Bride of the Buddha

by Barbara McHugh, PhD

  By then I was almost sixty, and I’d been his attendant for twenty years. During that time, my life resembled my previous years with the Sangha although with more duties. In spite of them, my contentment grew as my grief for my son, while never leaving me, slowly transformed itself in the way of shadows giving shape and beauty to my life, blended as they were with my gratitude for his time on earth. I may not have been enlightened, but along with the other monastics, I periodically caught sight of a truth that sparkled through the sludge of ignorance, sometimes unexpectedly, in the ordinary course of living. This glimpse of the infinite came from the power of the Dharma, which shattered the cramped prisons of habit and stripped away the self-concepts smothering our hearts and minds.

  My time to meditate was limited, though, what with teaching every sort of student, from fellow monks to kings and courtesans; plus, I was still in charge of the day-to-day sangha business of coordinating Dharma talks and public meals and reporting the likes of privy leaks and rat infestations to the appropriate lay volunteers. I also now had the Tathagata’s personal schedule to manage, along with his health and general well-being. I enjoyed caring for him—simple, loving tasks, such as rubbing his back after he’d spent an entire day and a large part of the night teaching and doling out advice. Was this my femininity expressing itself? It didn’t matter what I called it—by this time I had been posing for over half my life as a man. But perhaps the simple acts of one being caring for another is actually what the deepest joy of a marriage comes down to, whether or not the partners abdicate their sex.

  The conflicts we had were mainly over my tendency to worry and grieve. Those years saw the deaths of many beloved monks and nuns, and most devastating to me, that of Pajapati, who I missed almost as much as my son. I also worried about the Tathagata. His unremitting life of teaching and running the Sangha was wearing out his body, a process that all too many of his monks—who wanted to maintain their illusion of an all-powerful leader—tended to overlook. But his back pained him after years of wandering from town to town, sitting on hard platforms giving lectures, and conducting interviews until he went hoarse and every one of his monks had fallen asleep. I of course was old too, but I seemed to have inherited my mother’s youthful vigor (at almost ninety, she lived on), people continuing to take me for far younger than I was. And even though I worked hard, the Tathagata toiled harder, for he also had to juggle the politics of his supporters, which got messier and more dangerous as the years went by.

  Shortly after his seventieth birthday, when we were once again staying in Jeta’s grove, our clan’s karma bore the first of its poisonous fruit. It began with a panicked visit to the Sangha by King Pasenadi, who had remained a faithful follower even as his kingdom expanded. The king had always counted the Sakyans among his vassals, so for him to visit our private part of Jeta’s grove, instead of having the Tathagata come to his palace, was unusual, especially considering he had brought his queen, none other than my former servant Vasa. That day her round, once-bright face was lusterless and frightened, and as soon as I saw her, the fear I’d lived with for so many years awakened in my heart. It seemed very likely that the king had discovered that my brother had passed her off as a noblewoman for him to marry.

  The Tathagata seated himself on a raised dais on the main pavilion, the royal couple sitting in front of him, with a half-dozen senior monks—including Devadatta, unfortunately—standing at the pavilion’s edge. It was a hot, white-skied day, and the mango leaves stood unmoving, lightly scummed with ocher dust. Beyond them flies buzzed, and the late-season roses were faded and shriveled. Had I not been trying to quell my uneasiness over this visit, the day would have been a good one to spend reflecting on impermanence, all the more so at the sight of the king. I’d always thought of him as the picture of heedless confidence, an amateur Dharma student happy to debate abstract matters over wine and roast peacock, surrounded by bright tapestries, beautiful women, and loyal retainers armed to the teeth. But today he averted his eyes, his thinning black hair pulled back awkwardly on his bare head. He’d left his turban and sword—symbols of his royalty—back at his palace, obeying the protocol for visiting a spiritual teacher.

  Gently, the Tathagata asked Pasenadi the purpose of his visit.

