by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:
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“If I regret anything, it is the time when mystical and theological notions induced me to lead too secluded a life.”
Vincent Van Gogh (Letters)
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“I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect of the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country.”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
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For Gotama there would be no more renunciation, life remained… to be lived.
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Reunion with the Sisters
Gotama woke up remembering Regret’s irresistible laughter. No longer afraid of happiness, he laughed out loud before even opening his eyes.
When his eyes did open they observed that the bamboo trees at the end of the grove were parted and that a deer path led off through them. Slipping away from the group camped on the estate of Yasa’s father, and then altogether from the little village on the outskirts of Benares, Gotama followed the deer, heading off alone into more open country.
Leaving behind mango trees that were like great black tents pitched in the fields, he came to a deep rutted open road with straight asoka trees and dusty pink and yellow lantana bushes growing along the ditches. The landscape sent back the echoes his heart desired.
He contemplated the ritual drama of the ‘temptation’… and penetrated with piercing glance into its inner agitated world of motives. A symbolic picture passed before him whose deepest meaning he almost believed he had divined. The great distinctiveness of his memory picture, which he desired to draw aside like a curtain to get at the original behind it, enthralled his eye and prevented him from penetrating more deeply.
The quiet rhythmic pattern of his paces set up a correspondence and in his mind he heard;
“Kama Mara… Kama Mara… Kama Mara,
Desire… Desire,
Fulfillment,
Regret…
Mara, Desire,
Fulfillment, Regret…
Fulfillment, Desire…
Desire, Fulfillment…
Mara, Desire,
Fulfillment, Regret…
Fulfillment, Desire,
… Desire… ”
Implications were not yet settled. Names, relationships, and memories, revolved freely in rhythmic parade as Gotama was coming to understand the entire significance.
Kama Mara had first appeared as an horrific giant, an ultimate threat! But as the drama unfolded, he was revealed to have been the most beneficent, profound, and creative guru. His own identity and the direction of his life had taken on a new and forceful unity and power when Gotama understood how closely linked were the their destinies. It had been Kama Mara who issued those prophecies about him at his birth. Behind the scenes, it had been Kama Mara who, when he was a young man, still living in his father’s palace, made certain that that he encountered that old man—the first he had ever seen, and then the first sick man, then the dead man, and finally the ascetic.
And when the extremity of his asceticism was leading nowhere and had begun to threaten his life, it was again Kama Mara, who through the most artistically staged encounters, the ‘temptations’, contrived to deliver him. It was his educational genius which had all along made possible the steps in his development and provided an authentic foundation for what he now understood as his life’s direction.
Finally Kama Mara had become his friend. He longed to see him again.
His memories of Desire were even more compelling. Simply, through the expression of her own nature she was able to demonstrate solutions to problems he had never been able to even formulate; insoluble problems. It appeared to be a part of her nature to continually offer contributions to his well-being. The offer of food to him at just the right moment was not only symbolic, and not merely a turning point. He felt that it, and she, had saved his life.
Fulfillment? Opening out and expanding his conception of Beauty, she had encouraged nirvana but he had not understood. Only when he had mistakenly attempted to abandon it, had he come to know that nirvana meant and is life. His gratitude towards her was immense.
And, Regret? Continually he heard, in his imagination, her laughter. With a delightful squeal of joy, she had predicted the fulfillment, which he was finding now.
The luxurious privilege of Gotama’s birth had accustomed him, as a young adult, to considering the means of this ease as the most important thing. Later, as an ascetic, it was self-denial that had served to orient him. Finally, he had become aware of the simple, but profound value of his own humanity, a humanity superbly well endowed by nature and experience.
Walking felt best. His feet led. With the days’ heat at its greatest, he shrunk from the harsh afternoon light and the more traveled roads. Seeking the refreshing shade of a grove of amlak trees, he fell, again, upon paths taken by deer, which followed the shape of the earth in the ageless jungle forest.
