The Pilgrim Kamanita/Chapter 36
The setting sun shot its sheaf of rays through the openings between the trunks, consecrating, it seemed, with a heavenly benediction, the silent and expectant company assembled in the depths of the forest; and, between the tree-tops, roseate evening clouds looked down in ever-growing luminousness, as though, floating out from the blue ether, a second assembly were gathering, recruited from the hosts of heaven.
The temple building, with its black and crumbling walls, absorbed this farewell blaze of sunshine, as a broken-down old man quaffs a rejuvenating draught. Beneath the magic of the red-gold lights and the purple shadows, its masses grew wonderfully animated. The jagged edges of the fluted pillars sparkled, the corners flashed, the snails curled themselves up, the stone waves foamed with froth of gold, the carven foliage grew. Along the stair-like projections of the lofty substructure, round about plinths and capitals, on the beams, and on the terraces of the dome-like roof—everywhere—a confused medley of strange and mystical forms seemed to be in motion. Gods came forth in a halo of glory, many-headed and many-armed figures with all-too-luxuriant and, often, greatly mutilated limbs, the one stretching out four headless necks, the next waving eight stumps of arms. Breasts and hips of the voluptuously limbed goddesses were unveiled as these came swaying nearer, their round faces tilted under the burden of the towering, diamond-bespangled head-gear, a sunny smile on their full, sensuous lips. The snake-like extremities of the demons writhed and twisted, the wings of the griffins were spread for flight, grim masks of monsters, showing their whetted teeth, grinned horribly, human bodies swarmed, and, in and through the mad throng, to and fro, now over, now under, elephants' trunks, the heads of horses, and the horns of bulls, stags' antlers, crocodiles' jaws, monkeys' muzzles, and tigers' throats reeled in a tangled mass.
That was no longer an edifice decorated with statuary. These were statues come to life, which, breaking through the ban laid upon them by the building, had freed themselves from its solid mass and would hardly tolerate it further, even as a support. A whole world seemed to have wakened up out of its stony sleep, and, with its thousands of figures, to be pressing forward in order to listen—to listen to the man who stood at the top of the steps, surrounded and overshadowed by the whole swarm of them, the long hanging folds of his robe bathed in a golden glow—he, the living, the one perfectly calm soul amid this restless and delusive life of the lifeless.,
It now seemed as if the stillness of the assembly grew deeper; yes, it even seemed to me that the very leaves of the trees ceased to whisper.
And the Master began tor speak.
He spoke of the temple, on the steps of which he stood, and where our ancestors had for hundreds of years worshipped Krishna in order to be inspired by the example of his heroic life to heroic action and suffering here on earth, to be strengthened by his favour, and finally to pass through the gates of death to his paradise of pleasure, and to enjoy the raptures of heaven there. But now, we, their descendants, had come together to hear from the lips of a perfect Buddha the words of truth, in order to learn how to lead a pure and perfect life, and, finally, by a complete victory over desire for the fleeting and perishable, to reach the end of all suffering, to reach Nirvana. In this way he, the Buddha, the Fully Awakened One, completed the work of the dreaming god; in this way we, grown up, completed what our ancestors had, with the noble enthusiasm of childhood, begun.
"There ye see," he said, "how a gifted artist of days long past has reproduced in stone Krishna's combat with the elephant;" and he pointed to a huge relief which lay almost at my feet, one corner pressed into the turf, the other supported by a half-buried capital. The last glow of the setting sun lingered caressingly on the moss-covered relic, and, in its mild radiance, one could still clearly recognise the group—that of a youth setting his foot upon the head of a fallen elephant, one of whose tusks he breaks off.
And the Master now related how the King of Mathura, the horrible tyrant Kamsa, after he had invited Krishna to a prize contest at his court, secretly ordered his mahout to drive his wildest war elephant out of the stables upon the unsuspecting youth, and that, too, at the very entrance to the scene of the coming struggles. And how the latter slew the monster, and, to the terror of the king, entered the arena bespattered with blood, and with the tusk he had broken off in his hand.
"But a the Master also," he added, continuing his discourse, "enemies had hounded a savage elephant. And at the sight of the monster dashing down upon him, the Master was seized with pity. For blood streamed down the creature's breast, and the wounds from the lances of his tormentors were many. But his pity deepened as he saw there before him, not merely a wounded, but a hapless, creature who had become the prey to a passion of blind rage—a creature dowered by nature with courage and enormous strength, but gifted with little understanding, and robbed of that little by the cruelty of base men, who had roused it to the condition of madness in which it was actually being brought to destroy a Buddha—a poor, wild, dazed brute, and not likely, save with great difficulty and after endlessly long wanderings, to attain a propitious human existence, and to enter the path that leads to salvation.
