by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
--- --- ---
“The grandeur of real art… is to rediscover, grasp again and lay before us that reality from which we live so far removed and from which we become more and more separated as the formal knowledge which we substitute for it grows in thickness and imperiousness, that reality which there is grave danger we might die without ever having known and yet which is simply our life, life as it really is, life disclosed at last and made clear. “
Marcel Proust (Swann’s Way)
--- --- ---
“You are the Buddha!”
Along the road away from the Deer Park, passing through groves of willow trees making beautiful shapes against the sky heavy with gray, making their way beyond the sugar cane, Gotama and his followers encounter, hidden among the shadows of dark green fruit trees, a favorite haunt for the herds of spotted deer, a solitary youth sitting so quietly that the deer around him are not disturbed.
Nearly naked, long unwashed, more than a little frail, but of great and cultivated awareness, this intuitive, perceptive renunciate (for he was one of that lonely brotherhood), observing the manner and bearing of Gotama and the way his associates regarded him, was able to recognize that here—in Gotama—was one who had attained the very experience that he himself had been seeking.
Overcoming his shyness and evidencing the greatest respect he crossed the field and approached Gotama. Bowing as deeply as he could he addressed him, “A Buddha! How is it that I recognize what I have never seen before?! And how glad it makes me!”
His eyes were very sad, but they burned with inner fire. Observing that the Buddha was giving him complete attention, he went on, speaking from the innermost depths, “Your presence, full of intelligence, and so friendly, calls for complete sincerity. I must tell you that the source of trouble for me has always been my own mind. I suffer from an habitual restless condition which has always clouded perception. Hoping to end distraction and fresh desires I abandoned society altogether. At first, for many years, I practiced meditations with gurus. Now I practice alone. Effort and dedication has not been lacking… yet, I can tell you, nothing has been accomplished. Nothing affords lasting satisfaction. I feel stagnated and blocked from real development… Can you help me to find peace of mind?”
An outburst of laughter, almost a howl, was Gotama’s immediate reply before he said, “I cannot believe you ask such a thing, or that you continue to wander about, sitting naked in the fields… Well, I have nothing to give you, nothing to demonstrate.”
A little puzzled, he couldn’t help smiling, feeling that, indeed, something was to be gotten. He kept after Gotama, saying, “Is it by chance that you have come here? You are the very man for whom I have instinctively been searching—a man to whom I can entrust the guidance of my inner world… to acquire the being of a worthy man.”
“Just like the fish that covets the baited hook!” Gotama, shaking his head, laughed some more. “Don’t think I hide something from you. Truly, I have nothing to hide.”
The moist air around them was redolent with the scent of the wild laurel that was blooming all around them. Gotama inhaled deeply, slowly, and softly asked, “Have you noticed the laurel?”
“Yes, I have. Certainly it is wonderful.” He stopped for a moment, losing himself in the scent. Observing this, Gotama laughed a little and said, “You see, nothing is hidden from you.”
A deep, fresh rush of perception delivered a smile that slowly grew on that face so long unaccustomed. Laughing out loud and bowing again, with a shiver of excitement, he said softly to Gotama, “I have been separating myself from that which I am in the most continuous contact. If one looks for ‘truth’ one cannot see it. When one listens for ‘truth’ one cannot hear it. But here it is, this is it… abundant, inexhaustible.”
Gotama’s eyes flashed. He leaned over and whispered, “Look! You are the Buddha!”
As many others would later do, the new bodhisattva remained with the group and as they walked along, one of the original five bhikkhus, asked him about his conversation with Gotama. “What was it? What happened when you smelled the laurel?”
“I had a misunderstanding about ‘spirituality’ ”, the former hermit readily explained. “All along I had felt that beneath everyday reality there was something quite different which I ought to discover—like something transcribed after the manner of ancient pictorial writing. Buddha-mind is your ordinary mind. I smelled it out!”
Later, walking along together, as they paused to watch a solitary water buffalo, the new bodhisattva, enjoying the calm, asked Gotama, “Well, now what is your assessment? How shall we go on now to live our lives? It is my opinion that the daily practices—religious and otherwise—with which we are both familiar have attained such an age that they have outlived themselves. They are becoming like ancient rancid butter, and from them comes decay which is eating itself into our lives.”
Gotama’s answer, very measured, came slowly and their talk did not disturb the water buffalo. “Let this be our teaching; when we’re hungry, we’ll eat. When we’re tired, we’ll sleep.”
One of the other bhikkhus, who had been walking behind and listening to everything and did not really understand, said, “Siddhartha, is what you are talking about … ‘Enlightenment’. I am longing to experience this too.”
“I am willing to help in every way,” he replied, again unable to restrain a laugh, “but there are some things in which I cannot be of any help. When you are hungry or thirsty, my eating or drinking will not fill your stomach. When you need to sleep or respond to the calls of nature, you must do these things yourself also.”
With this remark the eyes of that bhikkhu, began to be opened and he laughed out loud..
With such conversations, it’s not hard to understand why, within a short while, the group gradually acquired a reputation among the villages of the region and that not a small crowd of people came out and attached themselves to the group that followed the Buddha.