Roberto Calasso - Ka

Then the Buddha was forced to resort to the satyavākya , the “word of truth.” He wasn’t pleased that the absolute of the truth must come up against a sorcerer’s spells. Of course the true word would win, but it would be diminished by the clash. Truth does not compete with facts. Truth is not a tool. But the Buddha wanted to win Ānanda back. One evening, he saw him returning to the monks. He looked like a mule with saddle sores. Without a word he fell to the ground and slept for a long time.

“And women?” said Ānanda. “Don’t look,” said the Buddha. “But what if we see some?” said Ānanda. “Don’t say anything,” said the Buddha. “What if we do speak?” said Ānanda. “Be vigilant,” said the Buddha.

That life is “sweet” ( madhura , deriving from madhu , “honey”) the Buddha announced when he was eighty years old, a few days before dying. It was the beginning of the rainy season. The Buddha said to his monks: “Split up and go your ways. Go wherever you have friends, in small groups. The land is prosperous toward Śalavatī. Around Vaiśālī there is famine. I will stay here with Ānanda. He will look after me.”

When they were alone, the Buddha was afflicted by a violent bout of sickness. He felt pains all over his body. Ānanda was in a state of constant agitation. Two questions echoed over and over in his confused mind: “What if the Buddha is utterly extinguished now? If the community is left without instructions?” All at once he realized he had asked the questions out loud. The Buddha replied: “What more can the community expect of me? I preached the doctrine without holding back.” And what he meant was. the esoteric no longer exists. Everything has been declared. All you have to do is listen. He went on: “I’m an old cart, vainly held together by thin belts. But even the diamond bodies of past Buddhas melted away. Even the gods of unconsciousness, who live for many kalpas , for millions and millions of years, die one day. Therefore. Ānanda, you must all stay on your islands, in your retreats — the islands and retreats of the doctrine.”

As soon as he was feeling better, the Buddha told Ānanda that he wanted to go back and see a few places near Vaiśālī that were dear to him. They reached a clearing that opened out toward a vast horizon. The Buddha asked Āuanda to stop. He had pains in his back again. Ānanda laid out the Buddha’s mat under a mango tree. Then he sat down next to him. The Buddha looked into the distance. He said: “Splendid and many-colored is the Island of the Jambū, and sweet the life of men.” They went down to Vaiśālī, to ask for alms. As they were leaving, the Buddha turned back, to his right. With elephant’s eyes, he looked at the city gate and smiled. “Why are you smiling?” asked Ānanda. “In twenty-five years I have never seen the Buddha turn to a city gate and smile.” “If a Buddha turns back and smiles, it must mean something. This is the Tathāgata’s last look at Vaiśālī,” said the Buddha.

There were three times in those last days when Ānanda omitted to ask a question. He did not ask the Buddha why man’s life is “sweet.” Another day, the Buddha three times remarked: “The interior of the Island of the Jambū is very pleasant.” Ānanda said nothing. Finally, shortly after the Buddha was feeling better, Ānanda heard him talk about the four “bases of magical powers” ( ṛddhipādas ), which, if developed, allow one to live for a whole kalpa , a whole cosmic cycle. Then the Buddha had added: “The Buddha now possesses those powers. Could he not, then, live for as long as the kalpa lasts? It would bring great good to the world, and the shadows would disperse. Gods and men would achieve peace.” Stubbornly, eyes steadily staring, Ānanda said nothing. It was his great, perhaps his only crime, certainly the only one he was reproached with, not just by the community of monks but by the Buddha himself. If at that critical moment Ānanda had asked the Buddha to exercise his powers and stay for a whole cosmic cycle, the Buddha would have stayed.

But why didn’t Ānanda say anything? He was possessed by Māra, who had ensconced himself in his belly. It was out of spite that Ānanda did not speak. “You did not grasp the sense of my words because you were possessed. I saw two horns on your head. Why did you let Māra get into your belly?” the Buddha asked him some time afterward. Those words buried themselves forever in Ānanda’s mind. Later, when he found himself alone before the monks, his inquisitors, still dressed in white before that huge splash of ocher robes, Ānanda admitted that he had been possessed by Māra. But then he added: “If the Buddha had stayed in the world for a whole kalpa , how could the Buddha Maitreya, who is to come after him, the venerable perfect one, ever appear?” Silence reigned among the holy gathering. Ānanda waited, terrified. A voice was raised: “Go back to your place. Repeat in their entirety the words you heard from the Buddha.”

That the compound disintegrate after eighty years or after three thousand was a matter of no importance to the Buddha. What matters is that the compound does disintegrate. Even the diamond Bodhisattva had disintegrated. So it was out of provocation that the Buddha let slip those words Ānanda would forever regret not having taken him up on: “There are those who have developed the four bases of magical powers ( ṛddhipādas ) and can live for a whole kalpa . I have developed them.” Ānanda said nothing. Was he distracted, confused? Or did he keep silent out of an excess of zeal? Or great wisdom? If Ānanda had asked the Buddha to exercise his powers, the world would have benefited immensely. But in so doing Ānanda would have shown that the important thing for him was the Buddha’s presence, not the truth of the doctrine, according to which it is irrelevant when a compound disintegrates, the crucial point being that the compound does disintegrate. By not asking the Buddha to stay — something that seemed the greatest of crimes to the monks and to himself—Ānanda had been faithful, perhaps too faithful (but can one ever be too faithful?) to the doctrine.

These were the Buddha’s last days. The Tathāgata said: “When I am no longer here, the monks can be happy even if they do not observe the lesser and least important of the rules.” Ever beside him. Ānanda said nothing. This was the moment in which the history of Buddhism was decided. Why didn’t Ānanda immediately ask the Buddha to specify which were “the lesser and least important of the rules.” When the implacable Mahākāśyapa — and the four hundred and ninety-nine monks meeting in the council of Rājagṛha — asked him to explain this omission. Ānanda said: “I didn’t want to pester the Buddha.” Yet he had pestered him so many times before… Now, as a result of that omission, the monks were obliged not to follow the Buddha’s advice. Had they announced that they were choosing not to observe “the lesser and least important of the rules,” everybody would immediately have said that the Order was degenerating, that now that the Master was gone, the monks were taking things easy. And how could they decide on their own which rules were “the lesser and least important” ones? The sixth and the ninth, in a list of rules? Or the fourth and the seventh? Or just the twelfth? Who could decide that? Ānanda observed a sad silence.

“But,” they went on, “if we obey all the rules just as they are, we will still be acting against the Buddha’s will. We will never know the happiness that he allowed us to glimpse when freed from the ‘lesser and least important of the rules.’” There was no way out. They decided they would go on following all the rules the Buddha had given them with equal zeal, even the ones that might seem obscure and irrelevant. Thus an invisible burden weighed on the monks. Sometimes they thought of that lightness that they would never now be able to achieve.