Drawn by an extra sensory perception and by the cooler air that rose off a shallow, wandering mountain stream, Gotama found himself at a small blue green pond with lotuses in blossom. Some were white, with green leaves and stalks. And there were crimson ones too, with large flat crimson leaves and stalks. Ducks paddled between them and white egrets floated in the shallows. All around bougainvilleas gushed up out of the sandy earth in fountains of papery flowers—lilac, orange, crimson, pink. Birds called to each other from the dense shade of mango trees.
To enter more deeply into this scene—as I have done throughout the story—I want to describe an imaginary painting. Something about the colors, the pond, and the grouping of the female forms suggested that the French painter, called an “Impressionist”, Pierre August Renoir, might have been drawn to depict this landscape with nudes.
There are no shadows, only contrasting light and dark areas saturated with a continuous succession of color-chords unified by a patterned arrangement extraordinarily rich in sensuous appeal. The scene becomes visible almost secondarily, accomplished in our minds, more by the use of color than of line. Separate objects; the pond, ducks, bougainvilleas, flowering jasmine, crimson lotuses, and even the white egrets, come into view by means of color contrast. The overall impression, created out of seemingly infinite subsidiary designs, everything permeated with a light that is thoroughly graded, suggests both a love of nature and of metaphor. Voluptuous color masses merge harmoniously within a series of rhythms in space. All has ease, grace and fluidity. All evokes the drama of nature and of perception.
Emerging from Renoir’s imaginary canvas, we realize that this is the same magical place where, in an inner vision at the beginning of this story, Gotama had first encountered the three young women bathing and drying themselves with a long purple cloth.
Now, like the progression of this story, it seemed to him as if his arrival to this point signaled a culmination—but, he felt that the movement had not taken place in a direction going from ‘present’ to ‘future’. Instead, it seemed as if the momentum, which directed events was no sooner born than it flowed back—at top speed—and settled upon itself.
Wetting first his head with cool water, he then washed his feet. In complete repose, he stood, barefooted and balanced, under a vast banyan tree the long aerial roots of which, trailed from the branches around and above him. The soft cackling of a small flock of parrots sitting at the top eating the small red fruits caught his attention. Straightaway, he entered into an ecstatic meditation. Timelessness overwhelmed him. Birds and other small animals were quick to notice and flocked, gathering to share the atmosphere around him.
Laughter and quick cheerful sounds… feminine voices broke the spell and alerted his attention to the presence of the three ‘Goddesses’. —There! Just as he had seen them at first! But now as he observed them his eyes were open. He now knew that the beauty, strength, playfuln
ess, grace, and culture they exemplified were completely unique, lost to the world save through them. The thrilling proximity, the electric attraction of the three sisters taught Gotama to better understand and sympathize with the feeling of his own old comrades, those five bhikkhus who wanted nothing other than to follow him around as disciples.
All this was experienced just below the level of consciousness.
“Our time here has come and gone. Father is right, our ‘play’ is done.” Gotama recognized Regret’s voice.
“So, what’s next?” he heard Fulfillment ask. “What’s left for us now that the Buddha has appeared? Our purpose here is fulfilled.”
“I’m still thinking about Siddhartha,” Desire cried.
“I know. We all are.” Fulfillment
“For him, if was as if there were no temptations.” Regret
“Temptations!?” Desire broke in.
“Fulfillment settled things, “For Siddhartha … initiations…”
Softly, Desire’s voice said, “I know that he is in love with me.”
These words brought Gotama from out behind the tree, propelling him towards the girls. Desire saw him first. The sudden change in her told the others. “You’ve been spying!” Mock anger in Desire’s voice; “Gotama Siddhartha Buddha!”
She chopped the water sideways with a cupped hand that sent well-aimed splashes up and onto him soaking his garment just as he came within range. Fulfillment and Regret took up their older sister’s cause sending water and laughter in Gotama’s direction until, at last, he jumped into the stream retaliating with splashing of his own.
For Gotama there would be no more renunciation. Life remained… to be lived.
