Bride of the Buddha
Page 30
I nodded.
“Beyond that handful, I know some of the future—not what will come but what may come—knowledge that would not benefit an unawakened being. So you must have faith in the Dharma and ask me no more.” Just then the sun came out, whitening the muslin screens over the windows and suffusing the room with feeble light. Now I could see his eyes, serene and compassionate as ever.
“I’ll need something to write on.”
“Palm leaves last longer than birch bark, I’ve heard.”
It was then, in that sad little black-walled hut, that I first conceived of this confession, which you now have in your hands. But I had no idea that I might have to commit the most difficult crime of all to confess, one I wasn’t sure even the Tathagata could forgive.
We spent the remaining two months of the rains retreat in Beluva, the Tathagata regaining some strength, meditating in the dank little hut or, on sunny days, under the oak trees. Then, on the day we were to rejoin the monks and go back on the road, the Tathagata turned to me, as if to make some pronouncement. We stood outside our hut, carrying our bowls. It was early morning, sun plashing through the greenery and birdsong embroidering the soft summery air. In a sling on my back I had my growing collection of marked-on palm leaves and all of our spare robes, including my white death robe, patched and repaired since I’d used it as a demon’s costume.
“When I was ill,” the Tathagata said, “I spoke with Mara.”
This disturbed me. “You know I don’t think of Mara as a separate person.”
“You know I don’t think of anyone as a separate person.” His gaze focused and for a flicker of an instant I slipped out of time, merging with him into a single flow of purpose. Almost immediately, this experience faded into abstract memory, as it always did.
“What did Mara say to you?” I asked.
“He tried to convince me to die on the spot. Enter my parinirvana there and then. But I refused.”
I knew not to feel relief but rather to feel the opposite. His health hadn’t improved all that much. “And?”
“I told him he didn’t have to wait long. Three months. Now we have two months left.”
Along with the expected shard of dread, I felt a jolt of anger, as if Mara indeed were standing there, dangling the Tathagata’s remaining time in front of me, daring me to look away. But more accurately, Mara was inside me, directing my anger at the Tathagata, who had presented me with this prophecy without my asking. “Why did you even listen to him?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you just send him away?”
“Mara doesn’t upset me,” he said. “But it seems that because you’re resisting him, he is always with you.”
I had to swallow the corrosive mix of my feelings; the monks were arriving, the usual yellow procession flickering through the trees. As they lined up before us and bowed, I noticed that several of the younger ones carried poles and heavy cloth, which could be made into a litter if the Tathagata needed it.
An awful memory overtook me, of the donkey cart transporting my sister’s body to the charnel ground.
In our travels we were accompanied by fewer monks than before (perhaps twenty-five), and most of the time we stayed in villages not much larger than Beluva. Why was the Tathagata taking us into these remote places? He refused to say. At the same time, I was heartened by the villagers’ enthusiasm for the Dharma. “We have waited years for your presence, Blessed One!” The cry went out, a welcome relief from the jaded, quarreling adherents we had left behind in Ajatasattu’s kingdom.
Our group reached the little village of Pava perilously close to the time that the Tathagata had predicted he would die. We settled down in yet another mango grove, belonging to perhaps the most enthusiastic villager of them all, a goldsmith named Cunda, a name that even now many followers of the Tathagata refuse to speak aloud. At the time, Cunda hardly seemed the type whose name was headed for such an unfortunate future. He was a plump man with delicate fingers and secretly pleading eyes. That day he wore a big purple paridhana and couldn’t stop smiling and bowing. “I’m so honored to have you, Blessed One!” he kept repeating as he conducted our saffron-robed procession through the fruitless trees to our lodging, individual kutis of bricks painted red and yellow in the Vajjin-Mallan fashion. Cunda gave us one last bow and invited us all to dinner the next day. At the time, I thought nothing of it. I was just grateful to be settled and, for the Tathagata’s sake, hopeful that we wouldn’t have to move soon.