"Filled full of pity as he was, the Master could feel no fear; and no thought of his own danger arose within him. For he reasoned thus: 'If I should succeed in casting even the faintest ray of light into this tempestuous darkness, such a spark of light would gradually grow; and when this creature, led by its glimmer, arrived at human existence, then it would find on earth the doctrine of the Master it had once killed, and this teaching would help it to salvation.'
"Possessed by this thought, the Master halted in the middle of the road, raised his hand with a calming gesture, looked lovingly at the raging creature, and uttered gentle words, the sound of which reached its savage heart. The giant beast stopped in his charge, rocked his mountain of a head irresolutely back and forth, and, instead of the thundering peal heard from him a moment before, gave vent to one or two almost timid trumpet-calls. At the same time he tossed his trunk into the air and swung it in every direction as if seeking something—like the wounded elephant in the forest when he has lost the spoor of his hidden enemy and hopes to scent it again—and, in very truth, he had been mistaken in his enemy. Finally, he came slowly to within a few paces of the Master and bent his knee, as he was accustomed to do before his owner when the latter wished to mount him. And, followed by the tamed elephant, the Master, to the confusion of his enemies, entered the park to which he had just been on the way.
"In this way," so the Buddha ended his parallel, "does the Master take up Krishna's battle with the elephant, spiritualise, refine, complete it."
While I listened to this tale, how could I do other than think of Angulimala, the most savage of the savage, who but yesterday wished to destroy the Buddha, and had not only been tamed, but converted, by the irresistible might of the Buddha's personality, so that I now saw him devoutly sitting opposite to me in the ranks of the monks—changed, even in his outward appearance, to another. And so it seemed that the words of the Master were most particularly addressed to me, as the only person—at all events, outside the circle of the monks—who knew of this matter, and could understand the significance of his speech.
The Master now went on to speak of Krishna as the "Sixteen-thousand-one-hundredfold Bridegroom," for as such had our ancestors worshipped him here, and again I had a feeling as though secret reference were being made to me, for I remembered that, on the night of our last meeting, the hateful old witch had called the divine hero by this name, which I did not hear without a certain fluttering of the heart. With a gentle dash of humour the Master then related how Krishna took possession of all the treasures which he had carried off from the castle of the demon king, Naraka. "And on one auspicious day," it is said, "he married all the virgins, and all at the same moment, appearing to each one individually as her husband. Sixteen thousand one hundred was the number of the women, and in just so many separate forms did the god incorporate himself, so that each maiden's thought was, "Me only hath the Master chosen."
"And, in like fashion," the Master continued, "when I declare the doctrine, and before me there sits an assembly of several hundred monks and nuns, and lay disciples of both sexes, listening, then each one of all these listeners thinks, 'To me alone hath the ascetic Gautama declared this doctrine.'
"For upon the individual nature of each seeker after peace do I direct the power of my spirit; I calm it, fill it with harmony, make it to be at one with itself.
"This I do, always, and in this way I take the sixteen-thousand-one-hundredfold bridal state of Krishna, spiritualise it, refine it, complete it."
Of course it at once appeared to me as though the Master had read my thoughts, and had given me a secret reproof, in order that I might not entertain the delusion that I occupied a privileged position, and so become the victim of a pernicious vanity.
And now the Buddha went on to speak of how, according to the belief of our forefathers, Krishna, although himself the Supreme God, the Upholder and Preserver of the whole world, yet, moved by pity for all created beings, suffered a portion of his own divine personality to descend from high heaven, and to be born as a man among men. Passing to himself, the Master said that when, after ardent struggle, he had made perfect enlightenment, the blessed and abiding certainty of salvation, his own, the desire came to him to remain in the enjoyment of this blessed serenity, and not to declare the doctrine to others. "'For this pleasure-loving generation'—thus I reasoned—'will hardly comprehend the freeing itself from all the forms assumed by existence, the quenching of all desire for life, the blotting out of all delusion; and, for the declaring of the doctrine, my only reward will be labour and vexation of spirit.' Thus did my nature incline to uncommunicativeness, and not to the proclamation of the doctrine. Then I looked with seeing eyes yet once again upon the world. And as in a lotus pond one sees some lotus flowers which develop in the waters and remain under the surface, others which force their way to the surface and float there, and, finally, others which rise above the waters and stand free from all contact with them; so also in this world I saw beings of a low type, beings of a noble type, and beings of the noblest type. And I reasoned thus: 'If they do not hear the doctrine they will lose their way: these will understand the doctrine.' And out of pity for these beings I decided to resign for a time the undisturbed possession of the blessed calm of Nirvana, and to proclaim the doctrine to the world.
"Thus does a perfect Buddha take up Krishna's coming down from heaven and becoming man, give it inward force, illumine, and complete it."