  “Such treachery is not to be borne!” King Pasenadi’s thick, beardless cheeks quivered as if he was about to cry. Then came his story of how my brother, Jagdish, partly out of Sakyan arrogance and partly to spite the Tathagata, had misrepresented Vasa when Pasenadi—who, even though he ruled over the Sakyans, came from a lower varna—had requested a bride. I had always hoped against hope that no one in Pasenadi’s Kosalyan kingdom would ever find out. But now that karma had come round.

  “Far worse than anything that happened to me,” Pasenadi said, “my son was humiliated.” He clutched his wide belly, clothed in crimson silk, and gave his wife a doleful look. Both he and Vasa were on the portly side, their faces soft with benign sensuality. Although the king considered himself a loyal student of the Dharma, he was too much in love with the life of the senses to make much progress on the Path—an example, the Tathagata sometimes pointed out to me, of how “a little bit of Dharma” failed to work.

  The king, periodically swiping his plump face with an embroidered red and yellow handkerchief, explained how his and Vasa’s son, Prince Vidudabbha, had visited the Sakyan home he assumed belonged to his maternal grandparents, only to find that none of the elders would receive him. Even worse, after his departure the servants washed every chair he and his retinue had occupied with a ritual solution of water and milk—something he discovered by accident when an attendant returned to the Sakyan residence to recover a lost sword. In this way, Vidudabbha understood that he had been treated as a member of a despised lower caste. He concluded that his mother had deceived his father’s whole kingdom.

  Pasenadi made his miserable conclusion: “I’ll be forced to cast my beloved wife into prison.”

  Although appalled, I was at least gratified that, in spite of everything, the king had loved Vasa over the years. “None of this is your wife’s fault,” I said, not meeting Vasa’s eyes, although at this stage in our lives I had very little fear she’d recognize me. Both of us had changed so much. Dear, lovely little sparkly-eyed Vasa, who had once reminded me so much of my sister Deepa! Now, no likeness remained at all in this puffy-faced, sad-eyed woman. Yet perhaps my sister would have come to resemble her, had she been the one to share Pasenadi’s gluttonous life.

  “The Sakyan leaders forced the deception on this woman,” I reminded him. “She deserves no punishment.”

  Devadatta intervened, as I should have known he would. “The Blessed One’s attendant is expressing only his views, which unfortunately are suffused with his well-known weakness regarding the inferior sex. One woman seems a small price to pay for your kingdom’s peace.”

  All my years of mindfully managing my distaste for Devadatta evaporated even before he’d finished his reply. “Since when did the Sangha institute a policy of human sacrifice?” I demanded. “Non-harming, if I remember, is Precept Number One.”

  The Tathagata gave me a sharp look the likes of which I hadn’t received from him for over a decade. I had demonstrated the critical difference between the enlightened and the unenlightened: Awakened beings have destroyed every seed of greed, hatred, and delusion inside themselves, whereas the unawakened still carry these seeds in their hearts, ready to sprout as soon as conducive conditions arise. Devadatta provided a rich source of water and fertilizer, at least for the seeds dwelling in me.

  Nonetheless, the Tathagata did not disagree with me. He addressed the king: “You have duties to your wife, no matter what her varna. She’s still your queen. Assert yourself with the authority of the Dharma, which so many of your subjects follow.”

  Pasenadi’s heavy face slackened with a look of shame for his lack of decisiveness—mixed with relief to have his true desires sanctioned by his teac
her. But soon enough his tense grimace returned. “I will gratefully follow the Dharma. But my son is another matter. He wants revenge.”

  “Persuade him otherwise. A father needs to guide his son.” The Tathagata’s habitual equanimous tone edged toward warning. “Revenge can only lead to an endless cycle of death and suffering.”

  As the royal couple descended from their dais, the monks all standing at attention, Vasa turned to me. “I thank you,” she said softly, and I bowed, filled with sadness. I had a premonition I’d never see her again, and a sharp regret cut into my heart at the thought of a friendship that never had the chance to blossom beyond the promising buds of youth. But considering the varna system, with me as a noble woman and Vasa as my servant, any love between us would have always been stunted, and at its center a falsehood far greater than the deceptive roles both of us had played in our lives.

  When the king and queen had gone, Devadatta spoke out. “Master,” he said to the Tathagata, and the condescending way he said “master” stirred the hairs on the back of my neck. “Why do you shirk from using your superhuman powers to counter the threats of the Prince?”

  The Tathagata spoke with the patience he usually reserved for seven-year-old novices. “Liberation takes place in the human realm, where karma must be faced. Not in magic shows that blind the ignorant to the truth of life.”

  Devadatta’s cold gaze followed the path that the royal couple had taken through the trees. “You overestimate the human realm, I fear. People need to awaken to the authority of something larger then their piddling little lives.” He cast me an unenlightened look of sheer hatred and walked off.

  He was right, though. King Pasenadi never succeeded in persuading his son to abandon revenge. Within the year, word came back that Prince Vidudabbha had sworn to wash every chair that the Sakyans had cleaned with milk with the blood of their slit throats, a revenge that would eventually destroy our clan. Although the karma didn’t belong solely to my brother, he had initiated the tragedy. And, sadly, my own karma with my brother was far from over.

  For years I’d heard little about him, other than that after our father’s death he’d left the family farm to my sisters’ husbands and hired himself out as a mercenary soldier, fighting mainly for Sakyans who wanted to uphold their warrior caste against those who would deny its supremacy—people such as the hill tribes. As a monastic living the holy life, I sought to forgive him for what he had done to Bahauk and his people, although I would have been happier to forget my brother had ever lived. Because this was impossible, I refused to arouse my memories of him by ever asking of his whereabouts.

  For years, I knew nothing of his dealings with Devadatta. I never forgot, however, that Jagdish had informed him that I’d visited Pajapati back when I was trying to persuade her to request ordination. And I still suspected that my brother and Devadatta were in collusion to keep the current regime as rigid as possible.

  I also became more and more convinced Devadatta was planning to take over the Sangha. Ever since King Pasenadi’s plea, he had taken every opportunity to complain to any monk who would listen that the Tathagata had done too little to squelch Prince Vidudabbha’s threats. But Devadatta’s dealings with another prince worried me more. This prince was none other than Ajatasattu, the son of the Tathagata’s other main supporter, King Bimbisara, the owner of the bamboo grove where we so often stayed. Devadatta had initiated a friendship with Prince Ajatasattu when the prince was a child, impressing him with his magical powers, turning himself into a boy clad in snakes and sitting on the prince’s lap—or so the story went. This was nonsense, of course; the so-called psychic powers had been a matter of puppets and ventriloquism. I knew this for a fact, because over the years I’d made an effort to learn some of these tricks myself as a way of teaching children and other gullible people not to believe in every demonstration of the supernatural they saw. Nonetheless, back then I’d dismissed Devadatta’s performances as nothing more than his need to show off in front of royalty; in fact, I even saw them as a hopeful sign that Devadatta was easing up on his asceticism. Now, though, with Ajatasattu nineteen years old and often in Devadatta’s company, a foreboding similar to my feelings about Devadatta and Jagdish spread through me.

  My fears proved true. The Sangha was staying in Bimbisara’s kingdom, and the monks, along with King Bimbisara and his court, had gathered in a mango grove for a Dharma talk. Three hundred or so people sat or stood around the main pavilion, the king and queen up front, servants fanning them with glittering palm leaves. Like Pasenadi and his queen, the royal couple provided an opportunity to observe the impermanence of all beings, however privileged. King Bimbisara’s beard, now white, stood forth from his chin stiff as a shovel, vibrating with a slight palsy. His wife’s shoulders, draped with a silvery shawl, were frail and hunched. Prince Ajatasattu stood off to one side, conspicuously resplendent in royal purple, surrounded by warriors from the King’s army.

  Devadatta stood up and said he wanted to make an announcement.

  He nodded to the prince, then looked at the elderly king and queen pointedly, and at the Tathagata as if to include him in an assessment of old age. He took a step forward and spoke, hands together in the formal way. “Venerable One, you have worked so hard these many years. Surely, you deserve to dwell in ease here and hand over the Sangha to me.”

