Creation (36 page)

“Yes, Prince Jeta.”

“Good. That is the third truth. The fourth truth demonstrates how the fire can be put out. This is accomplished by not wanting.”

Prince Jeta stopped. For a moment I listened to the music, which I found oddly attractive. I say oddly because I had not yet become accustomed to Indian music. But since the occasion itself was so enchanting, all things pleased me, and I was more than ever removed from the four truths of the Buddha! I was not in the least detached or released. Certainly, I did not want to be extinguished. Suddenly I realized that Prince Jeta’s fourth truth was nothing at all, which in itself is a truth as some Athenians—and even Abderans—might say. I turned to my host. He was smiling. Before I could put my question, he answered it. “To blow out the flame of this painful existence you must follow the eightfold way. That is the fourth noble truth.”

Sooner or later, Indians produce numbers. Since they are the vaguest of mathematicians, I always discount any number an Indian gives me, even though it be thirty million million million times the number of grains of sand in the bed of the Ganges River.

“Eight?” I tried to appear interested. “But I thought there were only four truths.”

“The fourth truth requires that one follows the eightfold way.”

“And what, Prince Jeta, is
that
?”
I was distracted by one of the flautists. She was either off-key or in a key that I had never heard before.

I note for you, Democritus, what the eightfold way involves: One, right views. Two, right intention or purposes. Three, right speech. Four, right action. Five, right living. Six, right effort. Seven, right mindfulness. Eight, right concentration.

At the end, Prince Jeta realized that I was bored. “These things may seem obvious to you ...”

“No, no.” I was polite. “But they are so general. There is nothing specific—like the Wise Lord’s very precise instructions to my grandfather on how to sacrifice a bull.”

“The Buddha’s sacrifices are not of animals but of the animal in the self.”

“I understand. But what, specifically, is ... well, right living?”

“There are five moral rules.”

“Four noble truths, one eightfold way and five moral rules ... At least the Buddha’s numbers-are not as enormous as those of Mahavira.” This was very rude of me.

But Prince Jeta was not upset. “We find Mahavira’s views somewhat similar.” he said mildly. “But he is only a maker of river-crossings. The Buddha has crossed the river. He is enlightened. He is perfect. He does not exist.”

“Except that he is now in residence at Shravasti.”

“A body is there. But he is not there.”

Since you, Democritus, want to know the five moral rules, I shall give them. The off-key flautist fixed in my memory every word that the prince said. Here are the five moral rules: Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t get drunk. Don’t indulge in sex.

I questioned the last rule. “What would happen to the human race if everyone actually obeyed the five moral rules?”

“The human race would cease to be and that, in the Buddha’s eyes, is a perfect thing.”

“Even though the Buddhist order would end.”

“The aim of the order is to extinguish itself. Unfortunately, no more than a tiny fraction of the human race will ever be drawn to the order, and of those only an infinitesimal number in the course of the millennia will become enlightened. You have nothing to fear, Cyrus Spitama.” Prince Jeta was amused. “The human race will continue until the present cycle ends.”

“But what is the point to a religion that can only appeal to a few? And of those few, as you’ve just said, almost none will achieve the ultimate state of nirvana?”

“The Buddha has no interest in religion. He is simply helpful to those who are on the riverbank. He will show them the ferryboat. Should they reach the far side, they will then discover that there is neither river nor ferryboat nor even the two banks ...”

“Nor the Buddha?”

“Nor the Buddha. The fire will have gone out and the dream of this existence will have been forgotten and the one who has been enlightened will be awake.”

“Where?”

“I am not enlightened. I am still too close to the wrong shore.”

That is what I was meant to remember of that enchanted if perplexing afternoon in the grotto of Prince Jeta. Later, when I saw and heard the Buddha, I got a somewhat clearer idea of his teaching, which is not really teaching at all.

Democritus says that he sees a resemblance between the Buddha’s truths and those of Pythagoras. I don’t. Pythagoras and Gosala and Mahavira all believed in the transmigration of souls from fish to tree to man to whatever. But the Buddha was indifferent to transmigration because, ultimately, he did not believe in existence. We are not here, he said. We are not there either. We only imagine that the fire sputters.

