Living with the Devil

by Stephen Batchelor

  His first major patron was King Bimbisara of Magadha. Bimbisara is presented as a powerful but humane ruler, who from an early age had aspired both to kingship and spiritual insight. Not long after the awakening, Buddha traveled with his followers to Rajagaha. On hearing his teaching, the king “penetrated the dharma, left uncertainty behind him, his doubts vanished, he acquired perfect confidence and became independent of others.” In gratitude, this now enlightened monarch offered Gotama a park on the edge of town called the Bamboo Grove, where the monks could train and practice.

  Bimbisara appears to have continued ruling wisely for the next thirty years, but little more is heard of him until Devadatta mounts his rebellion. After Buddha refused Devadatta’s request to lead the community of monks, Devadatta went to his disciple Prince Ajatasattu, Bimbisara’s heir, and said, “Formerly, men were long-lived, now they are short-lived. Maybe you will die while still only a prince. So why do you not kill your father and become king? And I shall kill Gotama and become Buddha.” Ajatasattu “fastened a dagger on his thigh” and slipped into the king’s private quarters. But he raised suspicion among the guards and was arrested. The dagger was found and the plot exposed. When the prince was brought to his father, the king asked why he wanted to kill him. “I want the kingdom, sir,” replied the prince. “If you want the kingdom,” said the king, “the kingdom is yours.”

  Thus Ajatasattu became king of Magadha. To secure his power, he murdered his father anyway. He starved the old man to death in prison, which caused his mother, Kosaladevi, to die of grief. As a parricide, Ajatasattu was a killer (Mara) with whom Buddha had to contend in order that his community might survive in Magadha. Their next encounter was arranged by the royal physician. As Ajatasattu approached the grove where Buddha was staying, he “felt fear and terror and his hair stood on end.” But after hearing Buddha speak about the fruits of the homeless life, he was so inspired that he formally became a follower and confessed to murdering his father. “Since you have acknowledged the transgression and confessed it,” says Buddha, “I will accept it. For one who so confesses will grow in the noble life.”

  Rather than chastise him for murder, Buddha forgives him. “Rejoicing and delighting” at Buddha’s words, Ajatasattu devoutly takes his leave and departs. But as soon as the king is out of sight, Buddha turns to his monks and says, “The king is done for, his fate is sealed! If he had not deprived his father of his life, then as he sat here the pure vision of dharma would have arisen in him.” Buddha seems to be saying one thing to Ajatasattu and another to his monks. Having given the king hope and encouragement in the noble life, he then declares how his crime deprived him of the chance of realizing the noble life.

  Buddha’s other major patron was King Pasenadi, ruler of Kosala, the powerful monarchy that bordered on Buddha’s homeland of Shakya. Kosala was allied to Magadha through marriage. Pasenadi’s sister Kosaladevi was Bimbisara’s wife and Ajatasattu’s mother. Buddha was an exact contemporary of Pasenadi and spent twenty-four monsoons at the Jetavana Grove in the Kosalan capital of Savatthi, where he delivered a great deal of his teaching.

  Several discourses recount Buddha’s exchanges with Pasenadi. Unlike his brother-in-law Bimbisara, Pasenadi shows little interest in awakening. He admits that he is typical of those kings “who are intoxicated with sovereignty, obsessed by greed for sensual pleasures, have obtained stable control in their country, and rule having conquered a great sphere of territory on earth.” Although the two men knew each other well, instead of advising or admonishing the king on specific issues, Buddha tends just to offer him broad themes for reflection.

  On hearing of Pasenadi’s battles with Ajatasattu (a dispute over a village that was part of Kosaladevi’s dowry to Bimbisara), Buddha does not criticize Pasenadi for engaging in warfare and makes no attempt to persuade him to turn Kosala into a peaceful, nonviolent state. Nor does Buddha disapprove of the king disguising his spies and undercover agents as wandering ascetics. Instead, he draws the moral that one should not judge people by their outward appearance alone. On learning that a great animal sacrifice is being prepared by the king, Buddha criticizes this practice to his monks but makes no effort to prevent it from taking place. And when Pasenadi arrests “a great mass of people” and binds them with ropes and chains, Buddha points out how much stronger are the bonds of “infatuation with jewelry and earrings” and “anxious concern for wives and children.”

