Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions (72 page)

Thus, in a cleverly wrought narrative, the story mediates the conflict between family and Buddhist renunciation and even suggests that dharma can, in re-verse, work its way back into the family, in this case via Yasa’s renunciation, so that his mother and father are indirectly saved as the result of their son’s exit.

Better still, all this is implicitly effected through the mother’s unwitting gift to the Buddha that aided him at the crucial final moment before achieving enlightenment and also set in motion the cycle of events that would result in her entire family finding Buddhist salvation.

Document 5–8

¯ t a

¯

Long ago, at the time of the past Buddha Padumuttara, a woman was born into a good family in Ham

. savatı¯. One day, after listening to the Master preach the Dharma and witnessing his establishment of a laywoman as “foremost of those taking refuge,” she made a formal resolution, aspiring to attain that same status herself.

For one hundred thousand aeons, she was repeatedly reborn in sam . sa¯ra, in

the realms of gods and humans, until just before our own Master Gotama’s birth, she was reborn in the house of the landlord Sena¯ni in the village of Sena¯ni in Uruvela¯. Once she had come of age, she made this promise to the god of a 340

banyan tree: “If, once I am married to someone of the same caste, my first child is a son, I will, every year, make a food offering to you.”

Her wish was successful and a son, Yasa, was born to her. Then, on the full moon day of the month of Visa¯kha, when coincidentally the six years of the bodhisatta’s practice of extreme asceticism were just about over, she got up early in the morning and milked her cow before dawn, thinking, “Today, I will make that food offering!” The cow’s calves had not yet suckled, but as soon as a new pot was put under the udder, the milk flowed out of its own accord. Marveling at this, Suja¯ta¯ took the milk in her own hand and directed it into the new pot, and she herself put it on the fire to cook. And when that milk-rice started to boil, great bubbles appeared, and auspiciously turned to the right. So that in bursting they would not splash over the sides, the god Brahma¯ held an umbrella [as a lid over the pot], . . . while Indra regulated the fire, and the gods of the four directions added a divine nutritive essence to the milk-rice.

Beholding all these marvels, Suja¯ta¯ said to her servant Pun.n.a: “It has been a long time since I have seen so many good omens; go quickly and prepare the place of the god!”

“Yes, mistress,” she answered, and as told, she hurried to the foot of the banyan tree.

Now the bodhisatta had gotten up early, and waiting for the time of the begging round, he was sitting under that tree. And Pun.n.a, arriving at that pure place, mistook him for the tree god. She went back to Suja¯ta¯ and said: “The divinity himself is seated at the foot of the tree!”

Suja¯ta¯ replied, “Ah! If what you say is true, then it was he who gave me my son!” And putting on all of her ornaments, she piled the milk-rice on a golden plate worth a hundred thousand pieces of gold, enclosed it in another golden bowl, wrapped it in a white cloth, added wreaths of sweet-smelling garlands, picked it up, and set forth. When she saw the Great Man, there arose in her an overpowering gladness, and she bowed down very low in front of him, touch-ing her head to the ground. Uncovering the dish of milk-rice, she offered it to the Blessed One with her own hand, saying, “Just as my wish has been fulfilled, so may yours be accomplished.” Then she went away.

The bodhisatta went to the bank of the Neran˜jana¯ River and put the golden dish down there on the shore; he bathed, got out, fashioned the milk-rice into four balls, and ate it. He then washed the dish in the river, and in due course he went to the seat of enlightenment, attained omniscience, spent seven times seven days contemplating his enlightenment, and set in motion the excellent wheel of the Dharma at the Deer Park of Isipatana.

In the meantime, Suja¯ta¯’s son, Yasa, had grown, and the Buddha, realizing that he had within him the conditions necessary for enlightenment, went and sat down under another tree planning to encounter him. Young Yasa, finding the door to his harem open at midnight, was suddenly full of restlessness. Mut-tering: “How depressing! How distressing [is this life of sensual pleasure]!” he left his house, went out of the city, happened across the Blessed One, heard
Buddhism
341

from him the teaching of the Dharma, and attained the first three fruits of the path.

