Roberto Calasso - Ka

During the Buddha’s last night, Ānanda went about his duties as always, the most important being to decide who could be introduced to the Buddha and when. Lying between the twin śāla trees, the Buddha was gradually being covered by the petals of the two trees that had blossomed out of season, and by other petals falling slowly from the sky. Nearby, among the hovels of Kuśinagara, Ānanda had had to announce that in the third watch of the night the Buddha would be extinguished without residue. Already a large number of Mallas were crowding into this little village hidden away in the forest — and many others were arriving from the five nearby towns. They brought with them their children, their womenfolk, their servants. They wanted them all to be able to say one day: “I saw the Buddha.” They kept together in groups, as though afraid of losing each other in the confusion of a caravansary. Ānanda thought: “If I admit them to the Buddha’s presence one by one, I’ll never get them all to see him.” With all the experience he had accumulated in twenty-five years with the Buddha, he gave simple, straightforward instructions. They would be brought to the Buddha family by family. Ānanda led each family. The children stared wide-eyed, understanding nothing. Dozens and dozens of Malla folk filed by the two śāla , trees, Ānanda introducing every one of them. The Buddha looked at them and was silent. They too were silent, huddled together in one dark clump, like a heap of rags. Behind every family, the huddle of another could be seen, waiting motionless in the darkness. The only sound was the shuffling of new arrivals. As so often in the past, Ānanda directed everybody’s movements. He went from one group to the next. He was always present.

The last Malla family was leaving. The only sounds now were those of the animals in the forest. Ānanda felt tense and exhausted. A slim shadow materialized from the trees. A solitary figure, a wanderer with no faith, Subhadrā. He had passed by the village and heard the news. He said to Ānanda: “They told me that the Tathāgata will be extinguished in the last watch of the night. I feel uncertain about something. Perhaps the śramaṇa Gautama can free me from this uncertainty. I would like to be allowed to see him, Ānanda, like the others.” Imagining the Buddha wouldn’t hear him, Ānanda whispered: “It’s late, Subhadrā, my friend. Don’t disturb the Tathāgata. The Blessed One is tired.” But Subhadrā insisted. Then, soft and clear, came the Buddha’s voice: “Enough, Ānanda. Don’t keep Subhadrā away. Whatever he wants to ask me, it will be for knowledge. And he will understand what I tell him.” Then Ānanda said: “Come this way, Subhadrā. The Tathāgata will receive you.” After greeting him in accordance with the rules, Subhadrā sat down next to the Buddha. He spoke as though taking up an old, unfinished conversation, starting in the middle: “Did the old masters,” said Subhadrā—and he listed some illustrious names, including those of Ajita and Saṃjayin—“did the old masters understand or not? Or did some of them understand and others not?” “That’s enough, Subhadrā,” said the Buddha. “Let’s leave aside the question of whether they understood or not. Now listen to me. Whatever the discipline, if the noble eightfold path can be found within it, then likewise to be found there is the person who understands. Everything else is meaningless. For fifty years, ever since I left my father’s house, I have been a pilgrim in the vast realm of doctrine. There is no other knowledge. But within it the brotherhood can live the perfect life.” Subhadrā kept his eyes on the ground. He said: “The Tathāgata has shown me the truth in many ways. I too wish to find refuge in the doctrine. I too wish to enter the Order.” “Anyone,” said the Buddha, “who wishes to enter the Order after following another doctrine must submit to a trial period of four months.” Subhadrā went on staring at the ground. “I will submit to it. I hope that after four months they will accept me.” Then the Buddha called Ānanda and said: “Ānanda, welcome Subhadrā into the Order.” “It shall be done,” said Ānanda. Then Subhadrā rose to his feet and thanked Ānanda. He was the last disciple converted by the Buddha. He went on living a solitary life.

When Subhadrā left, the Buddha saw Ānanda was puzzled. The Buddha said: “Ānanda, don’t be surprised that I spoke to Subhadrā. One day, when I was king of the deer, the forest where we lived was set on fire. All we could hear around us was the desperate bellowing of our relatives and friends scorched by the flames. All the deer crowded together — and there was only one way out. Someone would have to lie down and form a bridge so that the others could escape by running over him. I lay down to make a bridge for them. Subhadrā was the last of the deer to pass over me. There will be no more now.”

The Buddha’s last words were: “Act without inattention.”

The earth, a lotus leaf, drifted on the waters. The “flower,” puṣkara , is also a “stronghold,” pūṣkara , say the gods, “who love what is secret” and thus play with the sounds of words. And it is also the “nest of the waters.” Life: an intermittent fever between long lapses of quiet, when the leaf wandered on the liquid surface. That leaf was a bed, a pallet. Who slept on it? The drowsy god, who had just created or fought his enemy or descended into the world in some form or other. The vegetable filaments could become a snake’s coils, twined together as though in a basket. Softly stretched upon them was Viṣṇu.

The beginning: something not to be found in nature. The first distinct image was that of Viṣṇu drifting on the waters, his head reclined on Śeṣa. In the image that precedes all others, Viṣṇu was already resting on the past. The first world was always at least the second, always concealed within it another that had come before.

Śeṣa was also śeṣa , the “residue” one meets every day: food leftovers, remainders in division, the remnants of our actions, which are still there even when the fruit of the action has been consumed, on the earth and in the sky. From that residue new life develops. The new is an old, old lump, which refuses to dissolve.

Residues are ubiquitous. They hem us in on every side. The crucial thing is how we deal with them: do we eliminate them? cultivate them? Sometimes they contaminate, sometimes they enhance. “On the residue are founded name and shape, on the residue is founded the world.” Not only is the world founded on the residue but the world is the first of all residues, broken off from something immensely more vast that in its overabundance could not bear to remain whole. “This is the world,” thought the ṛṣis .

“In the beginning, only the Self ( ātman ) was this ( idam , the world). Nothing else flickered an eyelid.” If we don’t really know, and we can never really know, what the ātman is, what the Self is, here we find a hint. Only what is conscious blinks, only what is inhabited by a mind. Thus “this,” and hence the world, was the mind, before it came to be called “the world.” Rather than a laborious process, the passage from what happened before creation to what happened afterward was a flickering of eyelids. It separated the quiescent world from a world that was looking at something. Creation was the looking. To measure life on earth one had to know the relationship between the lotus leaf and the waters. The liquid expanse was the iris, which surrounded the pupil: the flower. When Urvaśī appeared in the form of a swan, on the waters of the pond Anyatahplaksā, one of the six Apsaras escorting her was called Hradecakṣus, the Eye of the Pond.