As he said this, there came to me a feeling of unspeakable joy; for I knew that the Buddha numbered me with the lotus flowers that had risen to the surface of the water, and that I, by his help, would one day raise myself above it, and would stand free, unsullied by material things.
Further, the Master told us of those heroic deeds of Krishna, by which he had freed the world from monsters and wicked rulers, and had added to the happiness of all created beings. How he had vanquished the water serpent Koliya, slain the bull-shaped demon Aristha, destroyed the ravaging monsters Dhenuka and Kishi, and the demon prince Naraka, had overcome and killed the villainous kings Kamsa and Paundraka, and other bloody tyrants who were the terror of helpless human beings, and had thus ameliorated in many a way the distressful fate of man.
But he, the Master, did not combat the foes that assailed men from without, but the monsters in their own hearts—greed, hate, insanity, love of self, the desire for pleasure, the thirst for the things that pass away; and he freed humanity, not from this or that evil, but from suffering.
Then the Blessed One spoke of suffering which everywhere and always follows life like its shadow. And I felt as though some one with gentle hand lifted the load of pain my love had brought me, bore it away, and cast it into the great maelstrom of suffering, where, in the general whirl, it disappeared from view. In my inmost soul, and deeply, did I feel that I had no right to enduring happiness where all suffer. I had enjoyed my happiness; it was born, had unfolded itself, and had passed, just as the Buddha taught that everything in this world comes from some source, and, after its time is fulfilled, must—sooner or later—again pass away. This very transitoriness, in which the unreality of every individual thing veiled itself, was, he told us, the final, the unavoidable source of suffering—unavoidable so long as the desire for existence was not uprooted—so long as it continued to flourish luxuriantly and for ever to give rise to something new. And as each individual is, from the very fact of his existence, accessory to the suffering of the world, I should now be obliged—or so it seemed to me—if I had been spared pain, to feel myself doubly guilty, and to be filled with a desire to bear my part also.
I was no longer able to bewail my own lot; on the contrary, as I listened to the Master's words, the thought awoke in me, "Oh, that all created beings were no longer obliged to suffer! that this holy man might so succeed in his work of salvation, that all—all—purified from sin and enlightened, might reach the end of all suffering."
And the Master spoke also of this end of suffering and of the world, of the overcoming of every form of existence, of salvation in an even state of mind void of all desire, of the blotting out of all delusion, of Nirvana—strange, wonderful words telling of the only island in all this troubled sea of birth on whose rocky shore the breakers of death dash in impotent foam, and over to which the doctrine of the Perfect One sailed like a trusty ship. And he spoke of that blessed place of peace, not as one speaks who relates to us what he has heard from others—from priests—and also not as a song maker who lets his fancy rove, but like one who communicates what he has himself experienced and seen.
Much he said, it is true, in the course of it, which I, untaught woman, did not understand, and which would not have been easily understood by even the most learned of men.
Many things I was not able to reconcile; for here existence and non-existence were, at one and the same time, not life, and yet still less lifelessness. But I felt in heart like one who hears a new song utterly unlike any other he has ever heard, a song of which he is able to catch but a few words, yet the music of which penetrates his heart, telling him everything. And what music! Notes of such crystal purity that all other sounds when compared with it must seem to the listener like empty noise, strains bringing greetings from so far away, from so far above the spheres, that a new and undreamt-of longing is awakened, of which one felt that it can never be stilled by anything earthly or earth-like, and which, if unsatisfied, will never pass away.
Meanwhile night had come down. The pale light of the moon, as it rose behind the temple, threw shadows from the latter right across the whole width of the forest glade. The form of the speaker was all but undistinguishable. These more than human words appeared to come forth from the sanctuary itself that had swallowed again into its mass of shadow all the thousand wild and tangled, life-simulating forms, and now towered upward in simple but imposing lines, a monument of all terrestrial and celestial life.
My hands folded about my knees, I sat there listening and looking up to the heavens, where great stars glittered over the dark tree-tops, and the heavenly Gunga lay extended like a river of light. Then I remembered the hour when we both, at that same spot, solemnly raised our hands to it, and mutually swore by its silver floods which feed these lotus lakes, that we would meet here again in the Paradise of the West—in a heaven of pleasure like to that of Krishna, of which the Master had just spoken, as of the place which the faithful strove to reach.
And as I thought of it, my heart grew sad; but I could trace no desire in myself for such a life in Paradise, for a shimmer of something infinitely higher had shone in my eyes.
And without disappointment, without anything of the painful emotion he feels whose dearest hopes are shattered, I caught the words of the Master—
"To be born is to die; all-destroying, oblivion's breath holds sway;
As in gardens of Earth, flowers in Paradise fade, and pass away."