The Temptation of the Buddha: A Fictional Study in the History of Religion and of Aesthetics
Page 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
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“Can I be as I believe myself, or as others believe me to be?
Here is where these lines become a confession in the presence of my unknown
and unknowable me, unknown and unknowable for myself.
Here is where I create the legend wherein I must bury myself.”
Miguel de Unamuno
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On the road—the happiest man alive.
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On the Road—the Happiest Man Alive
I hope the reader has not completely forgotten the narrative thread left off a few chapters back and will consent to return with me to imagine the picturesque episode, which occurred not long after ‘the enlightenment’ beneath the tree. It is rarely omitted in any telling of the life of the Buddha.
Taking naturally to the open road, crossing fields yellow-green-like rugs thrown across the jungle cleared flat land breathing naturally the open air, Gotama, beginning his life’s work; teaching, sought out his old companions; the five bhikkhus with whom he had spent those years in the Forest of Mortification, the ones who had so deplored his fall from their common fanatical asceticism.
The Deer Park (Migadaya), where they had gone, is situated in Sarnath, on the outskirts of Varanasi, some 200 to 300 kilometers from Gaya. It has been a religious or sacred site since ancient times. Gotama knew the way and that it would take at least ten days to walk, not including rest time. No brooding over the future, no laments from the past, he set out.
Upon seeing his approach, the five bhikkhus decide among themselves not to acknowledge him, saying, “He has broken his vows and abandoned holiness. Now he lives in abundance and indulges in pleasure.” But when he draws near, it becomes, straightaway, so obvious that he has attained some remarkable happy glorification or beatification that they can not but greet him with the most respectful awe and obeisance, even expressing their desire to become his disciples.
The Samyutta-Nikaya and the Pali Vinaya say that the first real sermon that the Buddha delivered was addressed to his former companions, at the Deer Park. As presented in those accounts, it is here that he speaks of the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path for the first time. But to a modern researcher/ historian it appears at least equally probable that, as time went by, a number of teachings were brought together, ‘redacted’ into the document now referred to as the “Sutra of the Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma”.
I imagine a more personal, informal, and friendly beginning for Buddhism.
Seated in the shade of great heartwood along a shallow stream, enjoying the fragrant resin of a clump of ocibanuum trees, Gotama, in a manner which will become typical of him, speaks to his former companions.
“My friends, bhikkhus, already I am called ‘Buddha’, but you must know that ‘enlightenment’ is neither a higher or a lower state. It’s just as if I have woken up. From what? My life up to now… a dream I remember clearly. It was as if there were a circle around me composed of many worlds and of the orders of time. Together, all formed a chain. As in common for dreamers, I had no idea that I was asleep and dreaming.”
“Strange. But what woke me up was the power, the force of the present moment. Instead of obliterating it—as we had, together, habitually practiced doing for years, all at once, its presence overwhelmed me… and so thoroughly too, that I could not but become continually aware of it, and increasingly so.”
“It was a result of this experience… that I regained the sense of my own identity. The immediate awareness, which I felt now with such force, transformed memory… This freshness reformed my consciousness.”
“This new sensation had on me the effect which love has of filling one with a precious essence; or rather, more precisely, this essence was not in me, it was myself.“
So saying the new Buddha embraced his former companions. Then, making a point of it right away, to illustrate the unique freedoms of thought that were to become eventually so characteristic of proper Buddhism, Gotama told the five bhikkhus, “You must know that Tathagatas (those who come to the truth) can only try to show a way. I have discovered a path, but you yourselves must tread the path.”
“Just because they may have been handed down by many generations, traditions need not be followed. You must do your own work. Do not believe in anything because it is spoken of by many, or because it has been written. One can’t simply take the word of others, including mine, and believe it. Do not believe in that as truth to which you have become attached by habit. And don’t believe in conjectures. Believe after observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason.”
“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about “enlightenment”, or what I mean by saying I have woken up, and start to imagine that there is a place to get to—like by climbing a ladder. If you should ever think so, then right away you’ve got altogether the wrong idea. The place to which you really want to go is one at which you actually already are.”
“In order to come to this new point of view one must be, first, consciously self aware. To analyze things is only possible when self-consciousness is present. It is the only way. One must be, first, consciously self-aware. There can be no substitute for this. Then, one knows for certain if things are wrong, or if things are good. Without consciousness of itself, observations and reason have a very limited use.”
“Bhikkhus, there is something else, something worth saying, worth teaching. A very basic and useful idea; extremes need not be practiced.”
“One is equally misguided when completely devoted to sensual pleasures, or too attendant upon practical matters, or when one mortifies one’s self—as we have done. Avoiding extremes, the Tathagata gains realization.”
The Life of the Buddha has begun. Compassion and artistry will entail the need to communicate in an effective, lasting manner, the wonder of the unfathomable reservoir of freedom that has opened up to him. The innovative techniques of his teaching, through practice, begin to develop. He leaves the Deer Park, accompanied by the first “Buddhists”.
I’d like the reader to understand that the new Buddha had many conversations there at the Deer Park, and that more than a few “discourses” took place. Hajime Nakamura, in his account of the Buddha’s life, wrote that “For the Buddha to go to Varanasi to expound his ideas was something like a modern scholar presenting a new theory at a national conference.” In this way one can understand and agree with Nakamura that the visit to the Deer Park was a great turning point in Gotama’s life, for it was after this that he began to live amongst and teach ordinary lay people. For the next forty-five years, until his death at the age of eighty, he traveled from place to place in central India, along the reaches of the Ganges, devoting himself to teaching.