The next morning Cunda led us to an open pavilion in the grove where a long table awaited us, ablaze with scarlet hibiscus arrangements and Cunda’s handcrafted gold plates and goblets. The air smelled of frying yams and cumin, and peacocks strolled about, only occasionally disconcerting me with their ragged cries. Servants in red and green striped turbans were setting out breads, yogurt, and lentil dishes, but the main course, Cunda told us, was yet to come.
Once we were seated on the pavilion’s many silk cushions, he disappeared into the nearby brick kitchen and reappeared carrying a huge covered bowl, all gold. “Allow me to present to you our supreme dish—pigs’ delight, made with mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and soft truffles. It’s a speciality of the region.”
I ordered myself not to jump to silly conclusions at the mere mention of mushrooms. Surely Jagdish could be nowhere near here—if he still even lived, considering he was almost the age of the Tathagata. Still, I couldn’t help myself. I was seated next to the Tathagata. “You shouldn’t be eating such rich food,” I said.
“Nonsense,” the Tathagata said, as Cunda spooned out the ocher-colored mush on his golden plate. When our host garnished the dish with chopped brown mushrooms, terror ripped through me.
“No!” I whispered, leaning toward the Tathagata, preparing to push his plate away.
“Stop that.” His voice froze me. He had never given me so direct an order.
I stared down at my hands, my heart and gut churning with confusion and shame. The Tathagata tasted the dish, and pronounced it delicious. “But this is food that only a Tathagata can digest,” he said. “Serve the rest of the monks more of your excellent dahl.” He ate six or seven more bites, then pushed his plate away. “Bury the remainder of this dish,” he said. “And I thank you very much for it.”
I sat there stunned, thinking that Cunda must have believed that the Tathagata was carrying out some unknown ritual. In any case, he obeyed, his worried eyes only a little more dubious than usual, and then sat down to hear the Tathagata’s Dharma talk, tailored especially for him, comparing the training of the mind to the refining of gold. “One practices with the goal of making the mind malleable by removing all impurities,” he said. “Then, as with gold, it will have many excellent uses. Eventually, it will lead you to liberation.”
I just stared at my golden plate, barely able to listen, unable to eat.
Two hours later, the Tathagata and I were meditating not far from our kutis when he fell over. He lay on his back, agony having its way with his face, while his voice remained serene. “I need you to do a few things,” he whispered.
The dread and despair of the past year crashed over me. “They poisoned you!”
He actually smiled. “No, I skipped the mushrooms.”
I had no time to think of the implications of this now. It was all I had to do to ignore my fear and desperation, as I turned him over in the grass and looked down at the back of his robe, which looked like he’d sat in a black swamp, spreading foulness through the yellow cloth. “As soon as this bleeding lets up,” he said, panting a little, “we need to go to Kusinara.”
“Why?” My voice buckled in my throat. Only if he were planning his funeral would it make sense to go to Kusinara, the largest town in the area and a place where he had many followers. Was this his destination all along? “You’re too sick to move.”
“Don’t worry. I’m mindful of what I’m doing.” With that he crawled to his
feet and staggered to the river to bathe, waving away my help. As he emerged, I covered the wreckage of his body with a soft sheet, determined to concentrate only on caring for him. He smiled his thanks and sat down, his back against a tree. “Before we go, we need to make sure that Cunda hasn’t blamed himself for my death. He had no idea about the poison, and he needs to be reassured that to serve a Buddha his last meal is a great honor.”
Now outrage joined all my other emotions. “If he didn’t poison you, who did?”
“No one poisoned me. As you well know, this blood is a recurrence of my earlier illness.”
He was right, of course. I knew the symptoms of food poisoning, and they didn’t include bloody diarrhea, especially so soon after the poison was consumed. “Then why did you skip the mushrooms? And why did you have the food buried?”
“Ananda,” he said softly, “they were trying to poison you.”
It was as if a warhorse had kicked me in the chest. “Why?” I managed to ask. I was too shocked at first to be frightened.
“You alone have memorized my teachings. It seems there are persons who don’t want your version passed along.”
