Creation (43 page)

“After we’ve studied the rotting corpses, I remind the novitiates how truly disgusting the living body is. Since many novitiates are young, they are still attracted to women, which of course links them to the chain of being. So I show them how the body of the most beautiful woman is like a wound, with nine openings that ooze revoltingly, while the whole body is covered with a clammy skin that—”

“Slow as
my
brain is, I have grasped the concept,” I said, evening somewhat the score.

“My dear, if you really have, you are now spinning for yourself the wheel of doctrine! Such a clever child.” Sariputra looked at Prince Jeta. Although the monk’s face was smiling, the eyes were as bright and unblinking as a parrot’s. He was a disconcerting figure.

“I think,” said Prince Jeta, “that the time has come for our friend to attend the Buddha.”

“Why not?”

Democritus wants to know exactly who the Buddha was and where he came from. The first question is probably not answerable. I know that I asked it often enough when I was in India, and I received a marvelous variety of responses. Indians do not have our interest in facts; their sense of time is different from ours, while their apprehension of reality is based on a profound sense that the world does not matter because the world is only shifting matter. They think that they are dreaming.

THIS IS WHAT I THINK I KNOW ABOUT the Buddha. At the time that I met him—more than a half-century ago—he was about seventy-two or -three years old. He was born in the Shakya republic, which is located in the foothills of the Himalayas. He came from a Warrior family called Gotama. At birth, he was named Siddhartha. He was brought up in the capital city of Kapilavastru. At one time Gotama’s father held high office in the republic, but he was hardly a king, as certain snobs at Shravasti and Rajagriha still like to pretend.

Siddhartha married. He had one son, Rahula—which means link or bond. I suspect that the child must have begun life with another name, but I never found out what it was. He certainly proved to be a bond with that world which the Buddha was to eliminate—for himself.

At the age of twenty-nine Siddhartha embarked upon what he called the noble quest. Because he was acutely conscious that he was “liable to birth because of self, and knowing the peril in whatever is liable to birth, he sought the uttermost security from this world’s bonds—nirvana.”

Siddhartha’s quest took seven years. He lived in the forest. He mortified the flesh. He meditated. In due course, through his own efforts—or simply because he had evolved in the course of all his previous incarnations?—he understood not only the cause of pain but its cure. He saw all that was and all that will ever be. In a magical contest he defeated the evil god Mara, who is lord of this world.

Siddhartha became the enlightened one or the Buddha. Since he had eliminated not only himself but the tangible world as well, he is higher than all the gods: they are still evolving and he is not. They continue to exist within a world that he has entirely dissolved. Since enlightenment is an end in itself—
the
great end, the now-eliminated world ought not to have concerned the Buddha. But the world that he had awakened from returned to him, as it were, when the high god Brahma came down from heaven and begged him to show others the way. But the Buddha was not interested. Why speak, he said, of what cannot be described? But Brahma was so insistent that the Buddha agreed to go to Varanasi and set in motion the wheel of the doctrine. He expounded the four truths; and he revealed the eightfold path. Yet at the same time, paradoxically, the entire exercise was—is—pointless because he had abolished this world and all other worlds, too.

“Everything subject to causation,” the Buddha said, “is like a mirage.” For him, human personality is something like a bad dream—to be got rid of, preferably, by waking up to ... nothing? There is a point beyond which I cannot follow the Buddha. But then, he is enlightened and I am not.

In every way, the Buddha’s teaching is opposed to that of the Wise Lord. For Buddhists and Jains, the world deteriorates; therefore, extinction is the goal of the wise. For Zoroaster, each man must make his way either toward the Truth or the Lie, and in eternity he will be judged for what he did or did not do in the course of only one life. Finally, after a time in heaven or hell, all human souls will share in the Wise Lord’s victory over Ahriman, and we shall achieve a perfect state of being that is not so different from the Buddha’s sunyata, or shining void—if that is the right translation of a word which explains so precisely the inexplicable.

