Deepak Chopra - Buddha - A Story of Enlightenment

“Weigh her down with stones,” Mara ordered. Devadatta shot him a look of hatred and dumped the bundle into the water. The bed sheets were not securely tied, and they billowed out over the surface of the river, a spectral white like sails in the moonlight. They retained enough air in bulges and bubbles that Sujata didn’t sink immediately, and the fast current carried her away. Devadatta didn’t wait. He wanted to forget that Mara was beside him.

“Not beside, dearest. Inside,” Mara said with satisfaction.

Devadatta trembled in despair. He had no doubt that the gods didn’t exist. But at that moment he understood why, when the horror of life finally reveals itself, somebody had to invent them.

Sujata’s disappearance wasn’t discovered for several days. The first day a maid ran to Kumbira with the news that the tray of food left outside Sujata’s door was untouched.

“She’s always pouting. Wait till she gets hungry enough.” Sujata’s staying in her room hadn’t hid her plight from Kumbira, who knew well enough that she was lovesick. But when her food was untouched the second day, Kumbira knocked on the door and entered. What she saw made her react quickly.

“Run away. Now.”

Kumbira pushed the maid who had followed her out the door, hoping that the drawn curtains hid the sight of blood on the stripped bed. But the frightened girl certainly saw something, which left Kumbira very little time before palace rumors would spread like wildfire. She immediately went to the king and laid before him everything that had happened between Sujata and the prince.

Suddhodana took the news more calmly than she had expected. And if the king was concerned about Sujata’s fate, it certainly didn’t show. “She was too ashamed to stay. Send a few men to search where she went. Not too many.” It wasn’t even half an hour before Channa carried the news to the prince, who immediately ran to Sujata’s room. Kumbira had been swift enough in having the bed removed; even so, Siddhartha was alarmed at Sujata’s sudden disappearance.

“I’ve sent my men out,” Suddhodana told him. “What else do you expect me to do? She wanted to go home. Somebody should have kept her from getting so lonely.”

Siddhartha was stung by his father’s implication. The pleasure pavilion had been open to him since he was sixteen, but in those two years he hadn’t gone there. Suddhodana was offended by this show of chastity. “I didn’t put those girls there so you could pray with them,” he had once taunted.

Stymied by his father’s indifference to Sujata, Siddhartha ran to Channa. “We have to find her.”

“Do we? Stop and think,” said Channa. “There’s a good chance your father is behind it himself. He wants her gone.”

“You think she’s like an old horse?” Siddhartha said coldly. He was well aware that his father caused people to disappear from sight after a certain age, no different from what went on in the stables.

Channa didn’t argue. He put a saddle on his favorite mount and started to lead it outside. “Don’t tell anyone I’m gone,” he said. “You’re staying here.” He saw Siddhartha flush a deep scarlet. “Go ahead, blame me,” said Channa. “You can’t risk leaving.”

Siddhartha was all too aware that if he rode past the palace gates in search of Sujata, no one could predict his father’s reaction. Every person at court had connived to keep him prisoner. But that wasn’t going to stop him. Siddhartha strode over to the saddle rack, took down a saddle, and began to cinch it on Kanthaka. The stallion usually stood still for him, but it shied and almost bucked.

“Easy,” Siddhartha whispered.

When he had mounted, Siddhartha headed toward the woods, leading the way. On their hunts Channa had once pointed out a stream that ran steeply down a hillside and more than once, despite the king’s soldiers on patrol, the prince wondered if it was an escape route. Channa had said, “There’s a dry gully at the bottom. If I ever wanted to leave without anybody knowing, I’d take the horses through the stream first to kill the scent. It’s even steeper beyond. Nobody bothers to patrol it.”

They headed that way now because if he was gone even an hour a scouting party would be sent out after him. That much was a given. The stream was easy to find; it was steep and rocky enough that both riders kept quiet, concentrating on the horses’ footing. The dry gully, as Channa had promised, got even steeper. They decided to walk the animals down. Under the black jungle canopy of tangled trees and vines, the sun struck their skin in dappled spots, but each speck felt searing at high noon. It wasn’t the way Siddhartha had envisioned his break to freedom. Reality dictated otherwise.

Channa began talking again, letting out his sentences in short bursts as he negotiated the scree-strewn slope. “My father swore me to secrecy about what happened when you and I were still sucking at the breast. The king sent them all away. All the old, sick ones. It was a bad time.”

Siddhartha had come to that conclusion on his own. After his mother’s death, it was the grimmest fact about his birth. Channa stopped talking, trying to calm his horse as the slippery ground slid out from under its feet. The gully led to an overgrown bamboo thicket, the space between the trees too close for a horse to squeeze through.

“There’s an old road just beyond. They took some of them that way.”

“Who?”

“Some women. Ones the king didn’t need anymore.”

Channa was recounting the past in a clipped, flat voice, like a physician noting the cause of death. “He told Bikram to take them out a secret way, the one we’re following. He didn’t want anybody to see.”

Siddhartha had a realization. “You hate him, don’t you?”

“You really want to know?” Without turning around, Channa lifted up his shirt, exposing the full extent of his wounds from the whipping. “A king’s no better than a criminal.” Silence followed until they reached the end of the thick bamboo. Channa stopped his horse and faced Siddhartha. “You can turn back, you know. Nobody would be the wiser.”

“Why would I?”

Channa looked more thoughtful than Siddhartha had ever seen him. “Your father may be a bastard, but he could be right, doing what he did. He kept misery away from you. Isn’t that a good thing? I try to work it out in my mind.”

“He wasn’t right.”

The determination in Siddhartha’s voice caught Channa’s attention.

“Three years went by. One of the women had a baby. Life was too hard, and she died. The baby survived. So your father sent guilt money and food, year after year.”

“Until she was old enough to bring to court,” said Siddhartha.

“Just be glad she’s not your half sister.” Channa’s tone was indifferent now. He’d taken the weight off his shoulders. “So, their village is up ahead. That’s where we have the best chance of finding Sujata if she did run away. Not that I believe it.”

Siddhartha didn’t ask Channa what he did believe. He had his own premonitions. He couldn’t escape the fact that he hadn’t seen Devadatta in the past few days. It would be like him to kidnap Sujata for revenge. Far better if the king had packed her off in the night instead.

Siddhartha gazed down at the village, which looked normal from a distance, a single dirt street winding between low bamboo huts, the only oddity being the parched wastelands and untended fields on the outskirts. Why aren’t the farmers tending their crops?

“Come on. You can’t really see much from here,” said Channa. He led the way down a narrow rutted trail. Weeds grew up to the horses’ stomachs. Channa pointed them out. “Nobody comes this way. They probably haven’t seen visitors for half a year.”