Roberto Calasso - Ka

After the Buddha’s funeral there was a stasis in the air. A dull curtain was drawn across everything. The community of monks were looking to make a gesture. They wanted a scapegoat, someone to punish. Among the hundreds of ocher robes, one white robe stood out: Ānanda. He who had heard more of the Buddha’s teaching than anybody else, who knew the doctrine like the palm of his hand. He who had failed to persuade the Buddha to stay alive. He who had omitted to ask him to stay at the right moment. Omission: what came could be worse? Every gesture can be redeemed by the mental state in which it is made. But omission is a defeat of the mind, makes a mockery of vigilance, which should be constant, always. “It didn’t occur to me,” Ānanda blurted out, with that effrontery which so exasperated the older monks, when they began to question him.

Four hundred and ninety-nine monks were arranged in a semicircle. Before them stood Ānanda, alone. In the center of the semicircle was Mahākāśyapa, the chief inquisitor. He had not witnessed the great events of the Buddha’s life. He was the last of the latecomers, but he came from farther away than the others. With the Buddha gone, the monks had been seized by the frenzy to follow him. They thought: “When the great elephant goes, the little ones follow him.” Mahākāśyapa stopped them with a voice that demanded obedience: “Monks, do not go! It is imperative that we all unite to prevent the Law from falling into ruin.” Then he sounded the gong to summon everybody to a gathering. And he warned the monks: “Before composing the supreme meaning, you must not give up life for extinction.” Now he was presiding over the assembly. He called Ānanda a “mangy jackal.” No one objected.

Gathered together at Rājagṛha, the monks reminded Ānanda that with his stubborn impudence he had always been one for the women, right to the end, as though in complicity with them. After his death, the Buddha’s feet, like the rest of his body, had been coated with gold. Yet the tears of some unknown woman had turned them white, as if the liquid of suffering were corrosive. It was Ānanda who had allowed this outrage.

And there was another, even more scandalous episode. Surrounded by a group of women, Ānanda had lifted the robes of the dead Buddha, thus revealing his phallus. Now everybody knew that the Buddha’s phallus was like that of those stallions with hidden testicles — or at least so it ought to have been to conform with the thirty-two lakṣaṇas , or “tokens” of perfection. But how dare Ānanda expose it to the adoration of those bigoted, or perhaps incredulous women? When they reproached him with this crime, Ānanda muttered something about the “nakedness of the Buddha.” But no one was convinced. Alone among the monks, even after the Buddha’s death, even in a now empty world, Ānanda went on plotting with the womenfolk, in the teeth of all criticism.

The line of monks moved along the road to Rājagṛha. Lost in their midst was a restless Ānanda. His hair was gray, but there were still those who called him “boy,” kumāraka . He thought: “Among all these arhats , I feel like a still unweaned calf among big oxen. My studies are still not over.” Before him and behind him, heavy, purposeful footfalls. It was a very different business from when he had walked along with the Buddha and the forest closed behind them as if they had never passed. Now he felt like one particle in a swarm, only he wasn’t sure whether of friends or enemies. Perhaps they set such store on keeping him with them the better to enjoy the moment when they would throw him out.

There were many paradoxes in the story of Ānanda. He was a servant who, while living among monks, never thought of becoming ordained himself, yet it was to him more than anyone else that the Buddha’s teaching was entrusted. Being alone, for the Buddha, meant being with Ānanda. Cut off by the rainy season, unable to move around, the monks would wonder what the Buddha in some other place might be saying to Ānanda, words they would never hear perhaps, words that might constitute the secret from which they were to be forever excluded. Thus they nursed a silent and growing rancor toward Ānanda, this eternal adolescent, albeit with a web of wrinkles around his eyes, who always seemed to be waiting for something, who fed on the words of the Buddha, close to him as his jugular, and thus never became “he who has done what must be done” ( kṛtakṛtya ). Then there was another paradox: the most serious crimes Mahākāśyapa accused Ānanda of, the ones that had had the gravest consequences, were a number of omissions. But at the same time, the community of monks depended on Ānanda and Ānanda alone if they were not to commit the most serious omission of all: ignoring or passing on incorrectly the Buddha’s words. Ānanda was the only one who had heard all those words. Would he agree to reveal the wonderful and hidden words, or would he jealously try to keep them for himself? At that moment, with the monks all assembled, their eyes converging on him and his crimes, and with Mahākāśyapa listing those crimes one by one, Ānanda was the body of the Law, which was entirely gathered together in his mind, just waiting to be recorded and divided up into the Three Baskets. The charges all leveled, the feeble answers of the accused all heard, Mahākāśyapa ordered: “Now get up. We shall not gather the essence of the holy words with you.” But then a monk called Anuruddha whispered what the whole community was thinking: “What shall we do without Āuanda, who has heard the Law in its entirety?” Ānanda went off, sadly, and the monks were left arid and abandoned in their uncertainty. Ānanda wandered around, in the forest again now, solitary and cheerless. What if he were unable to achieve that level of awakening which alone would allow him to present himself to the assembly of monks once more? What if he failed yet again to reach that goal he had never sought with real determination while living with the Buddha? There had been a reason for his not seeking it, a reason he had just confessed to Mahākāśyapa: if he had become an arhat , like other monks, he would not have been able to serve the Buddha, because an arhat cannot serve anyone. And that was the only thing Ānanda had wanted: to serve the Buddha. But was that really the only reason? Or had the ferocious Mahākāśyapa had good grounds for not believing him? Ānanda was well aware that contemplation was not his strong suit. He was too restless and anxious, there was always something distracting him. Now for the first time he was on his own, with no Buddha to serve. Nothing could hide his inadequacy now. He walked up and down, asked people the way. All of a sudden he thought he glimpsed liberation, but far away — and immediately it vanished. Nothing happened. Toward dawn he was overcome by a feeling of faintness that blurred his sight. He collapsed on his pallet. A moment before his head touched the pillow, he was dazzled. It was the awakening, which for him came together with sleep. And then he remembered. One day the Buddha had told him some words he hadn’t understood: that he would be able to still the currents thanks to extreme tiredness.

Ānanda got up from his pallet. It was still dark outside. He walked through the forest until it opened out on the clearing where the monks slept. He approached the door that Mahākāśyapa had shut behind him only a few hours ago, but as though forever. Ānanda knocked. Mahākāśyapa’s strong and vigilant voice answered at once: “Who is knocking?” “It’s me, Ānanda.” “Why have you come here?” “Last night I finally stilled the currents.” “We won’t open the door for you. Come in through the keyhole.” Ānanda went in through the keyhole. In the darkness he recognized the eyes of the monks, all staring at him. He fell down before them and confessed his crimes. Then he looked at his accuser and said: “Mahākāśyapa, do not reproach me.” “Do not harbor rancor toward me,” said Mahākākāśyapa. “I did it all so that you might find the way. Now go back to your place.”