Then his father, searching for him, followed his tracks until he too came to the Blessed One. He asked what had happened to his son. The Master, however, concealed young Yasa by making him invisible and preached the Dharma to his father. At the end of the sermon, Yasa’s father attained the fruit of entering the stream, and Yasa [who, though invisible, had been listening], became an arhat. The Blessed One then ordained Yasa simply by saying, “Come, monk,”

and as soon as he heard those words, the characteristics of a layman in him disappeared and he became like a great elder, bearing a begging bowl and all the requisites of a monk, which had been magically created.

Yasa’s father invited the Buddha to their home. The Blessed One, taking young Yasa as his novice disciple, went to their house, ate a meal, and preached the Dharma. At the end of the sermon, Yasa’s mother, Suja¯ta¯ . . . also attained the fruit of entering the stream . . . and at the same time uttered the formula of the threefold refuge. Subsequently, when the Master was assigning statuses to the laywomen, he established her as the foremost laywoman among those taking refuge.

[Translated in Strong,
Experience of Buddhism,
pp. 48–49]

BUDDHISM AS A THREAT TO THE INDIAN FAMILY

While the above stories leave little doubt about the care given to finessing a mutually productive pattern of exchange between Buddhism and the family, one can also find explicit stories admitting the dread with which families might have regarded the Buddhists, since they threatened to draw their beloved and much needed sons away from them. In the following story the Buddha’s im-minent arrival, with a group of twelve hundred monks, prompts the villagers to go on the offensive, hoping physically to persuade the Buddha to leave them and theirs alone. The story, though articulating a rather vivid antipathy toward the Buddhist ascetics—they are likened to a hailstorm that decimates crops— still manages to present a calming point of closure, since the rampaging mob is quickly overcome by a complex trick. In this ruse a Buddhist sympathizer in the village knowingly sets fire to the village once the mob has gone out to “rough up” the Buddha. The mob learns that their village is being destroyed, even as they take action to save it by heading off the Buddha’s arrival, and yet the Buddha magically quenches the fires and proceeds to preach them dharma, presumably quelling the other metaphoric fires that ravage their home-focused lives.

Document 5–9

At that time, the Blessed One was traveling in the country of Kosala and was headed for a brahmin village. The non-Buddhist heretical masters there, learn-342

ing of the coming of the wanderer Gautama, hastened to visit the families of the brahmin householders.

“May your happiness increase!” they declared to them. “We are leaving!”

“Reverend sirs,” the householders responded, “why are you going?”

The heretics replied: “Having seen you rich, we hate to see you ruined. That is why we are leaving!”

“What do you mean, reverend sirs?” the others asked. “Why do you say we shall be ruined?”

“You should know that the wanderer Gautama is coming, at the head of twelve hundred disciples. His band is like a hailstorm that decimates the crops.

Countless parents among you will doubtless be deprived of your sons.”

The householders said: “But, reverend sirs, if that is the case, we must remain united and support each other. . . . ”

The heretics said: “Let us make an agreement, then. We promise to stay here, but you must go and ill-treat the wanderer Gautama.”

“We will rough him up!” the brahmin householders declared, and taking swords, sticks, bows, and arrows . . . they headed down the road.

Now, there was in that town an old man who was inclined toward Buddhism.

He saw those men and asked them, “Where are you going?”

“We’re going to get someone!” they replied.

“Whom are you mad at?” the old man asked.

“The wanderer Gautama!” they answered.

“Go home,” the old man told them. “The Blessed One is a great teacher; if you are angry with him, whom would you consider to be a friend?”

But they refused to go back.

The old man then reflected: “People of this sort—it is not possible to convert them by preaching the Dharma. They can only be tamed by the performance of some kind of magical display.”

So he went back to the village and set fire to it. The fire rose up on every side, and those who had stayed in the village started screaming. Those who wanted to assault the Buddha heard their cries and were afraid.

“The wanderer Gautama is still far from here,” they said to one another, “and already a horrible thing has happened: the village is on fire! We must go back and put out the blaze.” They tried to do so, but found they could not.

Soon, however, the Blessed One arrived. “Why are you afraid?” he asked.

The villagers replied: “Our houses are being consumed by the flames, and we can’t do anything about it!”