For the Indians, all creatures are subject to constant reincarnation. Punishment and rewards in any given life are the result of previous deeds, in previous lives. One is totally subject to one’s karma, or destiny. For us, there is suffering or joy in time of the long dominion and, finally, union with Ahura Mazdah in eternal time. For them, there is endless death and rebirth, only broken for a very few by nirvana, which is nothing, and sunyata, which is what it is if it is.

Democritus thinks that the two attitudes are not so far apart. I
know
that they are entirely unlike. Admittedly, there is something luminous if slippery about the Buddha’s conception of sunyata; in fact, the more I think of his truths, the more I feel that I am trying to catch with two clumsy hands one of those swift eels that writhe at night in hot southern seas, ablaze with cold light. At the core of the Buddhist system there is an empty space which is not just the sought-after nirvana. It is perfect atheism.

To my knowledge, the Buddha never discussed any of the gods except in the most offhand way. He never denied them; he simply ignored them. But despite his formidable conceit, he did not set himself in place of the gods because, by the time he had set in motion the wheel of his doctrine, he himself had ceased to be, which is the ultimate stage of evolution. But while he still inhabited Gotama’s flesh, he allowed others to create the sangha in order to alleviate for the chosen few some of life’s pain.

At first only men could be admitted to the order. But then Ananda persuaded the Buddha that women should be admitted too. They would live in their own communities, and follow the eightfold path. Although the Buddha was complaisant, he did make a joke, much quoted by misogynists. “Had the order been made up only of men, Ananda, it would have lasted a thousand years. Now that women have been included, it will last only five hundred years.” In either case, I suspect he was unduly optimistic.

Toward the end of the rainy season I accompanied Prince Jeta to the park which he may or may not have sold to the merchant Anathapindika for the Buddha’s use. Here live a thousand monks, disciples, admirers. Many ascetics sleep out of doors, while pilgrims live in guesthouses and members of the order are quartered in a large building with a thatched roof.

Not far from this monastery, a wooden hut had been erected on a low platform. Here on a mat sat the Buddha. Since the hut was built without walls, he lived in full view of the world.

Sariputra welcomed us to the monastery. He moved like a boy, with a skipping step. He did not carry a parasol. The warm rain seemed never to bother him. “You’re in luck. Tathagata is in a mood to talk. We’re so glad for you. Since the full moon, he’s been silent. But not today.” Sariputra patted my arm. “I told him who you were.”

If he expected me to ask him what the Buddha had had to say about the Persian ambassador, he was disappointed. I was ceremonious. “I look forward to our meeting.” I used the word upanishad, which means not just a meeting but a serious discussion about spiritual matters.

Sariputra escorted Prince Jeta and me to the pavilion that had been built on a platform approached by eight shallow steps—one for each part of the eightfold way? At the first step, a tall heavyset yellow man greeted Sariputra, who then introduced him to us. “This is Fan Ch’ih,” said Sariputra. “He has come from Cathay to learn from the Buddha.”

“It is not possible
not
to learn from the Buddha.” Fan Ch’ih spoke the Koshalan dialect even better than I, despite an accent that was rather worse.

Since Fan Ch’ih and I were to become close friends, I will only note here that he had not come to India to learn from the Buddha; he was on a trade mission from a small nation in southeast Cathay. Later he told me that he had come to the park that day in order to meet the Persian ambassador. He was as fascinated by Persia as I was by Cathay.

We followed Sariputra up the steps and into the hut, where all of those who had been seated rose to greet us except for the Buddha, who remained seated on his mat. I could see why he was called the golden one. He was as yellow as any native of Cathay. Not only was he not Aryan, he was not Dravidian either. Obviously, some tribe from Cathay had crossed the Himalayas to sire the Gotama clan.

The Buddha was small, slender, supple. He sat very straight, legs crossed beneath him. The slanted eyes were so narrow that one could not tell if they were open or shut. Someone described the Buddha’s eyes as being as luminous as the night sky in summer. I would not know. I never actually saw them. Pale arched eyebrows grew together in such a way that there was a tuft of hair at the juncture. In India this is considered a mark of divinity.