Yet one does exist ... There is absolutely no doubt that I am an old blind man, sitting in a cold and drafty house at Athens, nearly deafened by the sounds of all the building going on just back of us. There is no doubt, in my mind at least, that I am discussing old times with a young relative from Abdera. Therefore, I exist, if barely; more ashes than flames.

To the Buddha the idea of existence was something entirely painful. How right he was! and to be got rid of by eliminating all desire, including the desire to rid oneself of all desire. Obviously, few succeed—at least in eternity. But I am reasonably convinced that those who follow in his way are better off in regard to this world than those who do not.

Odd. I never thought that I would come around to this point of view. Neither did Prince Jeta. “Nothing that I have told you truly matters,” he said as we prepared to leave the luminous cave.

“Because the goal of matter is sunyata,” I said, rather to his surprise, and to my own earthly delight in my cleverness, “and sunyata is nothingness, which is also your word for the circle that stands for nothing, yet still exists.”

For an instant Prince Jeta paused at the edge of the pool. Reflections of blue-water light flickered across his face like so many iridescent spiders’ webs.

“You must meet Tathagata,” he said in a low voice, as if he did not want even the water to hear him.

“Who is that?”

“Another name for the Buddha. Our private name. Tathagata means the one who has come and gone.” With that Prince Jeta himself went. He dived into the water. Gracelessly, I followed.

Years later I discovered that every word that was spoken in the grotto beneath the mountain was carefully taken down by an agent of the Magadhan secret service. Somehow, Varshakara had managed to cut a narrow channel straight through the soft stone of the mountain to the grotto. Fortunately, Prince Jeta was too important to be arrested while the person of an ambassador from the Great King was sacred.

The journey back to Rajagriha was interminable. The dusty road was jammed with people, carts, contingents of soldiers, camels, elephants. Everyone was eager to get back to the city before the sun set and the gates were shut.

I must say I could never get used to the way that Indians relieve themselves in public. You cannot go any distance on any Indian trail without observing dozens of men and women squatting cheerfully at the side of the road. Jaina and Buddhist monks are the worst offenders. Since a monk may eat only what he has managed to beg, tainted food is often put into his bowl, sometimes deliberately. Once the food is in the bowl, he is obliged to eat it. As a result of a truly atrocious diet, most monks suffer from every sort of stomach disorder—in public view.

I saw, perhaps, a dozen Buddhist monks. Each wore castoff rags, and carried a begging bowl. None wore the yellow robes that are today characteristic of the order because, in those days, most dedicated Buddhists still lived in the wilderness, remote from temptation. But eventually the solitary life proved to be at variance with the order’s need to record and transmit all the sutras, or words, that the Buddha ever spoke. Gradually those men and women who were truly devoted to the Buddha formed communities. Even during my first visit to India, the order was already a good deal less peripatetic than it had been at first.

The original disciples had traveled with the Buddha and, except during the rainy season, he was always on the move. During his last years, he tended to move in a circle that started and ended at Shravasti, where he spent the rainy season in a park that had been given to the order by Prince Jeta and
not
by a Shravasti merchant named Anathapindika, who used to claim that he had paid Prince Jeta an enormous amount of money for the park. Since Prince Jeta was always careful to avoid credit or praise for anything that he did, Anathapindika is now credited with being the Buddha’s most generous patron. I have never known a man quite so noble as Prince Jeta.

When the rains stopped, the Buddha would sometimes revisit his Shakya home in the foothills of the Himalayas. Then he would walk south through the republics, visiting such cities as Kushinara and Vaishali. He would then cross the Ganges at the port of Pataliputra and go south to Rajagriha, where he would spend at least a month in a bamboo grove just inside the city wall. He always slept beneath the trees. He preferred to beg for his food in country lanes rather than in the crowded streets of Rajagriha. During the heat of the day he would meditate beneath a tree, and all sorts of people would come to see him, including King Bimbisara.

