Unseen in the incense smoke and masses of people, a hundred new monks had arrived, led by Kassapa. Here was the monk I’d feared above all, the one who could very well replace Devadatta, striding in my direction. He had a vast blade of a nose and eyes like polished zinc, his steps twice the length of an average man’s—despite his age, which had to be at least seventy, the same as mine. He extended a long arm out over the crowd. “What is this outrage!” he demanded.
Mutely, the council headman handed him the flare, yet to be ignited.
I struggled to resume breathing, at this point not so much terrified as horrified that Kassapa had interrupted the Tathagata’s funeral in such a way. “The Blessed One ordered that the ceremony be conducted according to the customs of this town,” I said as calmly as possible.
“With all these women? They have defiled the Tathagata’s body with their tears.”
My horror sharpened into anger. At that point I was convinced he was no better than Devadatta. But I knew enough not to indulge my unenlightened emotions at this sacred moment.
By now the crowd, men and women, had backed away from him, leaving plenty of room for Kassapa and his monks—all in patched and shabby yellow robes, their eyes scummed with disapproval of the people’s flower-wreathed garments—to surround the pyre. Kassapa arranged his robe over his shoulder in the formal way, and the monks followed suit. Then he put his hands together, raised them and circumambulated the body three times, touching his head to the corpse’s feet, his monks all doing the same, walking so close together that none of the crowd, including me, could see who lit the flare.
An enormous orange flame sprang up and spread out into space, as if to tear down the top of the sky. The crowd gasped and fell to its knees. Most of them believed that Kassapa’s mere presence had brought the fire to life.
The Buddha’s body burned until only the bones remained. I could do nothing but watch, hoping that somehow this great flame would burn away my own ignorance and delusion, so I would know what to do next.
Not long after the fire started, Kassapa approached me. “I hold you primarily responsible for the desecrations that I’ve witnessed,” he said. His black eyebrows were sharply peaked as if in permanent outrage, although his voice was calm as stone. “As the Tathagata’s chosen successor, I will now take over.”
“The Tathagata never mentioned that you were to succeed him,” I said, my chest tightening as if to contain a wrathful Mara baring his fangs in my heart.
“The Buddha and I exchanged robes shortly after we met,” he said. “And I attained enlightenment in one week’s time. If one could say that any man was his true son, he would say it of me.”
I found myself wanting to tear down his presumption and remind him that the Tathagata’s true son was Rahula, who had awakened long before Kassapa and at a far younger age. But such a remark would only feed Mara. “The Tathagata has spoken little of you to me,” I said.
Kassapa raised his eyebrows. “Why would the Perfect One speak to you of me? You’re not even enlightened.”
“And you claim to be?” Alas, my personal anger at this man who had so insulted women proved my lack of enlightenment yet again. But I couldn’t believe his assertions—had he really let go of his attachment to his sense of a separate self?
Kassapa turned toward the crowd and addressed them in his bass voice. “I have attained the direct knowledge of things as they really are. Anyone not completely mired in delusion can see this in me. One might just as well think that a bull elephant seven cubits high could be concealed by a palm leaf as think that my direct knowledge could be hidden.”
I was about to demand some kind of proof for this assertion when the crowd’s murmurs changed into shouts of amazement. “Look!” a man cried out. “The Devas are coming to earth! They’re surrounding Kassapa the Great!” “They’re blessing him!” came another voice. And another: “Rainbows pouring out of heaven!”
I saw none of this. Although I may not have been alone in my blindness, it seemed as though more and more people were peering upward and agreeing that Kassapa’s power had spangled the air with divine beings. Then almost simultaneously, as if under a spell, they all knelt, pressing their foreheads into the earth. “You may lead us,” came the shouts and murmurs. “Kassapa the Great!”
Were these people’s visions a sign of his enlightenment? The crowd obviously believed it, but I wondered: The Tathagata’s followers had been cast into the same darkness that I occupied, and here came some powerful monk vesting great authority in himself to offer them a way forward on their path. Could their longing for miracles actually produce them? I didn’t know.
Kassapa continued. “In Rajagaha in two month’s time, I will hold a council to decide on who will transmit the Blessed One’s teachings from now on and what exactly will be taught.” And now he directed his zinc gaze back on me. “Only monks who have attained full enlightenment will be allowed to attend.”
My despair returned, leaping up like a panther and closing its jaws around my throat.
Over those next weeks I redoubled my efforts to awaken, using my grief as the object of my meditation. This feeling of utter loss remained with me, as if a scimitar had swooped through my chest, cutting out my heart and then continuing on to sever the ground from under my feet. I tried to open myself to this state and perceive its deeper reality, investigating its movements, patterns, and qualities within my body and mind, knowing that if I could observe it from outside itself, it would pass in the way of all mind states, once I detached from them. The feeling did disperse at times, until I remembered my last look at the Tathagata’s dead face. Then it seemed I’d made no progress at all.