  The crowd shifted and stared in shock. As for myself, I remember that my panic was mixed with a feeling of justification. I’d never trusted the man and said so often enough.

  But the Tathagata—in my opinion—looked mainly amused.

  “I thank you for your concern,” he said. “But I’m not ready to retire, not to mention that you are very close to my own age.”

  “Perhaps I am,” Devadatta said. “And perhaps the Sangha needs new leadership.” He gestured in the direction of the assembled yellow-robes. “A large portion of our monastics have been lolling about in a very unseemly kind of luxury.” At this point, he switched his gaze to the lay audience, many in silk and with fan-waving servants. “Of course, this luxury is perfectly suitable for high-varna worldlings. But ordained monks, besides hastening their own enlightenment, should set an example for how laypeople might spend their future lives.” He started in reciting what he felt the required practices should be for the Sangha, rules he’d been trying to institute since he’d joined and which we’d heard hundreds of times. These rules forbade monastics to live under any sort of roof and to wear anything other than discarded rags; we were also supposed to abstain from all meat or fish and to spend our entire lives in the forest.

  The Tathagata stopped him mid-list. “Enough,” he said. “Our monastics already can choose to live this way if they please. But such asceticism isn’t necessary for awakening and often acts as an impediment, either overwhelming aspirants with unnecessary physical pain or filling them with spiritual pride for so-called accomplishments in self-denial. We’ve discussed this before, Devadatta. The Dharma has always been about teaching a Middle Way.”

  “It is my belief that the Middle Way is the Mistaken Way,” Devadatta said. “As the new leader of our rejuvenated Sangha, I will myself serve as supreme example of what we monks all must aspire to—the life of spiritual warriors.”

  The word “monks” was not lost on me, any more than “warriors.” I dreaded to think that Devadatta’s proposed new sangha would exclude nuns. “I think the Tathagata has made his position clear,” I said. “He is not about to retire.”

  This time the Tathagata didn’t give me any sort of admonishing look. “Indeed I am not,” he said. “And when I do, I trust that the Sangha is perfectly capable of self-government. I’ve never even considered relinquishing the Sangha to Sariputta or Mogallana, my oldest and most venerated disciples.” His voice remained serene. “So how in the world, Devadatta, could you ever think I would hand it over to a lick-spittle such as yourself?”

  The crowd gasped. The Tathagata never s
ullied his speech with direct insults. But when I looked over at his face, it was firm, not angry, as if the insult had been the only way he could get through to Devadatta.

  Devadatta just stood there, his face gone dark as iron. “You yourself have called me one of your most accomplished monks, praising my psychic abilities.”

  The Tathagata’s face was without expression. “Perhaps you’ve changed, Devadatta. In any case, beware above all of falsifying your accomplishments. You of all people should know the consequences of such lies.”

  Everyone, monastics and laity alike, knew the terrible karma of lying about one’s spiritual abilities. For monastics it was nearly on a par with killing, because the delusions it created had the power to do such great harm. Any monastic caught uttering such untruths was immediately expelled from the Sangha, followed, it was said, by many lifetimes in hell.

  In a silence heavier than a thousand elephants, Devadatta marched off.

  With Devadatta gone, the Tathagata began the Dharma talk. He didn’t seem to notice that Prince Ajatasattu left before he started speaking.

  Later, alone with the Tathagata in the damp hush of the empty mango grove, I tried to explain my fear: Devadatta, considering the company he kept, could very well resort to violence, especially after such a humiliation.

  “He’ll do what he’ll do, Ananda,” the Tathagata said. “I spoke to him in the rough way I did solely for his own good, the way you might have to pry open a child’s mouth to remove a pebble that he’s about to swallow. I’ve done all I could. Now it’s up to him to save himself.”

  I took a breath and asked the question that until now I had dreaded even formulating in my mind. “Should you die,” I asked, “who will guide us?”

  “I most certainly will die,” he replied. “And your guide will be the Dharma.”