by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:
--- --- ---
“There is the material the poet has collected, the material the new spirit has revealed, and this material will form the basis of a truth the simplicity of which will be undeniable, and which will lead to great, very great things.”
Apollinaire
--- --- ---
Together we’ll attend his first formal talk to ‘non-specialists’.
--- --- ---
An Early Sermon—Setting the wheel in Motion
Like the seeker in the last chapter, discovered sitting quietly among a herd of spotted deer along the road leading from the Deer Park, You and I, reader, have encountered Gotama, and have been drawn to follow him. Together we’ll attend his first formal talk to ‘non specialists’. The lore of early Buddhism tells us that this event, whether apocryphal, or historic, took place at the estate of a wealthy land owner whose name does not come down to us. We know him only as ‘the father of Yasa’.
The Pali description serves as our point of departure;
“At the time there was in Baranasi a youth of good family, called Yasa,
the son of a wealthy merchant, of an obedient and refined nature” …
And while the group was in the vicinity they passed the residence of a man Siddhartha had know as a child, a friend of his fathers’… this very ‘father of Yasa’. Gotama left the company, and turning in, off the main road, entered and walked slowly through a grove of bananas and slender palms to arrive at a fine village home. He found Yasa’s father admiring the coconuts.
After exchanging affectionate greetings, Gotama explains that he is traveling with a group of bodhisattvas. “Siddhartha,” Yasa’s father said, “already I have heard about you, and I know that the people are turning to you, looking up to you as to a lofty mountain. So… you have become a guru after all!”
Gotama, acknowledging this reference to the prophecy given at his birth, says, “It is not because of any power that I have. Of course you must know that I cannot save or help anyone, but, I am trying to teach them to be able to help themselves. I believe that if I have success, the explanation is that my words, and something about me, verifies their own experience which has not yet dawned upon their conscious minds.”
“Reasonable enough.” Yasa’s father said. “Stay awhile Gotama, if you can. Stay and refresh yourselves. It will be my pleasure to provide hospitality.”
THE SCENE: Just outside of the town of Benares; a meal on the estate of Yasa’s father’s. A large villa with slightly sloping tile roofs. Verandas with pilasters of white stucco emerge from thick bougainvillea. Groves of oleander, hibiscus bushes in flower, citrus and guava orchards bearing fragrant fruit. Over wheat bread served with barley rice and peas, the smell of ghee, along with warm spirits, prevails. Gotama and his group of followers recline and converse on several large sheets spread out on the ground for them.
It is evening. Melons, rice, and coconuts on brass trays are passed around by women in bright saris of purple and blue, flowers in their hair. With the prospect of a rather more formal than usual talk before him, I am inclined to imagine Gotama with somewhat the attitude of a doctor pressed into service.
After the meal, he takes up a branch, just as Regret had done, smoothes the dirt with his rough sandals, and traces a large circle as the group gathers around, gradually, to see what he is doing. Still looking down at the dirt, he sits down folding his legs up over his knees, and is quiet a long while.
Finally, he looks at everyone and says, “Everyone seems to understand himself and the world, but really, most people are almost totally lacking in knowledge of either. In fact, it’s almost natural now, normal, to have lost a critical interest in our own selves… I mean… even in what ought to be one’s most basic concerns… Our contemporary life, too often routine, is conducive to like habits of thinking. Laziness and a lack of curiosity are the result… and … a real helplessness.”
And then, unfolding his legs, he stands up, wrapping his arms in close around himself, and stays quiet a while. When, with some drama, he opens his arms wide and says, “Don’t you know, Brahman, the Great Self, is playing at ‘hide and go seek’ with itself … for always and always and always And, each of us, each one of us, ourselves, is Brahman—on purpose getting lost … for the fun of it! Do you know? Have your heard it?”
“How lost… how far out can one go? Maya… the categories of human thought… like a game with set boundaries…. all well organized. Look, here’s the PAJVA CHAKRA—the Great Wheel of Becoming”
Indicating the circle he has traced with his stick, and six smaller circles drawn around on the circumference, he says, “Here are the Six Great Worlds:
DEVA
HUMAN BEING ASHURA
PRETA ANIMAL
NARAKA
“Notice that it’s a wheel. It goes round with no stopping. Anywhere is the top… so… let’s start here.” Gotama indicates a small circle close to him. “This stands for the DEVAS, the great and powerful gods who hold the open sky, supreme spirits, who we imagine to be happy. These are the ones who have made a success of things. If we think long enough about these, then it’s easy to imagine their opposites… (he points to an opposite smaller circle) here… a world of great sadness, the NARAKA, the world of the failures.”
“Follow round the circle and we come to the HUMAN realm; a world where death comes more quickly. Here is where we wake up and go to sleep and where there’s work to be done. Opposite from us on the circle is the world of ANIMALS. With feelings so like our own, but with language and consciousness comparatively, so undeveloped, they present a continuous caricature of human life.”
“Just below the human world…” Gotama walked around and pointed with his stick, “is a spirit world, full of tormented creatures cut short or prevented from growth and development. The PRETA world is where everybody is chronically frustrated; large appetites and not the means to satisfy them.”
Stopping his presentation, Gotama made several circuits around the circle he had drawn, gathering his thoughts and allowing the quiet to be heard. At last he faced everyone. Finding just the right pitch for his voice, he began again, “Opposite the PRETA are the ASHURA—different kind of beings. Like the DEVAS, these are highly developed, but are, unlike them, full of anger, furious in fact, and ready to do harm, to inflict pain. These are the ones called ‘demons’, the ‘evil spirits’.”