Yet I persisted. For if I was unable to attend the Council, Kassapa’s version of the Dharma would prevail—with its emphasis on severe asceticism and supernatural feats, along with its view of women as little more than an impediment on the path. Not that I had any hope of obliterating his influence, but at least I could state the Dharma as I knew it and perhaps even slip in alternatives to his one-sided stories. Most importantly, I could make sure that the nuns’ discourses were preserved. Although at least Kassapa never suggested abolishing the nuns’ order, there were far too many monks who felt that the first duty of all women was silence and who would conveniently “forget” the nuns’ wisdom unless someone explicitly included it for memorization. If I couldn’t get into the Council, my only hope—a very slim one—was that the Sangha itself, especially the nuns and younger monks, could resist caving in to Kassapa’s authoritarianism and preserve the Dharma as they remembered it originally spoken.
Then one day this hope all but died. By now I was back in Rajagaha, site of the Great Council and realm of the treacherous King Ajatasattu who’d imprisoned and starved his father, our old friend Bimbisara, to death and who Kassapa now praised as a true follower of the Dharma. As a result, I was no longer comfortable staying in the Bamboo Grove. I’d made myself a little sleeping shelter under a rock outcropping in one of the surrounding hills, which reminded me of where I’d once stayed with Stick Woman, sleeping on straw among bats and eagles—at least Kassapa couldn’t fault me for my bedding.
The dry season was underway, though not yet oppressive. I was doing my early morning walking meditation on a barren hillside with a path winding through wispy bleached grass and slanting gray boulders as big as a procession of elephants when I spotted a yellow-robed flock of mostly younger Sangha members climbing a gravel slope and calling out to me. My old and beloved friend Kavi, the former boy monk, still round-eyed and stubby-chinned at fifty, headed up the group, followed by Naveen, my other boy-monk friend, who had taught me to write so many decades ago. From the pinched-face urchin I’d persuaded the Tathagata to ordain, Naveen had become quite the handsome monk, with long dimples under his cheeks giving a dramatic shape to his face.
“May we walk with you?” Kavi asked.
“Of course,” I sa
id, warmed by the presence of so many monastics who were dear to me. Included in the group were four nuns, careful to obey the precept of remaining at the end of the line as it took form on the path—a sight that always produced a little twist inside me along with a hope that someday this rule would change.
The group walked awhile in silence but for the wind thrumming in my ears and the calls of raptors bouncing off the boulders. Below us stretched the flat valley, checkered yellow and green, the silver strand of its river glittering with morning sun. From this distance everything seemed so small, the trees like humps of moss encroaching on the miniature city and the tiny pink confection of King Ajatasattu’s palace, which had once so overwhelmed me with its size.
As the path dipped down into the oak forest, Kavi cleared his throat. “Ananda?” he said, “we wish to request something of you.” As he spoke, the line of monastics disintegrated and the group reformed around me.
A nun called Thullananda spoke out. “It’s more than a wish. It’s an absolute necessity.” She was about forty, of average height but with a wide stance and fierce brown eyes.
I nodded in a neutral reply. Thullananda was known as a brilliant and powerful teacher who had taught the Dharma to King Pasenadi, among others. However, as a woman of strong opinions she had made enemies in the Sangha, not the least of whom was Kassapa.
Kavi cleared his throat again. “Many of us think you need to press your case for being on the Council. After all, you alone have memorized all of the Tathagata’s discourses.”
“Kassapa knows this,” I said, “but he’s afraid that if he invites one unawakened monk, all the other unrealized ones will complain of injustice.” Which was true, but what Kavi didn’t understand was that for me to go up against Kassapa and his fellow Council members would put me under the scrutiny of over a hundred presumably enlightened masters, directing their attention to my mental and physical being, in all likelihood resulting in my exposure. Although I had assumed over the years that the truly awakened would accept me for who I am, as had the Tathagata, how could I know what awakened people would do until I achieved enlightenment myself? Also, the Sangha contained highly aware individuals who had not necessarily taken the final step of wiping out their personal desires completely. And these desires could well take the form of condemning the Sangha and even the Tathagata for allowing a woman to do what I had done. At the very least, I would be expelled from the Sangha for all time.
Thullananda threw her robe over her shoulder. “I can’t believe Kassapa is worried about injustice. That grandiose hypocrite! There are plenty of enlightened nuns—but do you see any invited to the council? I think not.”
“He’s worried about the Sangha’s unity,” I said, cringing at my memory of when I excoriated the Tathagata for using the same argument to exclude women. “A majority of monks would still be unable to accept the idea of women in the Council.”
“None of us here feel that way,” Kavi said, the others murmuring their agreement.
“On the contrary,” Naveen said, “everyone here would vote to include nuns in the Council in at least the same proportion as they are in the Sangha. But not getting that, we need you in the Council—you, who have been such a great support for women over the years.”
In other circumstances, I might have been able to appreciate the irony here, but now I felt only dismay. “There’s nothing I can say to Kassapa to influence him, I’m afraid. He’s never liked me—and even less after I allowed women to play such a major part in the funeral.” I attempted a smile. “But I still have ten days left, and I mean to go into absolute seclusion in hopes of liberating myself at last. The Tathagata assured me that this would happen.”
“Not enough,” Thullananda said. “We need you to talk to Kassapa now. Some of us will go with you.”