The Buddha then said to them: “I will put the fire out for you. . . . ”

And then, just as soon as the Tatha¯gata had finished speaking, the fire was extinguished by his supernatural powers, and faith was engendered in the hearts of all those brahmin householders.

“Blessed One,” they said to the Buddha, “what did we do to merit your coming?”

Buddhism
343

“It is for your sake that I have come,” the Blessed One said to them. And understanding their character and knowing their roots of merit, he preached the Dharma to them, and instructed them in the Four Noble Truths. . . .

[Translated in Strong,
Experience of Buddhism,
pp. 59–61]

THE BUDDHA’S ADVICE FOR LAITY

In this important text that appears to have been well known in Southeast Asia and East Asia, the Buddha is shown supplementing a father’s advice to his son.

At the moment of the discussion, the son is, in accordance with his deceased father’s instructions, performing prostrations in the six directions—the four car-dinal directions plus up and down—without assigning any particular meaning to this daily gesture. The Buddha intervenes and explains to the boy, in detail, how to organize these ritual observances so that they function to articulate and reaffirm all his familial and social obligations, even as the Buddha explains how to set all these responsibilities within a wider Buddhist context. In the first section of the document, which is unrelated to our topic and has been omitted here, the Buddha explains lists of four and six items relevant to Buddhist ethics and practice that presumably could be correlated with the four and six directions. In the second half of the work, duplicated below, the Buddha takes up the more germane topic of mapping the bowing in the six directions onto the boy’s social world. Thus, beginning with a bow to the east, he is to honor his mother and father, followed by a bow to the south representing his teachers, then to the west for his wife and children, to the north for his friends, with the nadir reserved for his servants, and the zenith position, not surprisingly, held by ascetics. By supposedly advocating this handy ritual design, the Buddha is shown both fulfilling what the boy’s biological father had failed to transmit to him, and giving the boy (and the reader) the structure and content to create a hiearachized, and yet integrated, map of familial, social, and religious obligation.3

Document 5–10

¯ l a k a s u t t a : a d v i c e o f l a i t y i n t h e d ı ¯ g h a n i k a

¯ y a

Thus have I heard. Once the Lord was staying at Ra¯jagaha, at the Squirrels’

Feeding Place in the Bamboo Grove. And at that time Siga¯laka the householder’s son, having got up early and gone out of Ra¯jagaha, was paying homage, with wet clothes and hair and with joined palms, to the different directions: to the east, the south, the west, the north, the nadir and the zenith.

And the Lord, having risen early and dressed, took his robe and bowl and went to Raja¯gaha for alms. And seeing Siga¯laka paying homage to the different directions, he said: “Householder’s son, why have you got up early to pay homage to the different directions?’ “Lord, my father, when he was dying, told me 344

to do so. And so, Lord, out of respect for my father’s words, which I revere, honor and hold sacred, I have got up thus early to pay homage in this way to the six directions.” “But, householder’s son, that is not the right way to pay homage to the six directions according to the Ariyan discipline.” “Well, Lord, how should one pay homage to the six directions according to the Ariyan discipline? It would be good if the Blessed Lord were to teach me the proper way to pay homage to the six directions according to the Ariyan discipline.” “Then listen carefully, pay attention, and I will speak.” “Yes, Lord,” said Siga¯laka, and the Lord said: . . .

“And how, householder’s son, does the Ariyan disciple protect the six directions? These six things are to be regarded as the six directions. The east denotes mother and father. The south denotes teachers, The west denotes wife and children. The north denotes friends and companions. The nadir denotes servants, workers and helpers. The zenith denotes ascetics and Brahmins.

“There are five ways in which a son should minister to his mother and father as the eastern direction. [He should think] ‘Having been supported by them, I will support them. I will perform their duties for them. I will keep up the family tradition. I will be worthy of my heritage. After my parents’ deaths I will distribute gifts on their behalf.’ And there are five ways in which the parents, so ministered to by their son as the eastern direction, will reciprocate: they will restrain him from evil, support him in doing good, teach him some skill, find him a suitable wife and, in due time, hand over his inheritance to him. In this way the eastern direction is covered, making it at peace and free from fear.