The old man’s flesh was wrinkled but glowing with good health, and the bare skull shone like yellow alabaster. There was a scent of sandalwood about him that struck me as less than ascetic. During the time I was with him, he seldom moved either his head or his body. Occasionally he would gesture with the right hand. The Buddha’s voice was low and agreeable, and seemed to cost him no breath. In fact, in some mysterious way, he seemed not to breathe at all.

I bowed low. He motioned for me to sit. I made a set speech. When I was finished, the Buddha smiled. That was all. He did not bother to answer me. There was an awkward moment.

Then a young man suddenly asked, “O Tathagata, is it your view that the world is eternal and all other views false?”

“No, child, I do not hold the view that the world is eternal and all other views false.”

“Then, is it your view that the world is
not
eternal and all other views are false?”

“No, child, I do not hold the view that the world is not eternal, and all other views are false.”

The young man then asked the Buddha if the cosmos was finite or infinite, if the body was similar or not similar to the soul, if a holy man exists or does not exist after death, and so on. To each question the Buddha gave the youth the same answer or non-answer that he had given to the question whether or not the world was eternal. Finally the young man asked, “What objection, then, does Tathagata perceive to each of these theories that he has not adopted any one of them?”

“Because, child, the theory that the world is eternal, is a jungle, a wilderness, a puppet show, a writhing, and a chain forever attached to misery, pain, despair and agony—this view does not contribute to aversion, absence of desire, cessation, quiescence, knowledge, supreme wisdom and nirvana.”

“Is this Tathagata’s answer to each question?”

The Buddha nodded. “This is the objection I perceive to these apparently conflicting theories, and that is why I have not adopted any one of them.”

“But has Tathagata any theory of his own?”

There was a pause. I must confess that the blood was suddenly high in my cheeks, and I felt as if I had the fever. I wanted, desperately, to know the answer or non-answer.

“The Buddha is free from all theories.” The voice was mild. The eyes seemed to be looking not at us but upon some world or non-world that we could not comprehend. “There are things, of course, that I know. I know the nature of matter. I know how things come into being and I know how they perish. I know the nature of sensation. I know how it is that sensation comes, and how it goes. I know how perception begins and ends. How consciousness starts, only to stop. Since I
know
these things, I have been able to free myself from all attachment. The self is gone, given up, relinquished.”

“But Tathagata, are you ... is the priest who is in such a state as yours, is he reborn?”

‘To say that he is reborn does not fit the case.”

“Does that mean he is not reborn?”

“That does not fit the case either.”

“Then is he both reborn and not reborn?”

“No. Simultaneity does not fit the case.”

“I am confused, Tathagata. Either he is the one thing or the other or even both things at the same time, yet—”

“Enough, child. You are confused because very often it is not possible to see what is right in front of you because you happen to be looking in
the wrong direction. Let me ask you a question. If a fire was burning in front of you, would you notice it?”

“Yes, Tathagata.”

“If the fire went out, would you notice that?”

“Yes, Tathagata.”

“Now, then, when the fire goes out, where does it go? to the east? the west? the north? the south?”

“But the question is to no point, Tathagata. When a fire goes out for lack of fuel to burn, it is ... well, it is gone, extinct.”

“You have now answered your own question as to whether or not a holy man is reborn or not reborn. The question is to no point. Like the fire that goes out for lack of fuel to burn, he is gone, extinct.”

“I see,” said the young man. “I understand.”

“Perhaps you
begin
to understand.”

The Buddha looked in my direction. I cannot say that he ever looked
at
me. “We often hold this discussion,” he said. “And I always use the image of the fire because it seems easy to understand.”

There was a long silence.

Suddenly Sariputra announced, “Everything subject to causation is a mirage.” There was another silence. By then I had forgotten every question that I had meant to ask. Like the proverbial fire, my mind had gone out.

Prince Jeta spoke for me. “Tathagata, the ambassador from the Great King of Persia is curious to know how the world was created.”

The Buddha turned those strange blind eyes toward me. Then he smiled. “Perhaps,” he said, “you would like to tell me.” The Buddha’s bared teeth were mottled and yellow, disconcertingly suggestive of fangs.