“I fear we’ll only confirm his doubts about me,” I said.
“Ananda,” Kavi said in his soft voice, making me remember him once again as a little boy. “It’s like this. If you don’t attend the Council, hundreds of monks and nuns are planning to disrobe. Some have already done so, and only an assurance that you have a real chance to be accepted will stop the others.”
I stumbled on the dirt path, almost falling into the underbrush. I had not expected this. The Tathagata—and I, too, for that matter—had always worried that the Sangha would fall apart because the ascetics and authoritarians would leave, disapproving of his supposedly lax rules and ways of living. But now, much to my dismay, it was the spectrum’s other side who threatened to depart—the very supporters I depended on to preserve the Dharma and balance out Kassapa’s extreme views.
I addressed the group: “You would abandon your chances for liberation—not to mention the opportunity to teach the Dharma—just because a single monk has been excluded from this Council? You would destroy the Sangha for this?”
“What Sangha? What Dharma?” Thullananda shook her head, as if some insect had invaded her ear. “Groveling to some pompous monk just because he claims he’s enlightened? If I remember, the Tathagata told us, ‘Be a lamp unto yourselves.’”
“He also spoke of respect for authority,” I said.
“Fine,” Thullananda said. “If your great respect for this despot prevents you from speaking with him, we’ll all go and speak on your behalf.”
I expected the others to protest this, but instead they all murmured in what sounded like agreement.
“Good idea!” Naveen said. “We shouldn’t expect Ananda to risk his position, much less interrupt his meditation, but the rest of us have nothing to lose.”
I was surrounded by cries of “Correct!” “Let’s tell him what we think!” “We’ll disrobe right in front of him!”
That truly frightened me: disrobing in such a way was tantamount to stripping naked in public, resulting in extremely bad karma, at least according to the Sangha. “Wait,” I said. “I don’t want you doing what you can’t undo. You in fact have much to lose, even if you don’t see it.”
“That’s your view, Ananda,” Thullananda said. “But it’s no longer ours.”
I met her eyes, wedge-shaped and narrowed at the corners with her habitual determination. “If you insist on this protest,” I said, “I’ll speak with him myself. I’ll take some of you with me.”
“The nuns need to be represented,” Thullananda said.
“Well, choose someone from among you,” I said, hoping against hope they wouldn’t decide on Thullananda, whose defiant attitude embodied all too many monks’ fears of women’s power.
The other nuns were younger, smooth-skinned girls of various shades of delicate brown, uniformly gentle in their manner. “We choose Thullananda,” they said almost in unison.
Our group—which included Kavi, Naveen, Thullananda, and five other monks—visited the bamboo grove late that afternoon. In spite of the clangs and whoops of Ajatasattu’s soldiers just beyond the trees, the grove was as beautiful as ever, each bamboo clump a fountain of long green curving trunks culminating in an ocean of lime-green leaves overhead. Kassapa, in a robe so faded it had almost lost its yellow color, sat in meditation on the grass, flanked by two other older monks in equally faded robes. As we approached, Kassapa’s black eyes snapped open.
I barely had time to bow to him before he spoke. “Ananda, why did the Blessed One forbid more than three monks from traveling together?”
“To avoid trampling young plants, to prevent factions from forming, and to spare families from having to feed large numbers of people,” I said, having no idea what he was getting at. I glanced over at my group, who stood at a respectful distance, hands together in formal obeisance.
“You and at least thirty of your followers were seen wandering the hills,” Kassapa said, eyeing my group. “You could very well have been destroying crops and ruining families.”
“We weren’t ‘traveling together,’ Venerable One,” I said. A Mara voice spoke
inside me: The old coot has spies, that’s for certain. “Nor were we wandering. We were performing walking meditation on a barren hill.”
Kassapa flared his long nostrils. “The point is, you broke a rule, and you did it with untrained monks over whom you have little or no control.” He glanced at his two companions, then poked his chin in my direction. “This boy has no idea of his limitations.”
There was a whisper of fabric as my group of younger monastics shifted and stirred, apparently outraged at this insult to me.
I gave my friends a warning glance and addressed Kassapa politely. “I wonder what these gray hairs are doing on my head. Perhaps the Venerable One in his mindfulness of underlying reality has not noticed my age?”
Thullananda stepped forward, eyes blazing. Oh, no, I thought. “How dare you call the Lord Ananda a boy?” she demanded. “He’s kept the Sangha and the Tathagata going for all these years. And he’s taught us not only the formal Dharma, which he knows better than anyone in the Sangha, but also how to love and care for each other.”
Kassapa replied to her with the emotion of a chunk of granite. “Your rudeness proves my point.” He looked away from Thullananda and over at me, his gaze steady under the black tents of his eyebrows. “You’ve lost all control over your followers.”
Naveen, the dimples in his cheeks hardening into deep creases, spoke up. “We’re not the Venerable Ananda’s followers. We’re members of this Sangha. But if you don’t let the Buddha’s most loyal attendant—and the only person with complete knowledge of his talks—be a member of your Council, we and many others are prepared to disrobe.”
Bride of the Buddha Page 31