Roberto Calasso - Ka

On their way back to Vaiśālī, Āmrapālī’s pupils, who couldn’t keep their voices down now, ran into another, even more sumptuous procession, made up of the Licchavis, the eminent families of Vaiśālī. They were going to meet the Buddha. Everyone stood to one side to let them pass. Not so Āmrapālī. Her carriage and the five hundred pupils behind it refused to move from the center of the road. The procession of courtesans collided with the procession of nobles. Wheel against wheel, hub against hub. Āmrapālī’s carriage pressed on, while others tumbled down the bank. In the melee, the courtesan brushed right past the angry faces of the Licchavis. They asked: “Why are you behaving like this?” “I’ve got to get back in time to prepare myself to receive the Buddha,” said Āmrapālī scornfully. Then they offered her all kinds of treasures to concede the honor of the invitation to them. “Why should I accept?” said Āmrapālī. “Perhaps I shall be dead before tomorrow morning. I would only accept if the Buddha were to remain among us forever.” And she ordered two of her pupils to whip the oxen pulling her carriage.

Having finally reorganized themselves, the Licchavis reached the Buddha. The dignitaries got down from their carriages. Their servants stood behind them. They bowed and lay their gifts at the Buddha’s feet. The Licchavis women followed, heaping up precious fabrics. The Licchavis asked the Buddha to do them the honor of letting them invite him. The Buddha answered: “Āmrapālī has already invited me.”

Veṇuvana, Jetavana, Āmravaṇa, Kalandakanivāpa: these names punctuate the uniform, uneventful life of the Buddha, his dusty progress from place to place, begging bowl in hand. They are enameled islands, quiet paddocks furrowed by trickling streams. It was here that the Buddha loved to talk to his monks. None was more dear to him than the place he stayed last of all, Āmravaṇa, the Park of the Mango Trees, the most enchanting of all Vaiśālī’s seven thousand, seven hundred and seven parks. Āmrapālī begged the Buddha to accept it as a gift, out of pity for her.

Ānanda was the Buddha’s cousin. In his name we find “joy” ( ānanda ), a promise of happiness. He was preparing for his marriage to Janapadakalyāṇī when, together with six other young nobles of Kapilavastu and the palace barber, Upāli, he ran off to join the Buddha’s disciples. For twenty years he followed him, anonymous among the other faithful. Then the Buddha named him as his servant. From then on, for the next twenty-five years, they were never apart. Ānanda mended the Buddha’s cloaks. He went to find water for him. He introduced visitors. It is said he listened to eighty-two thousand statements of the Buddha. A further two thousand were told him by others. He came to be called Bahuśruta, “He who has heard much.” But he remained a “white robe,” never took ordination, like a student forever on the way . Later he would be severely reproached for this. He kept no account of the mind’s states and conquests, unlike many of those around him. One supreme privilege, denied to all the others, was enough for him: the constant company of the Buddha, for he was the only one who could see him all the time. The only one who stayed with him during those long periods when the monks would split up into small groups, scattered around desert places, with only the pelting of the rain for company as they awaited the Buddha’s return.

No one knew the Buddha as well as Ānanda did. Often he said nothing at all. “Was not the Buddha the Master? What need was there for me to speak?” he would say one day in his defense. All the same, he could be pushy too. More than once he had seen how the Buddha might refuse something twice and then agree at the third time of asking. Ānanda was accused, among other things, of having taken advantage of this. It is thanks to Ānanda’s insistence that women were admitted to the Order. “The doctrine would have lasted a thousand years, now it will only last five hundred,” said the Buddha on that occasion. But he did agree.

Ānanda never worried about always being on the way , because he was next to the Buddha, and he thought that for this reason alone he was nearer to the goal than anyone else. If others claimed to have reached it, what did that matter? It was better to be continually on the brink. This thought that had so long consoled him, filled him with terror when the Buddha told him that he would be dead three months hence. Ānanda wept. “I’m not ready yet, I never will be. And if I’m not ready living near the Buddha, how can I ever be when he is gone?”

It is true that Ānanda sometimes took advantage of his proximity to the Buddha. He could pass quite suddenly from his habitual silence to a petulant wheedling, of the variety he had seen other monks indulge in. On these occasions he was possessed by a demon who shook him like a puppet. One day he questioned the Buddha about what had happened after death to twelve people he had known. The Buddha gave prompt answers about each of the people concerned. He explained when they were to be reborn, how many times, and in what form. He was as calm as ever. Then he added: “Ānanda, it is not an unusual thing for a man to die. If you go asking questions of the Tathāgata every time a man dies, the Tathāgata will wind up a weary man. I had better reveal to you a chapter of the doctrine that will allow you to work out on your own what we can expect after death.” As the Buddha talked on, illustrating this new chapter of the doctrine, Ānanda’s mind was clouded by an immense sense of shame. The Buddha’s words flowed over him and evaporated into the air. He could never remember them.

Ānanda looked up at the Buddha and asked him the question he had been putting off for days and days: “How can awakening come about?” The Buddha was tracing signs on the ground with a stick. He went on doing so. In a flat voice he said: “In many ways. Looking at a peach blossom. Hearing a stone strike bamboo. Hearing the drum announcing dinner. Walking on a bamboo stick. Looking at the forest and the mountains. Looking at yourself in a barber’s mirror. Falling to the ground in a cloister. Tying a noose around your neck. Pouring water on your feet and watching it being soaked up by the dry earth.”

The Buddha once said that Ānanda was like a house that leaked when there was a storm. The water that got in was women. The image of the delightful Janapadakalyānī, left behind in Kapilavastu, would come to him from time to time, when he was preparing the Buddha’s bed or meditating or going to look for water, and bring on the sharpest of pangs. They left him exhausted and vulnerable. The Buddha reminded him of their previous lives when Ānanda was an ass, Janapadakalyānī a she-ass, and the Buddha their master — a poor peasant who would goad them on from time to time with a stick. Such subtlety wasn’t enough. So the Buddha took Ānanda like a baby and flew up into the sky, showing him an immense forest fire. He pointed to the disfigured body of a monkey on a charred trunk. Ānanda looked away. They flew on. In some heaven or other — and how was Ānanda supposed to know which? — in a noble but abandoned palace, they saw a marvelously shapely Apsaras looking into the void. “She’s waiting for you,” the Buddha said. They flew on. They saw five hundred amazingly beautiful Apsaras. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” said the Buddha. “Janapadakalyānī looks like a monkey in comparison,” said Ānanda. “You’ll have them all,” said the Buddha. Then he added: “But for the moment you mustn’t leave the monks.” Ānanda wasn’t sure whether he had been rewarded or humiliated. In silence they flew back down through the heavens.

The Buddha knew Ānanda was wavering and vulnerable. He watched him from the corner of his eye as he busied himself with the chores. A feverishness in Ānanda’s eyes betrayed his turmoil. There was a witch’s daughter who show was mad about Ānanda. She asked her mother to throw some brilliant arka flowers on a brazier to attract him. Ānanda left the other monks like a sleepwalker. More than a woman, it was a flower he was following. A fog hid the rest.