“Who?” Now I was frightened, but also angry. “Could my brother somehow have done this?” I shook my head, trying to order my thoughts. “I thought I’d scared him away.”
“You stopped him from assassinating me. But perhaps not from targeting the monk who’s been praised for saving my life and perhaps conjuring up a demon to humiliate him.”
I clutched my elbows, thinning skin sliding over aging joints and tendons. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Forgive your brother, if indeed he advised the poisoners.” He looked beyond me, in the direction of Cunda’s stately brick house. “Our host will make sure that those responsible will be brought to justice. This I know with the Dharma’s eye. They will not live past tomorrow, but this karma does not belong to you.” He turned his face to me, and it seemed cleared of all pain and illness. “My dear Ananda, it’s time for me to die.”
I had no time to forgive Jagdish, not then. I had to enter the same mentality that had got me through the death of my son, a state of complete concentration on my duties. The next day, I and the twenty-five other monks accompanied the Tathagata to the outskirts of Kusinara, carrying him on the litter, although he insisted on walking part of the way. At this point my focus was so intense I almost believed the miracles some of the monks were exclaiming about: that the clouded river water had cleared so the Tathagata could drink it, that his skin had turned to the gold of the heavenly realms, that swarms of deities packed every point in the surrounding atmosphere. (The less enlightened devas supposedly protested his death, the more aware ones celebrated his parinirvana.) I do remember a golden clarity in the atmosphere as the monks wept and chanted, but perhaps this was the result of my concentration. The real miracle was how calm and mindful the Tathagata remained. Even his body had abandoned overt symptoms of illness; it didn’t appear to be suffering in the way it had in the village of Beluva. Finally, in the late afternoon we reached our destination, the monks climbing the low hill to the sal grove where he ordered a bed made up for him between twin sal trees. Sal trees, considered sacred by so many peoples, were a logical choice, but I couldn’t help remembering their role in the massacre of Bahauk’s tribe. From now on, I would always associate these trees with death.
The thatched and wattled roofs of Kusinara lay below us already in shadow when the Tathagata motioned me to his side. It was then he told me that I shouldn’t preoccupy myself with venerating his remains, and that after his death the Sangha should abolish those of its rules that were trivial or irrelevant, most of which had arisen on a case-by-case basis.
I glanced up at the swallows ducking through the deepening sky. I had a premonition that these directives would never be carried out.
My discipline gave way. I covered my face with my hands. “I’ve failed you. I’ve not awakened.”
“You will,” he said. He called the monks to gather around him as the sun buried itself in the forest beyond the city. “All past Buddhas have had an attendant like Ananda. These attendants embody kindness. They are also wise. Ananda will direct my funeral proceedings, which will be held in the way of the clan-republics, with celebrating and singing. Ananda will now go into the city and instruct the people how they may view my body. I will reach parinirvana on the final watch of the night.”
My concentration returned, fortified by a sense of enormous responsibility and the power of his will, which seemed to have fused with my own. For now, I had gone beyond personal emotions and did as he asked.
By midnight, hundreds of white-clad mourners were milling around the hillside, their skin the silver of fish scales in the moonlight, their oil lamps bobbing in a stream that led from the town. They kept on arriving, in a din of chanting and weeping that—if one believed in that sort of thing—must have reached up to the realms of the gods. A smell of lamp oil, marigolds, and distressed humanity vied with the damp night air, all overlaid with drifts of frankincense. Still, the Tathagata lived on, answering questions from the monks while I tried to organize the mourners by household, so everyone could pay their respects, especially the women, some of whom were offering their jewels to be burned up along with their teacher. I longed to be at his side, but my duties kept me apart until the monks waved me over. He lay on his side in the lion’s pose, and I would have knelt beside him, but I didn’t want to block anyone’s access to his presence. His voice came out, ageless and pure—or so it sounded to me. “Everyone, I say this to you. It’s the nature of all formations to dissolve. Work for your freedom with diligence. Tread the path with care.”