  As a warlord, sensualist, deceiver, and tyrant, Pasenadi possesses the key features of Mara. It is probably no accident that Buddha’s discussions with this king immediately precede his dialogues with Mara in the Pali Canon. Although Pasenadi is presented as a lay follower of Buddha, unlike Bimbisara he is not recorded as attaining any spiritual insight. The only time his behavior is seen to be changed by Buddha’s advice is when he agrees to eat less in order to lose weight. Even after the king has just impaled a band of rebels, Buddha does not chastise him. He reminds him that “when ageing and death are rolling in on you, great king,” no amount of arms or wealth can stand in their way. There is nothing to be done “but to live by the dharma, live righteously, and do wholesome and meritorious deeds.”

  In contrast to Buddha’s sardonic manner with Mara, his attitude to Ajatasattu and Pasenadi appears circumspect and cautious. As ruthless autocrats who control a world in which Gotama is historically and socially enmeshed, these kings have a hold over Buddha that Mara lacks. Even the Pali commentarial tradition, which aims to present Buddha in the best possible light, has him think (after the impaling episode with Pasenadi): “If I reprimand [the king] for such a terrible deed, he will feel too dismayed to associate closely with me. Instead I will instruct him by an indirect method.” Such sentiments acknowledge how Buddha cannot ignore the pressures of the political reality in which he lives and plays a role.

  The final meeting between Pasenadi and Buddha takes place in Shakya when both men are eighty years old. Having elaborately praised Buddha and his monks, the king concludes ominously, “And now we depart. We are busy and have much to do.” When the king takes leave of Buddha, he is informed that the general with whom he had come to Shakya has departed with the royal insignia and crowned Pasenadi’s son Vidudabha as king. Isolated, Pasenadi hurries to Magadha to summon the help of his nephew and erstwhile enemy Ajatasattu. But the gates of Rajagaha are closed. Weary from the journey, he collapses outside the city walls and dies.

  Then Buddha travels south to Magadha and stays at his retreat on Vulture’s Peak outside the capital. While there, Ajatasattu informs him that he intends to attack the Vajjian Confederacy, the last republican stronghold in northern India on the northern border of Magadha. Buddha leaves Rajagaha and heads back toward his homeland by way of Vesali, the Vajjian capital, on what will be his last journey. It is unclear what prompts this move. At some point, he may have learned that Vidudabha (Pasenadi’s son) had invaded the Shakyan republic in revenge for the dishonor of being the son of a slave-girl given in marriage to his father under the pretense of being a Shakyan noblewoman. It is said that Buddha tried three times in vain to persuade him to withdraw. Adhering to the precept against killing, the Shakyans offered only symbolic resistance and were massacred by Vidudabha’s troops. The Shakyan territory was then incorporated into Kosala.

  Around the same time, Buddha, who had already fallen ill at Vesali, succumbs to food-poisoning and dies in Kusinara, described by his attendant Ananda as a “miserable little wattle-and-daub town, right in the jungle in the back of beyond.” From his broader (and, one suspects, ironic) perspective, Buddha criticizes Ananda for talking this way. Long ago, he said, Kusinara was the city of Kusavati, which was “rich and prosperous, crowded with people and well-stocked with food. It was never free of the sound of elephants, horses, carriages, drums, lutes, singing, cymbals, with cries of ‘Eat, drink, and be merry!’” Such is the fate of cities and civilizations. No matter how powerful they become, their glory will fade and be forgotten.

  The wo
rld around Buddha was torn apart. The political forces that had until then been held in check erupted in a storm of destruction. Not only did Vidudabha exterminate the Shakyans, Ajatasattu then conquered the Vajjian Confederacy, thus wiping out the only significant republican state in the region. Was the circumspection Buddha exhibited in his discussions with Ajatasattu and Pasenadi diplomatically motivated to preserve the delicate balance of power between these contending states? Whether or not he intentionally played a political role, Gotama had to function within a world every bit as devious, violent, and unpredictable as our own.

