Deepak Chopra - Buddha - A Story of Enlightenment

He found an armful of dry kindling, and when the rain abated he headed back to camp. Now the process reversed itself. The closer he got to the small clearing, the better he felt. His mind calmed down, and the shivering in his limbs subsided. As he set foot in camp and saw his master again, perfect peace descended like a curtain over his whole being. Gautama stared at the old hermit in wonder.

“Mara.”

Gautama was startled. “What?”

“Mara is interested in you.” Gautama opened his mouth, but the hermit shook his head abruptly. “You know it’s true. You knew it before you came here.”

Gautama trembled, sensing that a gulf was opening up between himself and his master. He was surprised at how afraid this made him feel. “I haven’t thought of Mara in years,” he protested.

“And so you kept him away. For a time.”

The hermit breathed a deep sigh, as if he had to remind his body how to return to the physical world before he could say another word. A few agonizing moments passed. Siddhartha felt his heart sink. If he can smell that I have a wife, what must a demon smell like? he thought.

The hermit said, “Mara will keep away from me. He has no interest in feeding when the bowl is empty. You are different.”

“What interest could he have in me?” asked Gautama.

“You don’t know?” The old hermit saw the look of bafflement in his disciple’s eyes. “There’s something he can’t let you find out. You must go beyond anything I can teach. That’s the only way to rid yourself of the demon,” his master said.

Gautama felt panicky. He bowed to the ground and seized the hermit’s gnarled feet. “At least tell me what I’m looking for.”

When he got no reply, Gautama glanced up to see that the old hermit had closed his eyes again and was far away. The disciple could barely sleep that night. When he woke up before dawn he saw no dark outline against the night sky. His master had left. Grief overwhelmed Gautama, and yet deep down he wasn’t completely shocked-his master could only do the right thing. That was their bond, and he would never betray it. At that moment leaving had been the right thing.

Gautama could have hung around camp for a few hours or perhaps a day to see if his abandonment was only temporary. But the storm in his heart and the return of despairing thoughts told him something definitive. His master had withdrawn his protection; therefore, their relationship had come to an end. Carefully the young monk tidied up the camp. He swept the ground and put a fresh gourd of water beside the place under the lean-to where the hermit sat. Then he bowed to the grass mat that had been his master’s only throne and departed.

As it turned out, one shred of their relationship was left. As he trudged back to the main road several miles away, Gautama fell to musing. He saw the hermit’s face and its look of pity. He heard his own desperate plea, “At least tell me what I’m looking for.” The hermit turned implacable; he closed his eyes and refused to speak. Only this time the answer came silently in Gautama’s mind.

There is one thing Mara can never let you find out: the truth about who you really are.

Gautama wandered down the road, his whole being churning with what the hermit had told him. Before he left his father’s kingdom he had fought against Mara the only way he knew how-by trying to alleviate suffering and want wherever he could. Saints persevere even though the tide of suffering rolls back in despite their compassion. Mara had survived a lot of saints. What was one more?

But a strange new element had been added. The forest hermit implied that the demon was afraid of Gautama. But why? Demons are immortal; they can’t be harmed physically. The riddle went even deeper. Gautama seemed to be the only person Mara feared.

These thoughts kept turning over in Gautama’s head like wheels within wheels. How remarkable that in one day all the peace he had gained with his master in the forest had come undone. Why even seek a teacher if the same thing would only happen again? Gautama muttered the only words of consolation that he could remember.

“Surrender and be free.”

“Did you say something, brother?”

“What?” Gautama looked up to see another monk about his age. “How long have you been standing there?”

“A few minutes. Care to join us? You’ve got a hungry look about you. There’s a well-off farmer up the road, and his wife doesn’t exactly hate me.” The young monk spoke with a half smile and a sense of assurance. Gautama rose and followed him down the shade-dappled dirt road. At the next bend he saw a patch of brilliant saffron flash through the trees, and when a small band of monks rounded the bend, the one Gautama was with waved to them. “Press on!” he shouted.

Gautama remained silent, melting into the group like a stray fish merging back into its school. The monk who had gathered him in was taller and older than the others. “Where are you headed?” he asked.

“East.” Gautama replied. There were big towns toward the east, and with large populations there would be more ashrams and all the famous teachers. He’d ask for help with his dilemma.

“Who are you?” the taller monk asked.

Gautama gave his name and the taller monk gave his: Pabbata.

“We’ll take you as far east as we’re headed,” Pabbata said. “You’ll be safer in a pack. These four scruffs are my cousins.”

“You all wanted to be monks?” asked Gautama with surprise.

Pabbata laughed sheepishly. “We all wanted to see more of life than a quarter-acre field that the jungle tries to take back every year.” His cousins nodded in assent. They began to chat among themselves, ignoring the stranger, and it didn’t take long for Gautama to take their measure. These were typical young men, all but Pabbata still adolescents, who needed to get out and stretch. They eyed every pretty farm girl who passed by on the road, joked with anyone who spoke their dialect, eagerly asked for news and gossip if they were lucky enough to meet a villager from near their home. Gautama didn’t have to close his eyes for the disguise of saffron robes to vanish.

“Have you found a Dharma?” he asked Pabbata when there was a lull and the group fell relatively quiet. He expected the taller monk to answer indifferently or with a joke, but his face lit up.

“I think about the Dharma night and day,” he said.

His cousins laughed, and one said, “He’s the serious one. We let him think for the rest of us.”

Pabbata’s spine stiffened. “Without a teaching, we’re no better than shiftless beggars.” This rebuke, mild as it was, irked his cousins, who sped up and left Gautama and Pabbata to trail behind. Gautama was glad to see them go.

Suddenly Pabbata asked, “Do you know why I stopped for you?”

“You seem kind.”

“Maybe. Fat lot of good that does you on these roads. No, it was something else. I was trudging behind my cousins, cursing the heat, thinking about someone I left behind, if you know what I mean. All at once I felt this cool breeze, and when I looked in the shadows, there you were. You understand?”

“No.”

Pabbata looked disbelieving. “You’re putting me on, right?”

When Gautama didn’t reply, the taller monk’s eyes widened. “You mean you don’t know? It was you. I felt your presence.”

Siddhartha could feel himself flush a deep scarlet. “That’s impossible. Let me assure you-”

“Assure me?” Pabbata guffawed. “I had a feeling you were high-caste. Look at you, even saying that makes you go red.”

Gautama was drawn to the tall countrified monk. He said, “I’ve been with a saint in the forest. I felt his presence. Every day, every minute. It made me-I don’t know what it made me.”