Bride of the Buddha

by Barbara McHugh, PhD

  I fully expected Kassapa to tell them to go off and do so. Instead his dry lips tightened almost imperceptively. “You need to have more concern for your karma,” he said. “Abandoning the Blessed One’s teachings, especially in these precarious times, would bring great harm to many beings, including yourselves.”

  I actually felt some relief at this point. Considering that the martial noises nearby were symptoms of these unfortunate times, I allowed myself to entertain a perhaps foolish hope that Kassapa cared for these monks and his autocratic manner came out of his sincere belief in the need for a strong leader to protect the Sangha from increasingly tyrannical kings. “Please listen to me, Venerable One,” I said. “I speak the Blessed One’s words strictly out of memory, unchanged by my views. For the sake of Sangha unity, I humbly request that you invite me.”

  Kassapa kept his eyes forward. “Very well,” he said. “But in this Council, the Blessed One’s words will pass only through lips that have been fully awakened. Since yours fail to qualify, you’ll have to attend as a water carrier. I hear you’ve had much practice at this task.”

  My friends’ outrage came forth in an audible gasp. I took the insult less personally—at least all my years of meditation had some effect—but I feared that Mara was on the point of taking over this group. “I’ve never found supplying people with water a degrading task,” I said. “But I still have ten days to achieve liberation. The Tathagata expressed confidence that this will happen.”

  “I sincerely hope your practice goes well,” Kassapa said. “But you have one more requirement, if you are to attend the Council in any capacity at all. You will have to answer certain charges against you. On the day before the Council, you will come into the Hall and meet with a committee of monks whom I will select.”

  I felt a plummeting in my chest.

  Tullananda was glaring at Kassapa. “Who are you to order such a thing!”

  Did I see a flash of anger in Kassapa’s eyes? But this was impossible for an awakened Master. “You seem to have forgotten that the Blessed One and I exchanged robes shortly after we met,” he said. He went on to repeat other details of their meeting, ending with him once again comparing his direct knowledge to a bull elephant seven cubits high.

  “That’s enough, Kassapa,” Thullananda said, her failure to use his formal titles making his two subordinate monks gape. Thullananda ignored them, keeping her hard glare on their leader. “You’ve failed to convince me of anything,” she said. “Out of respect for the Venerable Ananda and my fellow monastics, I won’t disrobe on the spot. But I’m leaving this Sangha. I no longer can conceive of it as conducive to the holy life.” She threw her robe over her shoulder and prepared to head off through the trees. She gave me one last glance, her eyes shining with tears.

  Her sadness reverberated through me long after she’d disappeared into the trees. I knew then, whether or not I ended up accepted into the Council, I would never be able to salvage her reputation.

  That evening I returned to the hills for my planned seclusion. Near my sleeping place under the rocky overhang was a granite cave the brownish maroon of raw meat, its walls polished and hewn to a size just large enough to stand up in, with a window-opening to let in light. I planned to spend the next ten days here, meditating with an emphasis on mindfulness of the body, as the Tathagata had advised me to do. The body, which never wanders into past or future the way the mind does, would tell me the truth of what was really happening—and hopefully, finally, I would awaken to things as they really were. If only the mind wouldn’t interfere.

  Sadly, it did. In the midst of the deepest bodily contemplations, where sensations of skin, muscles, and viscera sparkled and fizzed in and out of existence, revealing the body’s composite and temporary nature, the thought would intrude: What if I fail? If I failed to achieve liberation, what would happen to the monastics I loved? Would they all disrobe? Would the Dharma be lost to everyone—or at least to women? When thoughts like this arose, I would switch my awareness to the clenched fist of fear behind my solar plexis. If I could keep my attention on it, the fist would loosen, for nothing stays the same, but all too often the embodied fear maintained its hold, recruiting emotions and other thoughts to kidnap my awareness—until another question took over my entire being: What if the Council’s examination revealed my gender?

  If I were to reach enlightenment, at least I’d know what to do about the problem of my sex. But if I didn’t awaken in time, I couldn’t bear to think of what might happen.

  The more I struggled with these thoughts, the more my meditation stumbled.

  The days hurled themselves past me, each night a reminder that the Council was to take place on the morning of the full moon. The moon was fattening all too rapidly, its growing light shrinking the stars and turning the rocks to chalk as I did my walking meditation on the high ledge. Day and night the winds shifted and moaned like the underlying restlessness that was one of the last fetters of the human mind to dissolve before awakening. Or so I’d been taught.

  The day of my interrogation arrived. I would have to undergo it as an unenlightened monk.

  The Council was to take place in the vast Sattapani cave on the north side of the Webhara Mountain, one of the biggest hills in the area. After an hour’s sleep, I got up in darkness and reached my destination shortly after dawn, in time to get my bearings before the other monks arrived. Even though the hillside was still in shadow, I could make out the opulence inside—soon the cave’s floor would be glowing with its patterned carpets of all colors, and the sun through the cave’s overhead apertures would reveal polished stone walls bright with red and yellow banners. The cave had seven compartments and a wide outside ledge that extended far enough in front of it to fit the entire Council. At the center of the inside meeting hall gleamed a gilded throne, backed by a wheel of Dharma that looked to be solid gold. Kassapa might have espoused the most severe asceticism, but apparently his patron Ajatasattu had other ideas. Or perhaps Kassapa had approved of all of this in the same way I’d approved of the cremation, out of a need to add as much significance as possible to the Buddha’s life and death. On the other hand, he may have set this all up to intimidate the ignorant and confirm his power.

  I sat cross-legged at the mouth of the cave, waiting, as the rocks and scrub on the opposite hill warmed with the colors of the day. The winds had stilled completely, and the smell of rock dust and stale incense enveloped me along with a hush so profound that the bird notes inside it seemed like silver droplets reflecting the stillness rather than interrupting it. In this silence I heard the whispering slaps of multiple sandaled footsteps several moments before I spotted the line of monks, at least fifty of them, making its way up the hill. I felt a wave of dread as I imagined them focusing the precise attention of fully awakened beings on my minute facial expressions, the subtle textures of my voice, and the complete lack of beard on my unshaven jaw.

  It didn’t take long for them to settle in the cave, sitting cross-legged in their yellow robes, their shaven heads gleaming faintly in hues from pale mushroom to darkest teak, with Kassapa on the main throne and a pair of elders on lesser thrones on the opposite walls. I faced the assembly, sitting cross-legged in front of Kassapa’s raised dais.

  Kassapa’s voice boomed forth. “I will now interrogate this monk before me on his infractions of rules.” He turned to me, raising one black-peaked eyebrow and lowering the other. “You stepped on the Blessed One’s rain-robe when you were sewing it.”

  What? I couldn’t believe the pettiness of this accusation. Shocked out of my fear of exposure, I said, “Venerable Ones, not long before the Blessed One passed into his final nirvana, he told me that the Sangha, once he was gone, was free to abolish its minor and circumstantially based rules.”

  “And did you inquire which rules they were?” Kassapa’s voice echoed through the chambers.

  Again, I was shocked. “No, Lord Kassapa. The B
lessed One was extremely ill at the time. It would have been a terrible strain on him, and besides, he said the Sangha could decide.”

  Kassapa shook his head. “Obviously, it was through a lack of mindfulness on your part that you failed to ask him. For he wouldn’t have told you this unless he meant to enumerate the rules in question. What would people think of us—or of the Blessed One—if we abolished whatever rules we pleased as soon as his ashes were cold? As a result of your wrongdoing, I now decree that every rule will remain in place for as long as the Sangha persists.”

  The elders murmured their assent. I was too dumbfounded to feel outrage. Since when were we supposed to base our conduct on what people thought of us?

  “Furthermore,” Kassapa said, “for this interrogation to proceed, you must admit that treading on the Blessed One’s robe and failing to ask him further about the abolishment of rules are both wrongdoings on your part.”

  Now I had to choose. For me to attempt further to defend myself could well stimulate the kind of scrutiny I needed to avoid. Even worse, Kassapa was now saying that if I didn’t admit to his charges, he would expel me from the Council immediately and I’d lose all chance of saving what I believed was the true Dharma. I took a breath.

  “I don’t see my actions as wrongdoings,” I said. “However, out of faith that my future enlightenment will reveal to me the truth, I will acknowledge them as such.”

  Kassapa nodded curtly, affording me some relief that he, too, had faith in my enlightenment. Of course, at this point our views of my future enlightenment differed greatly.

  Kassapa cleared his throat. “Now we come to the question of women.”

  My insides went cold.

  “You and I have already spoken about the funeral,” Kassapa said. “Women, weeping over and fouling the Blessed One’s sacred remains—you allowed this. Acknowledge that as a wrongdoing.”

  I allowed myself one breath of relief in spite of my extreme repugnance for what I now had to say. “I do not see my behavior as wrongdoing, but out of faith in my future enlightenment I will acknowledge it as such.” At least, I reminded myself, I was able to maintain my integrity by registering my disagreement, although this was cold comfort indeed.

  Kassapa wasn’t finished. “Then there is the matter of women’s ordination. You involved yourself in this matter.”

  Was he implying more than he said? Did he know how I had resorted to something close to blackmail?

  His eyebrows revealed their usual amount of moral outrage, nothing more.

  “I do not see what I did as wrongdoing,” I repeated. “I was thinking particularly of Pajapati, who had cared for the Blessed One when his own mother died. She deserved ordination, and indeed, she has become liberated. As have many other nuns since then.”

  “Still, you must acknowledge your actions as wrongdoing.”

  “I cannot see them that way. But if this is what is required of me to join the Council, I will formally acknowledge them as such.” I put my hands together and inclined my head.

  By now my fear was passing into bewilderment. Nuns, including Kassapa’s former wife, had been part of the Sangha for years. Were these men truly enlightened?

  Kassapa cleared his throat. “Now we come to quite a serious offense, one that has repercussions on the entire age.”

  My heart lurched. All I could think was that the previous accusations had simply been a prelude to my exposure. Surely, there were no serious formal rules I’d broken other than my disguise.

  “If not for you,” Kassapa said, “the Blessed One would be alive today.”

  I was beyond bewilderment, black flecks swirled before my eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you not remember that the Blessed One asked you how long you would like him to live? He even suggested a number—a thousand years—and he would have lived out the age had you begged him, which he expected you to do. Needless to say, this would have benefitted countless beings, who will now be deprived of his living presence.”

  It was then that I remembered the conversation I’d had with the Tathagata right before we left Rajagaha for the last time, when he’d asked me, jokingly, how long would I have him live, and I’d replied with some theoretical remark about the importance of having a human teacher and not a divine one. I now also remembered the spindly young novice, apparently one of Kassapa’s spies, who’d overheard us. “That was a theoretical conversation!” I said. “The Blessed One was in no way hinting for me to beg him to live to an impossible age! Surely, if he’d wanted to live that long, he would have simply done so.”

  “You can’t know that,” Kassapa said. “Obviously, your mind was under the influence of Mara. You must acknowledge what you did was a wrongdoing.”

  “I don’t see it as such. But for the sake of Sangha unity I will acknowledge it.”

  My interrogation was over.

  “Go, now,” said Kassapa in a flat voice. “You still have time for practice. Think of this session as a lesson in humility and detaching from the self.”

  It was all I could do not to storm out of the cave, much as Thullananda had the bamboo grove. At this point, I was certain that Kassapa planned to discredit all I stood for. Which was all the more reason to stay. But after these attacks I was in no state to meditate, much less achieve any sort of enlightenment.

  The sun hit me full in the face as I pulled back the white cloth covering the Sattapani cave’s entrance, and suddenly I was struck by a thought that nearly knocked me off the ledge: What if awakening transformed me entirely? What if I ended up on their side?

  The way back to my personal cave was a winding gravel path lined with disorderly scrub and hut-sized, rust-streaked boulders; I walked in the day’s mounting heat until the high noon sun became too much. By now I’d reached the notch between the hill I’d been descending and the one where I was headed, and the vegetation had burgeoned into jungle. A huge banyan stood not far from the path, its hundreds of aerial roots streaming down from horizontal branches and flowing out over the ground, as if the tree craved to possess the whole of earth and sky. It reminded me of the banyans I’d encountered when I’d first gone forth as a seeker, and I gratefully stepped into its haven of damp green aromas and glimmering shade. A good place to meditate, I decided, seating myself in an enclosure formed by a circle of vertical aerial roots, almost as good as a cave for darkness and isolation. I hoped that my lack of sleep would help weaken my self-constructed reality, allowing the truth to manifest at last.

  But even before I lowered my eyelids, an all-too-familiar question attacked me. How would I know when and if I was truly liberated? People like Kassapa maintained that unless I recalled my thousands of past lives, traveled through multiple heavens, and acquired superhuman powers, I could never make such a claim. But in all my years of practice, I had failed to enter any of these unworldly states. Did I actually believe I could meditate my way into them in less than a day? The mere thought of it overwhelmed me with fatigue.

  Before I knew it, I was asleep and dreaming.

  The banyan had changed; its tangles and cascades expanded into a green dusk without limit where dim streaks of sunlight trembled up and down a ragged infinity of roots and tendrils. “Is this ultimate reality?” my dreaming self asked, “nothing but temporary shreds and fragments?” Then, on the other side of the tree’s vast, braided trunk I spotted Kassapa and four or five other monks, standing in a circle and shouting. They seemed to be berating a man, a householder, in their center; then Kassapa raised a whip as if to strike him across the face. I ran to defend the man, stumbling and ducking around the tree’s tentacles. “Stop!” I shouted.

  Kassapa shouted back, “This boy tried to kill you!”

  All at once I saw the householder’s face, suddenly intimate, as if I were staring at my own reflection transformed into a male’s. But the face wasn’t mine. It belonged to Jagdish.<
br />
  Not as a boy. It was his face the last time I saw him, when I’d tricked him into believing I was a demon. Then, in the way of dreams, the realm of the banyan tree vanished and my brother stood alone at night in a charnel ground, lumpy with corpses everywhere I looked. “Go home!” I shouted, my dream-self fearing for his life. “They shouldn’t have left you here!”

  I woke up, disoriented. The sun had set, and the trees’s appendages looped and twisted in floods of darkness, the hanging roots surrounding me like the bars of a cage. My heart pounding with guilt for having slept so long, I scrambled to my feet, thrust aside branches and tendrils, and staggered out to the twilit path beyond. I had no time to ponder this or any other dream, and so I cast it from my mind.

  The full moon was rising, a huge pumpkin over the eastern valley. I had less than a night to awaken after sixty years of effort. I decided not to waste time returning to my cave. I sat down on a rock and resumed my meditation.

  I couldn’t locate my breath. Instead, my awareness fell into a memory.

  I was very young, four or five, and I’d been playing in the mud puddles outside of the kitchen door of my parents’ home. All of a sudden Jagdish appeared, aged ten, shirtless and bleeding from a gash on his cheek, his face strangely dark as if flushed with some incomprehensible shame. I knew without having to be told that our father had beaten him, and not for the first time. A great dread crept through me. “Don’t tell anyone!” he said.

  “Why did he hit you?” I’d asked.

  “He wants me to be a man.”

  At the time, I had no idea what this could mean, so in a child’s way I accepted it at face value: Boys turned into men by being beaten. By the time Deepa was old enough to be my playmate, I had forgotten about these beatings, or perhaps I assumed that the beatings had in fact transformed my brother into a man. I remembered my older sisters teasing him, which still, I thought, did not excuse his behavior.