Gotama stopped altogether, folded his arms in and across his stomach. He appeared to be concentrating as if he were trying to remember or organize what he would say next. Or, maybe he had decided, that despite his being the center of everyone’s attention, he would enter into a prolonged meditation. He was completely still. The soft sounds of the evening rose up to fill the silent space. Birds flew in and out of the soft-needled casuarina trees and the thick jungle of pandanus. Flute voiced drongues swooped and cut through the air overhead like dazzling knives. Pairs of crested dub dubs sang from the branches.
Gotama’s voice cut surprisingly through the moist, still air. “Is everything that I been describing a way of talking about our own selves? Could it be that when we are in a state of equanimity—of balance—between the extremes—then that is ‘the human realm’? He indicated that point within the dirt circle that he had drawn.
“Maybe when we become so powerful, happy, and satisfied it is as if we had entered into the land of the Devas? You see what I mean? Say we are overwhelmed… with loss … or in turmoil… maybe then we are in the Naraka realm. When frustrated; among the Pretas? Should we become angry, then we are in the land of the ASHURA… and… (you see, finally, we have gone all the way around the circle) if we are not conscious of ourselves sufficiently, we are among the animals.”
“So… are these boundary realms standing for the modes of our being? … Well, then, what sense can we make of this… this wheel of existence? How are we to understand it?” Got
ama’s tone and manner were intimate, confidential, as if he were in conversation with each one of his listeners individually.
“We have been taught to search for a world behind this world—a real world behind this world of appearances. So then, maybe it is in this way that all the spokes of this wheel stand for our own inner being? And maybe it is not only every realm in this circle, but also all the modes of our being that perhaps they are standing for which are … unreal. What I am talking about is a lack of substantial reality.”
Gotama stopped talking and again became extremely still. One effect of these repeated silences was that everyone was given an opportunity to review and to reconsider his train of thought. Another was that, when at last he spoke again, all were glad and listened with fresh ears.
Now that he had left off repeating and interpreting the old formulas and began to speak common sense out of his own completely novel viewpoint, Gotama completely commanded everyone’s attention. “For me, neither family life, warfare, work, ritual, nor the religious teachings and practices I sought out and studied, afforded peace of mind,” he began. “All of it seemed removed from true wisdom.”
Now that he had left off repeating and interpreting the old formulas and began to speak common sense out of his own completely novel viewpoint, Gotama completely commanded everyone’s attention.
“Suddenly and this came about because of a song I heard sung by a young woman who had bought me a bowl of rice milk as I sat in meditation it occurred to me to think about music. The idea that I should retain this love of music even though I had not heard any at all for many years moved me very much. Well, then you could say that I began to search out the deepest melodies, the deepest themes of life… as if life were music. When I thought of it like this, it was not so difficult to discover the raga heard most easily amidst its endless variations; the dukka raga, played upon open, unstopped strings.”
“Insatiable desire, the will behind everything, by means of an illusion spread over things, can always detain its creatures in life… The love of knowledge, the seduction of beauty, the metaphysical comfort that beneath suffering another realm lives on indestructibly… all of our cultural life is made up of these stimulants of the forgetfulness of sorrow.”
“I came to believe, at first, that the cause of suffering was somehow inherent in desire, the deepest root of which is the burning thirst for existence. So, I reasoned, if such passionate longing might cease, then a liberation might be accomplished, a release from suffering.”
“Attempting to silence utterly desire, I divided the world. On one side I placed this comparatively blind thirst for existence, and on the other I placed wisdom, which takes a comprehensive view of the world, and seeks to conceive, with sympathy and love, of suffering as its own.”
“It was only through music that I was able to understand the joy experienced in the annihilation of the individual. The eternal, the spirit behind the principle of individuation, is given expression in its omnipotence… ”
“Up until this time, though there is nothing in the physical world which is pointing to a liberation in this direction, within me an impulse had arisen to withdraw, to imagine a realm of pure spirit… and so, vainly, in isolation, I had been seeking an inner perfection.”
“But, as the Pajva Chakra has shown us, there is a limit to how far anyone of us go. One cannot sharpen a knife indefinitely. When I began to understand this a WAY opened for me, a way which led to release… to peace. Anyone can discover it for themselves, as I have. Along with a new freedom I was overwhelmed by a spirit of compassion, which very much surprised me.”
“So, here I am, back to the world I had left behind. Though nothing has changed, it’s a new world now to me. I can’t help now but share my discoveries, telling what I have learned, my mistakes… If one is patient, there are steps that will set one on a direct path, steps that any one may take, steps which will eliminate many difficulties.”
“Now listen. I want to suggest how you might place your feet before you and begin to take these steps for yourselves. I ask you to begin by holding in your mind four most important perceptions. Taken together, they will lay the foundation, a foundation of the necessary self consciousness for an experience … a realization.”
“First, as I have already said, all life partakes of dukka. If you do not get what you want you suffer, if you do get what you want you suffer. Between getting and not getting, life may be compared to a flickering flame. Endeavoring to avoid pain or to gain delight fans the flame, making it blaze. This leads to a second important perception; that wanting, desire, in itself and its expressions in pleasure, power, and permanence, is most fundamentally characteristic of life, and that desire and the world, where all is flux, are at odds. ”
“So, then the next, the third important perception become obvious; that suffering will never cease as long as the fire is fed… To avoid suffering one must cease feeding the fire.”
“Fourth; the fire can be put out. This is accomplished by not wanting… The flame, no longer fed, will fade… And then, at last, a path opens, easy to follow…”