I should note here that the sight of holy men squatting beneath trees is a common one in India. Many have been known to sit in the same position for years. Rain-drenched, sun-scorched, wind-flayed, they live on whatever food is brought them. Some never speak; some never stop talking.

From Rajagriha, the Buddha would move on to Varanasi. Here he was always received like a conquering hero. Thousands of curious people would accompany him to the deer park where he had first set in motion the wheel of the doctrine. Because of the crowds, he seldom stayed long at the deer park. In the dead of night he would leave Varanasi for the northwestern cities of Kaushambi and Mathura, and then, just before the rains began, he would return to Shravasti.

The Buddha was revered by everyone, including those Brahmans who might have regarded him as a threat to their prestige. After all, he belonged to the warrior class. But he was more than a warrior, more than a Brahman. He was the golden one. So the Brahmans feared him because he was like no one else. But then, strictly speaking, he
was
no one. He had come; and he had gone.

AFTER AJATASHATRU PAID ME THE DOWRY, he said, “You must now buy yourself a house. It must not be too large, nor too small. It must be midway between my house and the king’s palace. There must be a central courtyard with a well of purest water. There must also be ten different kinds of flowering bushes. Suspended between two trees, there must be a swing that will allow two people to swing together, side by side, for many happy years. The sleeping room must have a wide bed with a canopy of Cathay cloth. There should also be a divan next to a window that looks onto a flowering tree.” After itemizing all the things that my house must have, he made two great high arches of his brows and asked, “But
where
is this perfect place to be found? My dear, we must search. There is not a moment to lose!”

Needless to say, Ajatashatru had already found us our ideal house. In fact, he owned it. So I ended by giving back to my father-in-law half the dowry money in order to buy a pleasant if somewhat dilapidated house in a noisy street.

To my surprise, no attempt was made to convert me to devil-worship before the wedding. I was not expected to do anything more than act out the groom’s part in an ancient Aryan ceremony that is not unlike our own. As in Persia, the religious part of the ceremony is performed by the priestly caste. This means that one is not obliged to pay the slightest attention to what they say and do.

In the late afternoon I arrived at the long low wooden house of Ajatashatru. At the entrance I was cheered by a large crowd of common people, who commented favorably on my appearance. I was resplendent, if very hot, in a cloth-of-gold shawl and a turban which a servant had taken one hour to wind and adjust. The king’s own barber had outlined my eyes with black and administered lac to my lips. He had then decorated my body with tinted sandalwood paste, transforming my chest into the leaves and branches of a tree whose delicately drawn trunk made its way down my belly to the genitals, which were painted to resemble roots. A glittering serpent circled the calf of each leg. Yes, the barber was a Dravidian and could not resist this pre-Aryan touch. In hot weather, fashionable Indians often cover themselves with sandalwood paste on the ground that it makes them cool. It does no such thing. One sweats like a horse, but at least the sweat smells like the most exotic perfume.

I was attended by Caraka and the entire embassy. By now, we all dressed as Indians. Weather had triumphed over patriotism.

We were greeted at the palace door by Ajatashatru and Varshakara. They were even more gorgeously dressed than I. Varshakara wore Burmese rubies the color of his teeth, while the heir to the throne wore a thousand thousand diamonds, as the Indians would say. Diamonds hung in chains about his neck, covered his fingers, fell in cascades from the lobes of his ears, girdled the huge belly.

According to ancient custom, Ajatashatru offered me a silver cup filled with honey and curds. After I had drunk this cloying mixture, I was led into the central courtyard, where a brightly colored tent had been set up. On the far side of the tent was my as yet unseen bride-to-be, with her mother, grandmother, sister, aunts, female attendants. On our side were the men of the royal family, led by King Bimbisara, who greeted me gravely and kindly. “This day will see joined as one the Aryans of far-off Persia and the Aryans of Magadha.”

“You reflect, Lord, as does the Great King Darius, the true light of the Aryans, and I am happy to be the humble bridge between the twin shining Lords of all the world.” I had prepared this nonsense in advance, and a great deal more that can be safely forgotten. All that mattered was the striking of the proper note, which was to pretend that Persia and Magadha were now united against the federation of republics and, if necessary, Koshala.