He entered absorption, then died.
As his final breath left his body, I remembered two other pre-dawns in my life, that of Siddhartha’s desertion and that of Bahauk’s death, where both times I thought I’d never felt so completely alone. Oh, but nothing like this. Then, as I knelt between the sal trees, the crowd all around me, the moon about to set, I thought I heard a sound discernible through all the prayers and weeping. Far off, it seemed, I heard the howling of a wolf.
16
In the days that followed, I submerged my despair in action. Above all, there was the body to prepare—that inert object that had once contained my husband, my teacher, my dearest friend, and what I mistakenly—or not mistakenly—called my soul and the spirit of everyone I had ever loved. I had no inner visions to gild or animate this corpse; to me it looked as dead as any cadaver dumped into a charnel ground. The sight of that gray husk, now lying on its back, eyes already dull as dried bone, transformed my grief into a paralyzing fear. What would our Sangha do now that our leader and teacher was so completely gone? What would I do?
I couldn’t give in to that fear; I could tell by the shrieks and sobbing that too many others, especially those far from awakening, were on the point of doing just that. I pushed through my emotions, turned the body over, closed its eyes and mouth, and addressed the crowd of a thousand, now restrained by a half-dozen monks. “We will prepare the Blessed One’s remains as those of a Universal Monarch who turns the wheel of righteousness,” I said, because I knew this is what the senior monks of the Sangha—and almost everyone else, for that matter—expected, even though the Tathagata had not seemed all that concerned. I then informed the people of the city that the Tathagata had requested to be cremated according to their funeral practices, with flowers and song.
I realized I wanted the ceremony too. I needed some great observance with bells, drums, clouds of incense, and—most of all—towering golden flames that illuminated as well as consumed, transforming the deflated corpse from a thing into an event—a cosmic display inspiring awe even in those who’d never heard of the Tathagata’s teachings. In no way did I see this fire as feeding a corpse to some deity, as Bahauk’s tribe had done with my dead lover, leaving me with a handful of ashes to bury in secret. Th
e flames that incinerated the Buddha had to live in the memory of the world, give form to countless human lives, and reach to heaven, whether gods lived there or not.
I ordered an iron vessel filled with oil and aromatic herbs to contain and preserve the wrapped body, and I arranged for the construction of a pyre. Meanwhile, monks from nearby kingdoms and republics staked out sleeping patches among the tall brown columns of the tree trunks, and whole families of laypeople wandered through the woods on their way to the city, hoping for lodgings with relatives, however distant. The crowds needed direction, and someone (me) to assign the monks who’d been traveling with the Tathagata to help organize the newcomers. And so I did, filled with an ever-increasing unease. Now was the perfect time for some ambitious monk to take over the Sangha. At least Kassapa was far away—too far, I hoped, to show up here and take advantage of everyone’s confusion and grief.
The formal ceremonies began as soon as the body was moved to the city’s center. With the bells and drums came harps, flutes, and conch trumpets, their cacophony somersaulting through the scented air. Laypersons of both sexes adorned the pyre as well as themselves with garlands of all colors, and in a matter of hours the whole city—roads, paths, parks, and even the trash heaps—was strewn with fist-sized mandarava flowers. Their color was the vermillion of blood and sunsets, and they had delicate curving stamens, each blossom like some strange creature with multiple antennae clawing the air.
The precremation ceremonies lasted seven days, after which we monks and the city elders agreed, to my relief, we could wait no longer for monastics and other devotees traveling from distant places. It was time to light the pyre, especially in view of the layered wall of gray clouds in the far west forecasting rain soon if not today. For now, the cool morning air was thick with incense and the sounds of drumming, which, as word spread that the burning was about to begin, were almost drowned out by the crowd’s collective wail. The head of the town council, a gentle-appearing gray-haired man with rounded shoulders, picked up the unlit flare. I was about to nod to him to light the fire when a loud clang shattered the atmosphere and every sound in it, leaving the crowd in stunned silence, our bodies quaking with the bell’s vibration.