  In their last conversation, Pasenadi says to Buddha, “I am a Kosalan and you are a Kosalan.” Buddha does not deny this. By the end of his life, he had come to regard himself as a subject of the king. In accepting the protection of the Kosalan state, he tacitly acknowledges the state’s willingness to use violence to protect the rights and freedoms of its subjects should the territorial integrity and peace of the realm be threatened. This too would explain his reluctance to criticize the king for his violent behavior.

  To tackle Mara in the political realm is a hazardous exercise that calls for utmost vigilance and care. Gotama had to realize his goals within the political environment of his time, but his goals were not in themselves political. Shortly after the awakening, before Brahma had inspired him to set off into the world, two merchants offered him some rich food that made him ill and weak. Mara appeared and urged him not to fight the sickness but die. “I shall not enter final nirvana,” retorted Buddha, “until my disciples have become learned, wise, and intelligent, . . . sufficiently accomplished in their own discourse so that my teaching will be extensively practiced and spread far and wide among many people.” Fifty years later, with his world collapsing around him and his body succumbing to illness and age, he had succeeded in accomplishing this goal and could die without regrets. And while his footprints still leave their mark today, the traces of Bimbisara, Ajatasattu, and Pasenadi survive as mere footnotes to his story.

  22

  Hearing the Cries

  IN 494 BCE, around the time Buddha was dealing with the rebellions of Devadatta and Ajatasattu in north India, the consul Menenius Agrippa successfully put down a slave revolt in Rome. Agrippa persuaded the slaves that just as it would be unreasonable for the limbs of a body to rebel against the belly that sustains them, so it was unreasonable for workers to rebel against the Senate. Convinced, the slaves left their entrenched positions on the Aventine Hill and returned to the city to serve their masters. The same argument has also been used to justify the Indian caste system, in which each caste is seen as a different body part of the great primordial Man (Purusha): “His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Warrior, his thighs the People, and from his feet the Servants were born.” By sacrificing narrow self-interest and acting according to one’s nature, each person thereby plays an essential role in sustaining the greater life of the whole.

  When Shantideva uses this same organicist metaphor to illustrate how all beings are empathetically interconnected, and Pascal and Eckhart, following Paul, draw on it to affirm how all members of the church are one in the body of Christ, they ignore its potential for justifying tyranny. The story of Agrippa shows how the mere recognition of the organic interconnectedness of society is not in itself sufficient to generate compassion for others. Nor does the Indian belief that all people are one as members of a single body imply that they are entitled to the same rights or freedoms. For although the brain and a toe are interconnected parts of the same whole, this does not accord them equal significance. The organism can continue to function without a toe but not without a brain. One part is dispensable, while the other is not.

  In the light of modern biology, an animal’s body is not only a complex self-regulating organism but also a killing field. Hundreds of millions of bacterial cells live in your saliva, and countless numbers are wiped out each time you spit or brush your teeth. About a million more live on the surface of each square inch of skin, only to die each time you take a hot, soapy shower. The immune system is designed to both trap and expel microorganisms before they gain entry to the body, as well as to identify and destroy those that manage to penetrate the first layer of defense. As food is broken down and digested, the intestinal walls and floor become factories of death. Your very survival entails the systematic, ongoing destruction of millions of living things.

  An organicist conception of life is entirely compatible with violent, autocratic, hierarchical, and undemocratic models of society. It has been appealed to by fascist states to justify the natural urge of the strong and healthy to overcome the weak and powerless. In comparing a criminal to a diseased finger that must be amputated before it infects the rest of the body, Chinese Communists have used it to justify the death penalty. In each case, the metaphor is employed to legitimate the oppression of one section of society by another. A political or religious elite is able to secure its privileges by persuading others that they are destined by nature to play a subordinate and submissive role.

