
William Blake
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The Tree—Kama Mara and Gotama
In the earliest record that has come down to us of these events; that is to say the orthodox Pali canon of the Buddhists in Ceylon, we are told that the Buddha ‘attained illumination’ beneath the nigrodha tree on the bank of the river Neranjara, near the village of Uruvela, later called Bodhgaya.
It was there, “at the time of year when flowers close” that Gotama Siddhartha arrived at the hilly grove and, recognizing the immovable spot, settled into the shade of a particular tree. Sometimes identified as an assattha, or Pipal tree, later—after the enlightenment—it is called the bo or bodhi tree. Bodhi is the Sanskrit equivalent of the Japanese word satori, meaning ‘enlightenment’.
The story of the Buddha’s enlightenment is never told without mention of this tree, under which it was necessary to sit. The ancient section of the Samyutta-Nikaya called ‘Sattavassani’ (Seven Years), which deals with the period of ascetic practice, says that Gotama remained in meditation four weeks before finally leaving the bodhi tree and that he spent a fifth week in meditation under the ajapala tree where he encountered and subdued a demon, Mara, and determined to preach to others. This text tells that it was here that the three daughters of Mara (maradhitaro); Tanha, Arati, and Raga, were likewise encountered.
The Pali Vinaya, says that then Gotama departed from the ajapala tree and spent a sixth week under the mucalinda tree (Mucilinda being the name, at the time, of a deity associated with snakes), and it is written that here, under the tree, Gotama was shielded from a threatening storm by the snake’s great hood. After this, now in entering his seventh week, he came to sit under the rajayatana tree and there, “delighted in his liberation”.
Gotama had been up since before dawn. Without taking thought he began walking. He had been re hearing internally, Desire’s words, “Love is the perfection of consciousness…” when he reached the spot. Serene, in one well-practiced motion, he folded his hands together and also his legs underneath, immediately placing ankles up upon knees. Unconsciously, naturally all chakras aligned, he breathed like a baby smiling from a timeless center of the universe. Right away, revelations came, as did snakes and birds, basking in his radiance. Everything, Everywhere, was Here.
Absorbed in wonder, held in awe and fascination, Gotama sat whole-heartedly. So rare is this, for men and women of any period of history, that sympathetic imagination is challenged; likewise description. Can we imagine a “crystalline suspension of mind”? a “condition like that of Primal Being”? an “eye of the universe continually experiencing the sublime”? (just a few of the attempts at description I collected.)
Was he “like an insect experiencing metamorphosis”? None of us knows anything about that either.
The dense calm by which, incidentally, Kama Mara had found him immediately affected the elephant upon whom he arrived. Literally struck by its force, the animal lowered its trunk and halted. Kama Mara, apparently not so affected, hollered out, “Hey! Yo! Its better to be a fat old man who sweats than to be nothingness!”
While the animals around him scattered, Gotama, maintaining his posture, not even shifting the position of his hands and fingers, took in the scene.
“Is there someone here?” Kama Mara hollered again before leaning down, lowering his voice and speaking more directly… now from not more than a couple of feet away, “Does this represent the furthest evolution of humanity? Or, isn’t there some further vanity?”
Circling his elephant around Gotama, he shouted, “Morbid pervert! Mooksha? Hardly! You cannot even speak.” Then, lowering his voice, “I think that you were expecting me. You did see something coming. But, do you know that I am Desire’s Father?”
As I imagine it, Kama Mara was right about Gotama not being able to speak. Sensing that to now form words would result in the proportionate loss of the greater consciousness, which he had just been able to attain, Gotama was unable to speak.
Looking hard at the apparently evaporated being before him, Kama Mara wondered, “Is this the young prince I once knew? Can this be the initiate I have prepared?”
Calmly, in the most matter of fact manner, still seated upon the elephant, he continued to address Gotama, his voice exuding earned authority, authentic power, “I can’t take seriously such extreme valuation of deep sleep. So weary? Too weary even for dreams? So profoundly depressed?”
Probing for a strength against which to test himself, Kama Mara, becoming more conversational, affected disappointment. “Isn’t the greatest of all pleasures and powers life? This all too typical holy man routine… Is this your life? Have you forgotten? Pleasure too, and growth are equally profound expressions of life’s fullness.”
“Don’t you know, anyone can escape from life.” He continued to pace around him, circling with the elephant. “Its the same old sad story—all over Aryavarta—past present, future. Are your idiosyncrasies so particularly exceptional? Or are you just a more extreme case, an obvious instance, of the general trend; that everywhere the instincts are becoming mutually antagonistic?”
His voice was now warmer and less threatening. “Are you sure that you know the world well enough to transcend it? I’m afraid that you’ve taken a wrong turn and simply followed it almost all the way to the end. You are listening. I know it. I’m here to turn you around. Real transcendence lies in the opposite direction.”
After a moment of silent appraisal, Kama Mara began to speak. In ever lower, thicker tones, he said, “There is no point trying to talk with an exalted one. Let’s try some direct action. We’ll see what you know about transcendence. Lets prove ourselves”
“All around, to the very edge of the fortress of my pride, I beat back the waves of illusion and of wrongness. Nauseated, I turn from them, as I do now from you.”