  To understand the way something is does not enable us to conclude how we should then act. Even if we are profoundly interconnected in the complex web of life, as Shantideva and others suggest, this need not imply that we should love each other as equals or treat one another with tolerance and respect. How we interpret and use this metaphor will depend on the kind of worldview, values, and principles that we already honor and seek to uphold. Insight into the interconnectedness of life will only reinforce feelings of universal love and respect if we are already committed to the principles of equality, liberty, compassion, and nonviolence.

  The image of life as a single organism in which we are all connected to each other is an insufficient basis for morality and ethics. To respond to the other’s suffering as though it were my own requires more than just knowing that the other is part of a greater whole that unites us. I need to hear the other’s call not to hurt her in such a way that I hear in it the echo of my own call for her not to hurt me. No matter how reasonably I can define her as friend, foe, or stranger, I have to discard this limited picture in order to encounter the other as a contingent, fragile creature who silently cries out not to be hurt. This requires suspending preconceived notions of the other and refining a capacity to listen.

  Meditative awareness is more akin to hearing well than seeing clearly. When looking intently at a visual object, we tend to aim a narrow beam of attention onto something outside of ourselves. But when we listen mindfully, we open our awareness in all directions in order to receive the sounds that pour in. Just as one develops a meditative ability to discern ever subtler tones and harmonies in this polyphony, so one can refine an empathetic ability to detect ever finer nuances in the other’s plea. As the deafening chatter of self-centeredness subsides, one recovers that silence wherein one hears more sharply the cries of the world.

  In the Chinese Surangama Sutra, Gotama asks his assembled disciples about the most effective way to awaken. Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva who personifies Buddha’s compassion, replies that using “the organ of hearing to quiet the mind for its entry into the stream of meditation” is the best method. In China, the male figure of Avalokiteshvara mutated into the female bodhisattva Kuan-yin, whose name means “Observer of Sounds.” Kuan-yin embodies a maternal compassion that is a response to the call of the other not to be hurt. Her graceful repose suggests how contemplative listening grounds and nurtures the open-hearted empathy that risks responding to the other’s call.

  To respond to the other’s call in this way is the origin of nonviolence. Such nonviolence is not equivalent to mere passivity in the face of opposition. In confronting someone’s rage, the wisest course of action may be to say and do nothing. But it might be to stand one’s ground, speak out firmly, even resist the aggression physically. It depends on how one assesses the degree of harm the aggressor is liable to inflict. As a moral principle, nonviolence is an unambiguous commitment to respond to others’ call
not to hurt them. As a moral practice, requiring at times instant decisions based on inadequate knowledge, it is to risk saying or doing something that will have consequences we cannot foresee and may not intend.

  People want to live in communities and societies that honor and protect the inviolability of the space each person cherishes as his or her own. This space is respected not because it encloses an immutable soul but because it is the unobstructed openness that can become a selfless person’s path. For this is the space one cultivates by paying mindful attention to the flux of embodied experience, thereby eroding the conviction that a tight cell of “me” endures somewhere at its core. Since this emptiness is the path, to intrude into another’s life in a way that violates that space is tantamount to blocking her path.

  The only grounds an individual or a society has to block a person’s path is if that path inflicts, or threatens to inflict, harm on that person as well as others. While Buddha regarded the freedom of nirvana as the “ground” and “goal” of life, the experience of that freedom heightened his awareness of the call of others not to be hurt. During his lifetime, Gotama established a community (sangha) committed to this principle of nonviolent freedom to serve as a model of a nonviolent and free society. Each generation since has had to face the double challenge of maintaining the sangha while transforming the wider society around it in the light of its values.

  The most far-reaching transformations of human society in recent times have come, however, not from the Buddhist East but from the sociopolitical movements of the Christian West that gained an irresistible momentum with the independence of the United States in 1783 and the French Revolution of 1789. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens, approved in Paris on August 26, 1789, likewise affirms the centrality of nonviolent freedom. Its fourth article states: