By Eknath Easwaran

The early Buddhists were not biographers or historians, any more than the early Christians were. Their first passion, when their teacher was no longer with them in the body, was to record not what they knew of his past but what he had taught. Of the Buddha’s life before illumination, therefore, the scriptures record only isolated fragments. From these has been pieced together the story of the Buddha as it is told today. The inconsistencies in the sources need not trouble us. Whatever their value as historical evidence, there can be no doubt that the story captures a real and deeply appealing personality.

Siddhartha Gautama was born around 563 B.C., the son of a king called Shuddhodana who ruled the lands of the Shakya clan at the foot of the Himalayas, along what is today the border between India and Nepal. Though not monarch of an empire like the neighboring kings of Kosala and Maghada, Shuddhodana was well-to-do, and his capital, Kapilavastu, had prospered from its location near the trade routes into the Ganges valley. Apparently his power was not absolute, but shared with a voting assembly called the sangha – the same name the Buddha would later give to his monastic order, one of the earliest democratic institutions in the world.

When the child was born, a holy man prophesied that he would either become an emperor or renounce the world for a great spiritual destiny. His parents gave him the name Siddhartha, “he whose purpose in life has been attained.” Like most loving fathers, however, King Shuddhodana had little interest in seeing his son and sole heir wander off into the forest in search of truth. He ordered his ministers not to expose the boy to tragedy or allow him to lack anything he desired.

Siddhartha was an extraordinarily gifted child, and we are told that he received the best education for kingship that the world of his day could offer. He excelled in sports and physical exploits combining strength with skill – particularly archery, in which he stood out among a people famous for their prowess with the bow. He had a quick, clear intellect matched by an exquisite tenderness, a rare combination which would stamp his later life. He showed both when as a youth he saw a bird shot down by the arrow of his cousin Devadatta. Siddhartha, already dimly aware of his bond to all living creatures, tenderly removed the arrow, then took the bird home and nursed it back to health. Devadatta, furious, insisted that the bird was his, and took his case to the king. “I shot that bird,” he said. “It’s mine.” But Siddhartha asked, “To whom should any creature belong: to him who tries to kill it, or to him who saves its life.”

At the age of seven or eight the prince went to the annual plowing festival, where his father ceremonially guided the bullocks in plowing the first furrow. It was a long, stressful day, and when the boy grew sleepy his family set him down to rest on a platform under a rose apple tree. When they returned, hours later, they found him seated upright in the same position as they had left him. Disturbed by the ceaseless toil of the bullocks and plowmen and the plight of the tiny creatures who lost their homes and lives in the plowing, Siddhartha had become absorbed in reflection on the transience of life. In this profound absorption he forgot himself and his surroundings completely, and a joy he had never known suffused his consciousness.

Siddhartha grew up accustomed to luxury and ease. Later he would tell the austere monks gathered around him, “I was delicately nurtured, brothers. When a piece of silk was not the very softest grade, I would not wear it next to my skin. Only the freshest fruits were sent to me, and a whole staff of cooks looked after my meals.” Nothing unpleasant was allowed to enter his vision.

On attaining manhood, Siddhartha learned that a lovely cousin named Yashodhara would choose her husband from the princes and chieftains who vied for her hand in a contest of archery. Siddhartha showed up on the appointed day, supremely confident of his skill. One of the suitors hit the bull’s-eye, but Siddhartha stepped forward boldly and with one shot split his rival’s arrow down the middle.

Yashodhara proved to be as loving as she was lovely, and in time the couple had a son named Rahula who combined the beauty and tender nature of them both. Siddhartha was twenty-nine. His future promised every fulfillment life could offer.

By this time, however, gnawing questions had begun to haunt his mind. The innocent pleasures of his life seemed fragile, edged with the poignancy of something not quite real enough to hold on to. An awareness preoccupied him which most thoughtful people taste but seldom face: that life passes swiftly and leaves very little behind.

His questions must have been old when history began; we ask them still. Has life a purpose, or is it only a passing show? Is there nothing more to hope for than a few good friends, a loving family, some memories to savor before one goes? It was questions like these that sent many into the forests along the Ganges to the sages of the Upanishads, and Yashodhara, seeing the look in her husband’s eyes, grew troubled. Even their newborn son had not brought him peace.

Finally, desperate to ease his tormented mind, Siddhartha persuaded his father to agree to a day outside the walls of his estates. Recalling the prophesy at his son’s birth, King Shuddhodana made sure the city was ready. No one poor, no one sick, no one unhappy was to be present along the prince’s designated route.

Yet despite all precautions, among the cheerful, cheering crowd who turned out to greet him, Siddhartha happened to catch sight of a man whose face was sallow and drawn and whose eyes were glazed with fever. “What is the matter with this man, Channa?” he asked his charioteer in horror.

“That is disease,” Channa replied. “All are subject to it. If a man is mortal, disease can strike him, even if he be rich or royal.”

Siddhartha continued on his excursion, but he could not forget the pallor of the man’s face or the haunted look in his eyes.

The next day Siddhartha ventured outside the city again. This time he saw a bent, wrinkled woman faltering on her staff. Siddhartha regarded her with compassion. “Is this, too, disease?” he asked.

“No,” Channa replied. “It is only age, which overtakes us all.”

“Will my wife become like that.”

“Yes, my lord. Even Princess Yashodhara, beautiful as a full moon in a cloudless sky. One day her skin too will be wrinkled and her eyes dim, and she will falter in her steps.”

“Channa, I have seen enough. Take me back.”

But in the palace Siddhartha found no peace. Before long he ventured out a third time, and on this occasion he saw a corpse stretched out on a bier for cremation. “What is that, Channa, which resembles a man but looks more like a log.”

“That was once a man, but death has come to claim him; only his body remains. Death will come for all of us, rich or poor, well or ill, young as well as old.”

“Even for my newborn son.”

“Yes, my lord. He too will lie like that one day.”

The prince closed his eyes and covered his ears. But a bomb had burst in the depths of his consciousness, and everything around him seemed edged with mortality.

On his way home a fourth sight arrested him: a man seated by the roadside with closed eyes, his body upright and still. “Channa, what kind of man is that? Is he dead too.”

“No. That is a bhikshu, who has left worldly life to seek what lies beyond. When the body seems dead but the spirit is awake, that is what they call yoga.”

Siddhartha rode home deep in thought.

The rest of that day he found no peace. The roses in his garden, whose beauty had always caught his eye, now reminded him only of the evanescence of life. The bright scenes and laughter of the palace flowed by like running water. “Everything is change,” he thought; “each moment comes and goes. Is there nothing more, nothing to the future but decline and death?” These questions are familiar from the lives of saints and seekers in every tradition, and there is nothing morbid about them; it is this awareness of death that brings life into clear focus. The Buddha-to-be was beginning to wake up.

Shuddhodana noticed with alarm the change that had come over his son. Gone was the enjoyment he had always found in his sports and games and the company of his friends; his mood was sober and indrawn. The king consulted with his ministers and concluded that Siddhartha had grown weary of married life and needed diversion. That very night they arranged a spectacle featuring the loveliest dancing girls in the land.

The performance went on past midnight. Finally the last guest left and the dancers fell asleep. One by one the lights burned out. Only Siddhartha remained awake, scarcely aware of the world, brooding over a still unconscious choice.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning – it was, the chronicles tell us, the first full moon of spring – Siddhartha looked around him in the shadowy hall and saw a chilling sight. The dancers lay snoring in the postures in which they had fallen asleep, and in the moonlight the lithe bodies that had seemed so lovely in silk and makeup looked coarse and offensive in their disarray. The chroniclers say it was a conjuring trick of the gods, who wanted the prince to reject the pleasures of the world and seek enlightenment. But no such explanation seems necessary. For a moment the curtain of time had gone up, and Siddhartha had seen beneath the tinsel of appearance, past the strange illusion that makes us believe the beauty of the moment can never fade.

That moment he resolved to go forth from the life he had known, not to see his family again until he had found a way to go beyond age and death. For a long moment he lingered at the doorway to his bedchamber, watching his wife and son asleep in each other’s arms. Young, delicate, full of tenderness, they seemed now to stand for all creatures, so vulnerable in the face of time and change. Afraid his resolve might fail, he did not wake them.

In the dark hours before dawn Channa brought the white horse Kanthaka, his hooves padded so that no one would hear his steps in the courtyard. They traveled eastward until dawn. At the river Anoma the prince dismounted, slipped the rings and ornaments of royalty from his body, and removed his robes and sandals. “Take these back to the palace now, Channa. I must go on alone.”

Channa received the bundle with tears in his eyes, for he had served the prince many years and loved him deeply. He pleaded to be allowed to go along, but to no avail. Kanthaka too, according to the chronicles, wept as Channa led him home, and died soon afterward of a broken heart.

At the edge of the forest, Siddhartha scavenged some rags from the graves of executed convicts. They too had severed their bonds with the world, and were not all creatures under sentence of death? Their color, saffron yellow, has been ever since the emblem of a Buddhist monk.

Siddhartha put on his makeshift robe, burned the rest of his clothes, and cut off his black hair. Henceforth he would own no more than his robe and a mendicant’s bowl, and eat only such food as he might be given. He was ready to plunge into his quest.

In the forest, Siddhartha studied yoga – meditation – with the best teachers he could find. With each he learned quickly what they had to teach, mastering their disciplines and matching their austerities, and discovered that they had not found the goal he sought.

Siddhartha then struck off on his own. For six years he wandered in the forest, subjecting his body to all kinds of mortification. Perhaps, he reasoned, his teachers had not been austere enough to reach the goal. Perhaps through starvation he could break his identification with his body, winning detachment from its ultimate fate.

Day by day he reduced his intake of food until he was eating only one grain of rice a day. His body became so emaciated that he could reach into the cavern of his stomach and feel his spine. Such power of will attracted attention from other seekers, and on the banks of the river Neranjara he was joined by five ascetics who became his disciples.

With his body so worn down, however, Siddhartha discovered that he could no longer meditate well. His mind lacked the vitality for intense, sustained concentration. He began casting about for another approach, and there came to his mind the experience under the rose apple tree so long ago, where he had tasted the joy that comes when the clamor of the mind and senses is stilled. “Austerity is not the way to the calming of passion, to perfect knowledge, to freedom,” he thought. “The right way is that which I practiced at the foot of the rose apple tree. But that is not possible for someone who has spent his strength.”

At that time, Sujata, the lovely daughter of a nearby householder, had just borne her first child and wanted to make a thanksgiving offering. “The radiant god to whom you prayed for a son,” her handmaid reported, “is sitting under a banyan tree by the side of the river. Why not make your offering to him directly?” So Sujata prepared her favorite delicacies and brought them in a golden bowl to the banks of the Neranjara, where she offered them to the man whose frail frame seemed suffused with light.

Siddhartha ate slowly, and when his hunger was satisfied he twisted a wick from the ragged edge of his robe, placed it in oil in the bowl, lighted it, and set his makeshift lamp afloat in the river’s slow waters. “If I am not to attain complete freedom,” he declared, “let this bowl travel with the current downstream.” It drifted in the eddies, then seemed to move slowly against the flow.

Siddhartha’s disciples witnessed these peculiar developments with amazement. Was this the man who for six years had outdone all other seekers in austerity? They had put their trust in his unbreakable determination; when they saw him waver and change course, they abandoned him in disgust. Siddhartha was again alone.

It was spring, when the world itself was quickening with new life. The very landscape must have reminded him of that ploughing festival so many years before, when his mind had spontaneously plunged into meditation. “When a good archer first hits the bull’s-eye,” he told his disciples later, “he stops and examines everything carefully. How was he standing? How was he holding the bow? How did his fingers let the arrow go? And he tries to make everything the same for the next shot. In the same way, brothers, I set about sytematically trying to repeat what had led to success so long ago.”

Near the city of Gaya he found a tranquil spot under a sacred fig tree and carpeted a place with fresh, fragrant grass. Folding his legs beneath him, he drew himself straight for meditation and took a solemn vow: “Come what may – let my body rot, let my bones be reduced to ashes – I will not get up from here until I have found the way beyond decay and death.” It was dusk and the moon was rising, the first full moon of the first month of spring.

Thus determined, full of peace, Siddhartha passed into deep meditation, when the senses close down and concentration flows undisturbed by awareness of the outside world. Then, the chronicles say, Mara the tempter came, much as Satan came to tempt Jesus in the desert. Mara is Death and every selfish passion that ties us to a mortal body. He is “the striker,” who attacks without warning and never plays by the rules. Any kind of entrapment is fair.

First Mara sent his daughters, maidens of unearthly beauty, each accompanied by exquisite ladies-in-waiting. Any of them, Mara promised, Siddhartha could have as his own. The Buddha-to-be sat unmoved and deepened his concentration.

Next Mara assailed his meditation with fierce armies – lust, cowardice, doubt, hypocrisy, the desire for honor and fame. Like a mountain unshaken by an earthquake, Siddhartha con-tinued his plunge into deeper consciousness.

Finally, as he neared the frontier in consciousness that divides what is transient from what is deathless, Mara ap-peared and challenged him in person. Who had given him the right to escape his realm?

The Buddha did not try to argue, but it is said that he placed his palm on the earth and the earth itself gave witness. The voices of millions of creatures could be heard crying out that he had come to rescue them from sorrow.

At this Mara ordered his armies to retreat. The dark waters of the unconscious closed over Siddhartha, and he slipped into that profound stillness in which thought stops and the distinctions of a separate personality dissolve. In this profound state he remained immersed throughout the night.

When dawn came the tree under which he sat burst into bloom, and a fragrant spring breeze showered him with blossoms. He was no longer Siddhartha, the finite personality that had been born in Kapilavastu. He was the Buddha, “he who is awake.” He had found the way to that realm of being which decay and death can never touch: nirvana.

Unaware of his body, plunged deep in a sea of joy and free to remain there until the end of time, the Buddha could have had only a faint recollection of those still caught in selfishness and sorrow. But the needs of the world cried out to him, the chronicles say, “and his heart was moved to pity.” That slim thread of recollection was enough. Drawn by the will to lead others to the freedom he had found, the Buddha traced his way back.

Then Mara played his last trump. “You have awakened to nirvana,” he whispered, “and thus escaped from my realm. You have plumbed the depths of consciousness and known a joy not given even to the gods. But you know well how difficult it has been. You sought nirvana with your eyes clear, and found it almost impossible to achieve; others’ eyes are covered with dust from the beginning, and they seek only their own satisfaction. Even in the midst of sorrow, do you see anyone throw the toys of the world away? If you try to teach them what you have found, who do you think will listen? Who will strive as you have? How many will even try to wipe the dust from their eyes.”

For a long time the Buddha sat silent, contemplating the impossibility of his mission. These questions shook him to the depths. In a world of sleepwalkers, how many would listen to someone returning from a world they would probably never see, coming to say that love always begets love and violence only breeds more violence? In a world guided by passions, how many would be willing to make the sacrifices required to base their lives on these truths?

Slowly his confidence returned. “Perhaps,” he replied, “there will be a few who will listen. Dust does cover the eyes of all, but for some it is only a thin film. Everyone desires an end to suffering and sorrow. To those who will listen, I will teach the dharma, and for those who follow it, the dharma itself will set them free.”

The Buddha remained at that spot for weeks, immersing himself in nirvana over and over. Each time he probed deep into the heart of life, the nature of happiness, and the origins of sorrow.

Then, with his teaching worked out, he went forth to teach. He had not only attained nirvana, he was established in it – aware of life’s unity not only during meditation but at every moment, awake or asleep. Now he could help others to make the same crossing. A kind of cosmic ferryman, he is represented as always calling, “Koi paraga?Anyone for the other shore.”

The Wheel of Dharma

The Buddha’s return is a pivotal moment, one of those rare events when the divine penetrates history and transfigures it. Like Moses returning from Mt. Sinai, like Jesus appearing in the crowd at the river Jordan to be baptized by John, a man who has left the world returns to serve it, no longer merely human but charged with transcendent power. As the scriptures record of Moses and Jesus, we can imagine how the Buddha must have shone that bright spring morning in the Himalayan foothills. Dazzled by the radiance of his personality, it is said, people gathered about him and asked, “Are you a god.”

“No.”

“Are you an angel.”

“No.”

“What are you then.”

The Buddha smiled and answered simply, “I am awake” – the literal meaning of the word buddha, from the Sanskrit root budh, to wake up.

His five former disciples caught sight of him from a distance and resolved neither to shun him nor to give him special attention. But as he drew closer, his face shining with what he had seen and understood, they found themselves preparing a place for him and sitting at his feet.

“Well,” one of them might have asked, “did the bowl flow upstream or down.”

“It flowed upstream, brothers,” the Blessed One replied. “I have done what is to be done. I have seen the builder of this house” – indicating his body, but signifying his old self – “and I have shattered its ridgepole and its rafters; that house shall not be built again. I have found the deathless, the unconditioned; I have seen life as it is. I have entered nirvana, beyond the reach of sorrow.”

“Teach us what you have found.”

Thus to these five, his first students, the Buddha began his work of teaching the dharma, the path that leads to the end of sorrow. The place was the Deer Park near the holy city of Varanasi on the Ganges, and the event is revered as the moment when the Compassionate One “set in motion the wheel of the dharma,” which will never cease revolving so long as there are men and women who follow his path.

In this talk we see the Buddha as physician to the world, the relentlessly clear-seeing healer whose love embraces all creatures. In the Four Noble Truths, he gives his clinical observations on the human condition, then his diagnosis, then the prognosis, and finally the cure.

“The First Truth, brothers, is the fact of suffering. All desire happiness, sukha: what is good, pleasant, right, permanent, joyful, harmonious, satisfying, at ease. Yet all find that life brings duhkha, just the opposite: frustration, dissatisfaction, incompleteness, suffering, sorrow. Life is change, and change can never satisfy desire. Therefore everything that changes brings suffering.

“The Second Truth is the cause of suffering. It is not life that brings sorrow, but the demands we make on life. The cause of duhkha is selfish desire: trishna, the thirst to have what one wants and to get one’s own way. Thinking life can make them happy by bringing what they want, people run after the satisfaction of their desires. But they get only un happiness, because selfishness can only bring sorrow.

“There is no fire like selfish desire, brothers. Not a hundred years of experience can extinguish it, for the more you feed it, the more it burns. It demands what experience cannot give: permanent pleasure unmixed with anything unpleasant. But there is no end to such desires; that is the nature of the mind. Suffering because life cannot satisfy selfish desire is like suffering because a banana tree will not bear mangoes.

“There is a Third Truth, brothers. Any ailment that can be understood can be cured, and suffering that has a cause has also an end. When the fires of selfishness have been extinguished, when the mind is free of selfish desire, what remains is the state of wakefulness, of peace, of joy, of perfect health, called nirvana.

“The Fourth Truth, brothers, is that selfishness can be extinguished by following an eightfold path: right understanding, right purpose, right speech, right conduct, right occupation, right effort, right attention, and right meditation. If dharma is a wheel, these eight are its spokes.

“Right understanding is seeing life as it is. In the midst of change, where is there a place to stand firm? Where is there anything to have and hold? To know that happiness cannot come from anything outside, and that all things that come into being have to pass away: this is right understanding, the beginning of wisdom.

“Right purpose follows from right understanding. It means willing, desiring, and thinking that is in line with life as it is. As a flood sweeps away a slumbering village, death sweeps away those who are unprepared. Remembering this, order your life around learning to live: that is right purpose.

“Right speech, right action, and right occupation follow from right purpose. They mean living in harmony with the unity of life: speaking kindly, acting kindly, living not just for oneself but for the welfare of all. Do not earn your livelihood at the expense of life or connive at or support those who do harm to other creatures, such as butchers, soldiers, and makers of poison and weapons. All creatures love life; all creatures fear pain. Therefore treat all creatures as yourself, for the dharma of a human being is not to harm but to help.

“The last three steps, brothers, deal with the mind. Everything depends on mind. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draw it. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.

“Right effort is the constant endeavor to train oneself in thought, word, and action. As a gymnast trains the body, those who desire nirvana must train the mind. Hard it is to attain nirvana, beyond the reach even of the gods. Only through ceaseless effort can you reach the goal. Earnest among the indolent, vigilant among those who slumber, advance like a race horse, breaking free from those who follow the way of the world.

“Right attention follows from right effort. It means keeping the mind where it should be. The wise train the mind to give complete attention to one thing at a time, here and now. Those who follow me must be always mindful, their thoughts focused on the dharma day and night. Whatever is positive, what benefits others, what conduces to kindness or peace of mind, those states of mind lead to progress; give them full attention. Whatever is negative, whatever is self-centered, what feeds malicious thoughts or stirs up the mind, those states of mind draw one downward; turn your attention away.

“Hard it is to train the mind, which goes where it likes and does what it wants. An unruly mind suffers and causes suffering whatever it does. But a well-trained mind brings health and happiness.

“Right meditation is the means of training the mind. As rain seeps through an ill-thatched hut, selfish passion will seep through an untrained mind. Train your mind through meditation. Selfish passions will not enter, and your mind will grow calm and kind.

“This, brothers, is the path that I myself have followed. No other path so purifies the mind. Follow this path and conquer Mara; its end is the end of sorrow. But all the effort must be made by you. Buddhas only show the way.”

The Years of Teaching

From Varanasi the Buddha set out to teach the dharma, walking through the villages and cities of north India. His fame spread before him, drawing crowds wherever he stopped, and from each place he took away with him several ardent young disciples in saffron robes and left behind a great many more who, though they could not abandon their homes and families, had consecrated themselves to the dharma. Only during the monsoon season did the Buddha not travel, taking advantage of the heavy rains to rest with his followers in a forest retreat and teach those who lived in the cities and villages nearby.

In this way he completed the second forty years of his life, and many beautiful stories are told of him during these years of wandering. A few of these will give some idea of the way he taught, and why he so swiftly captured the hearts of the Indian people.

The Homecoming

From the day Channa returned to the palace at Kapilavastu with his master’s cast-off finery, the Buddha’s family had mourned. Yashodhara wept for two: little Rahula, newly born the night that Siddhartha left, grew up knowing nothing of his father except what he heard from the loving accounts of those who missed him.

According to ancient Indian custom, those who renounce the world die to their past and become a new person altogether, never to go home again. Of Siddhartha’s life in the forest, little more than rumor could have reached his family’s ears. For seven years Yashodhara mourned without hope, while the infant that Siddhartha had left in her arms grew straight and tall.

One day Yashodhara’s maids came running with the news that a buddha, an awakened one, was coming to Kapilavastu with a great following of men all in saffron robes. He taught about dharma, they said, as no one had ever taught before, with an open hand and an open heart, and it was said that he was none other than the man who had been Siddhartha.

King Shuddhodana listened to this news with joy followed by anger, for he loved his son passionately and had never forgiven him for abandoning his royal heritage. That same day he rode out into the forest where the Buddha and his disciples were staying, and demanded to see his son.

Even in those days it was Indian custom for children to greet their father by kneeling and touching his feet. Yet King Shuddhodana, unprepared for the radiance of the man who came to greet him, found himself kneeling at the feet of his son. But then seven years of frustration burst forth. Why had he left those who loved him – his father and foster mother, his wife and little son? They had given him every comfort; if he wanted something more, did he have to break their hearts to get it? And the crown of a king – did it mean so little to him that he had to go and throw it away, leaving his father alone?

The Buddha listened patiently, and even while Shuddhodana scolded, the pain in his heart began to subside. At last, abashed before this man he could no longer claim as his son, he fell silent.

Then the Buddha spoke. “Father, which is the greater ruler: he who rules a small kingdom through power, or he who rules the whole world through love? Your son, who renounced a crown, has conquered all, for he has conquered an enemy to whom all bow. You wished for a son to give you security in your old age, but what son can guarantee security from changes of fortune, from illness, from age itself, from death? I have brought you instead a treasure no other can offer: the dharma, an island in an uncertain world, a lamp in darkness, a sure path to a realm beyond sorrow.”

Shuddhodana listened to these words, and the burden of sorrow slipped from his shoulders. He returned to his palace with his mind calm and clear, thinking of the treasure his son had mentioned and wondering what it would mean to accept it.

The next morning Yashodhara awoke to the sound of tumult in the streets below. Her handmaids ran to the balcony. It had not been long since the Buddha’s illumination, but even if we discount the enthusiasm of tradition he had already gathered a large following, and that regal figure at the head of a stream of bright saffron must have made a splendid sight. “How like a god he looks!” her maidens called. “Mistress, come and see.”

Yashodhara did not join them, but called Rahula to her side. “Do you see that radiant figure,” she said, “who owns only a mendicant’s bowl and robe, yet carries himself like a king? That is your father. Run down and ask him for your inheritance.”

Rahula disappeared down the stairs, and the women watched him reappear in the courtyard below and push his way through the crowd until he stood squarely in front of the man in saffron waiting at the palace gate. The boy fell at his father’s feet and boldly repeated his mother’s words. Yashodhara’s handmaids could not have heard the exchange, but they saw the Buddha lift Rahula to his feet with a sweet smile, and remove the gold-hemmed wearing cloth from the boy’s shoulder to replace it with one of saffron. Rahula, seven, had become the first and only child permitted to join the Buddha’s disciples.

“Mistress,” Yashodhara’s maids pleaded, “you must go down to him too! There, the king himself has gone to greet him. Surely he will see you, even if he is a monk and it is against his vows to look on a woman.”

“No,” said Yashodhara. “If there is any worth in my love, he will come to me.”

The maids protested, but through their talk came shocked cries from the crowd below and then the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The door opened on King Shuddhodana, and behind him stood the Buddha himself. As he crossed the threshold to her chambers Yashodhara knelt in his path, clasped his ankles, and laid her head on his feet.

“Since the day you left,” Shuddhodana said, “she has mourned, but she has followed your way. When Channa brought back your robes and jewelry, she put aside her finery. You slept on the forest floor, so she gave up her bed for a mat. When she heard you were eating only once a day, she too resolved to eat only once a day.”

The Buddha stooped down and raised her to her feet. “You have not yet heard a word of the dharma,” he said, “but in your love you have followed me without question for many lives. The time for tears is over. I will teach you the way that leads beyond sorrow, and the love you have shown to me will embrace the entire world.”

The Order of Women

While the Buddha was in Kapilavastu many in his family, even his father, came to seek permission to join the monastic order he had established for his male followers. There were no women in the Order, however, and although those dearest to his heart – Yashodhara and his aunt and foster mother, Prajapati – earnestly sought to join, the Buddha refused to make the precedent. Asking men and women to live together in a homeless life while trying to master the natural human passions seemed too much to expect of human nature. For women, his recommendation was the same as for men who wanted to follow him but were not prepared to give up home and family. There is no need to take to the monastic life, he told them, in order to follow dharma. All the disciplines of the Eightfold Path, including meditation, can be followed by householders if they do their best to give up selfish attachment.

Yet this was not enough for Yashodhara and Prajapati. They had seen through the superficial satisfactions of life and longed to dedicate themselves completely to its goal. After the Buddha left Kapilavastu they decided to go after him on foot, like pilgrims, to press their case.

They caught up with him at Vaishali, almost two hundred miles away. Ananda, a young disciple who loved the Buddha passionately and attended to all his personal needs, happened to see them first, and his heart immediately understood their devotion and moved him to take their side. But the Buddha had already made his decision, and Ananda could not think of any way to bring the subject up again. He came to his teacher that afternoon troubled and preoccupied, not knowing what to say.

“What is it, Ananda? There is a cloud over your face today.”

“Blessed One,” Ananda said, “my mind keeps struggling with a question I cannot answer. Is it only men who are capable of overcoming suffering.”

The Buddha never answered idle questions, but Ananda was very dear to him, and clearly there was something on his mind. “No, Ananda,” he replied. “Every human being has the capacity to overcome suffering.”

“Is it only men who are capable of renouncing selfish attachments for the sake of attaining nirvana.”

“No, Ananda. It is rare, but every human being has the capacity to renounce worldly attachments for the sake of attaining nirvana.”

“Blessed One, if that is true, should only men be allowed to join the sangha and devote themselves completely to the Way.”

The Buddha must have smiled, for Ananda had caught him with both love and logic. “No, Ananda. If someone longs as ardently as I have to give up everything and follow the Way, then man or woman, it would be wrong to block that person’s path. Everyone must be free to attain the goal.”

Ananda’s eyes shone with gratitude. He got up and opened the door, and there stood the two barefooted women waiting for their reply.

“Ananda,” the Buddha laughed, “by all this, you have said and done just as I would have said and done.”

Thus were ordained the first nuns of the Buddha’s order, and the two branches of the sangha became the world’s first monastic community.

The Middle Path

The Buddha’s students came from many different backgrounds. Ananda and Devadatta, his cousins, left behind wealth and social position; Shariputra, Maudgalyayana, and Kashyapa were ascetics won over to the Buddha’s path. Upali had been a barber in Kapilavastu. And Sona, also from a wealthy family, had entertained hopes of being a musician, for he loved to play the vina.

When Sona took to the spiritual life, he did so with such zeal that he decided everything else must be thrown overboard. Despite wild animals and poisonous snakes, he went off into the forest alone to practice meditation – and to undo the softness of his pampered past, he insisted on going barefoot.

After some time of this the Buddha decided to go after him. The path was not hard to find, for it was stained with blood from Sona’s feet. In addition to his begging bowl, the Blessed One brought something unusual: a vina, whose strings he had loosened until they were as limp as spaghetti.

He found Sona meditating under a banyan tree. The boy limped over to greet him, but the Buddha did not seem to notice. All he said was, “Sona, can you show me how to make music with this.”

Sona took the instrument respectfully and fingered a few notes. Then he began to laugh. “Blessed One,” he said, “you can’t produce music when the strings are so loose.”

“Oh, I see. Let me try again.” And he proceeded to wind the strings so tightly that Sona winced. When the Buddha tested them, all that came out was high-pitched squeaks.

“Blessed One, that won’t work either. You’ll break the strings. Here, let me tune it for you.” He took the instrument, loosened the strings gently, and played a little of a haunting song.

Then he stopped, for the music brought memories he was afraid to awaken. “It has to be tuned just right to make music,” he said abruptly, handing the vina back to the Buddha. “Neither too tight nor too loose. Just right.”

“Sona,” the Buddha replied, “it is the same for those who seek nirvana. Don’t let yourself be slack, but don’t stretch yourself to breaking either. The middle course, lying between too much and too little, is the way of my Eightfold Path.”

Malunkyaputra

The Buddha’s penetrating insight attracted many intellectuals, one of whom, Malunkyaputra, grew more and more frustrated as the Buddha failed to settle certain basic metaphysical questions. Finally he went to the Buddha in exasperation and confronted him with the following list:

“Blessed One, there are theories which you have left unexplained and set aside unanswered: Whether the world is eternal or not eternal; whether it is finite or infinite; whether the soul and body are the same or different; whether a person who has attained nirvana exists after death or does not, or whether perhaps he both exists and does not exist, or neither exists nor does not. The fact that the Blessed One has not explained these matters neither pleases me nor suits me. If the Blessed One will not explain this to me, I will give up spiritual disciplines and return to the life of a layman.”

“Malunkyaputra,” the Buddha replied gently, “when you took to the spiritual life, did I ever promise you I would answer these questions.”

Malunkyaputra was probably already sorry for his outburst, but it was too late. “No, Blessed One, you never did.”

“Why do you think that is.”

“Blessed One, I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Suppose, Malunkyaputra, that a man has been wounded by a poisoned arrow, and his friends and family are about to call a doctor. “Wait!” he says. “I will not let this arrow be removed until I have learned the caste of the man who shot me. I have to know how tall he is, what family he comes from, where they live, what kind of wood his bow is made from, what fletcher made his arrows. When I know these things, you can proceed to take the arrow out and give me an antidote for its poison.” What would you think of such a man.”

“He would be a fool, Blessed One,” replied Malunkyaputra shamefacedly. “His questions have nothing to do with getting the arrow out, and he would die before they were answered.”

“Similarly, Malunkyaputra, I do not teach whether the world is eternal or not eternal; whether it is finite or infinite; whether the soul and the body are the same or different; whether a person who has attained nirvana exists after death or does not, or whether perhaps he both exists and does not exist, or neither exists nor does not. I teach how to remove the arrow: the truth of suffering, its origin, its end, and the Noble Eightfold Path.”

Teaching With an Open Hand

“Perhaps,” a disciple suggested discreetly on another occasion, “these are matters which the Blessed One himself has not cared to know.”

The Buddha did not answer, but smiled and took a handful of leaves from the branch of the tree under which they sat. “What do you think,” he asked, “are there more leaves in my hand or on this tree.”

“Blessed One, you know your handful is only a small part of what remains on the branches. Who can count the leaves of a shimshapa tree.”

“What I know,” the Buddha said, “is like the leaves on that tree; what I teach is only a small part. But I offer it to all with an open hand. What do I not teach? Whatever is fascinating to discuss, divides people against each other, but has no bearing on putting an end to sorrow. What do I teach? Only what is necessary to take you to the other shore.”

The Handful of Mustard Seed

Once, near the town of Shravasti, the Buddha was seated with his disciples when a woman named Krisha Gautami made her way through the crowd and knelt at his feet. Her tear-streaked face was wild with grief, and in the fold of her sari she carried a tiny child.

“I’ve been to everyone,” she pleaded desperately, “but still my son will not move, will not breathe. Can’t you save him? Can’t the Blessed One work miracles.”

“I can help you, sister,” the Buddha promised tenderly. “But first I will need a little mustard seed – and it must come from a house where no one has died.”

Giddy with joy, Krisha Gautami raced back to the village and stopped at the very first house. The woman who met her was full of understanding. “Of course I will give you some mustard seed! How much does the Blessed One need to work his miracle.”

“Just a little,” Krisha Gautami said. Then, remembering suddenly: “But it must come from a house where no one has died.”

Her neighbor turned back with a smile of pity. “Little Gautami, you know how many have died here. Just last month I lost my grandfather.”

Krisha Gautami lowered her eyes, ashamed. “I’m sorry. I’ll try next door.”

But next door it was the same – and at the next house, and the next, and the house after that. Everyone wanted to help, but no one, even in the wealthiest homes, could meet that one simple condition. Death had come to all.

Finally Krisha Gautami understood. She took her child to the cremation ground and returned to the Compassionate Buddha.

“Sister,” he greeted her, “did you bring me the mustard seed.”

“Blessed One,” she said, falling at his feet, “I have had enough of this mustard seed. Just let me be your disciple.”

The Clay Lamp

One of the greatest admirers of the Buddha was King Bimbisara of Magadha. When he heard that the Buddha was approaching his capital, he hung the city with festive decorations and lined the main street with thousands of lamps in ornate holders, kept lit to honor the Buddha when he passed by.

In Bimbisara’s capital lived an old woman who loved the Buddha deeply. She longed to take her own clay lamp and join the crowds that would line the road when he passed. The lamp was broken, but she was too poor to buy a finer one of brass. She made a wick from the edge of her sari, and the corner shopkeeper, knowing she had no money, poured a little oil into her lamp.

A stiff breeze had come up by the time she reached the street where the Buddha would pass, and the old woman knew there was not enough oil to last long. She did not light her lamp until the radiant figure of the Buddha came into view at the city gates.

The wind rose, and King Bimbisara must have watched in agony as a sudden gust extinguished all his lamps. When the Buddha passed, only one light remained burning: a broken clay lamp which an old woman guarded with both hands.

The Buddha stopped in front of her. As she knelt to receive his blessing, he turned to his disciples. “Take note of this woman! As long as spiritual disciplines are practiced with this kind of love and dedication, the light of the world will never go out.”

The Last Entry into Nirvana

For over forty years the Buddha walked the length and breadth of north India, and throughout the rigors of a mendicant’s life he was careful to keep his body fit. But in his eightieth year he fell so seriously ill that Ananda and some of the other brothers feared he might die.

Through the pain and fever, however, the Buddha’s mind remained clear. He wrestled with death, and after a while the illness abated and strength returned.

“I wept,” Ananda confessed, “for I was afraid you might leave us. But I remembered that you had left no instructions for us to follow if you were gone.”

“If anyone believes that the Order would fail without his guidance,” the Buddha replied drily, “that person surely should leave careful instructions. For my part, I know that the Order will not fail without my guidance. Why should I leave instructions? Be a refuge unto yourselves, Ananda. Be a lamp unto yourselves. Rely on yourselves and on nothing else. Hold fast to the dharma as your lamp, hold fast to the dharma as your refuge, and you shall surely reach nirvana, the highest good, the highest goal, if that is your deepest desire.”

The next day the Buddha asked Ananda to summon all the monks in Vaishali. When all had gathered he spoke to them briefly, urging them to follow the path he had taught them with diligence and care, so that it might safely guide others for thousands of years. “Remember, brothers, all things that have come into being have to come to an end. Strive for the goal with all your heart. Within three months, he who has come this way to teach you will enter nirvana for the last time.”

“For I will tell you,” he confided later to Ananda, “that Mara has appeared to me again, as I have not seen him since the day I attained nirvana. ‘You may rejoice now,’ I told him, ‘for this body will soon leave your kingdom.’ Borne down under the weight of eighty years, Ananda, it creaks and groans like an ancient cart that has to have constant care to go on. Only in deep meditation am I at peace.

“But, Ananda, you must know that I will never leave you. How can I go anywhere? This body is not me. Unlimited by the body, unlimited by the mind, a Buddha is infinite and measureless, like the vast ocean or the canopy of sky. I live in the dharma I have given you, Ananda, which is closer to you than your own heart, and the dharma will never die.”

On the following day the Buddha, looking back on the city of Vaishali for the last time, left with his disciples for Kusinara. But his health had not fully returned. On the way he rested in the mango grove of a lay follower named Chunda, who served the Buddha and his disciples with an elaborate meal. Again the Buddha’s body was seized by pain. Again he subdued it, rousing the others to continue on their journey.

After some time he stopped along the road and asked Ananda to spread a robe beneath a tree for him to rest on. While he lay there, a man came to speak with him and left so impressed that he became a disciple. When he returned, he presented the Buddha with a new robe. Ananda, helping him to put it on, was struck by a change in his appearance. “How your face and skin shine, Blessed One! The gold of their radiance dulls even the saffron of this robe.”

“There are two occasions when a Buddha’s face and skin shine so,” replied the Buddha gently: “when he first enters nirvana, and when he is about to enter nirvana for the last time.”

Later that same day they arrived at Kusinara. There in a grove of sal trees the Buddha told Ananda to prepare him a bed, “for I am suffering, Ananda, and desire to lie down.” He stretched himself out in what is called the lion posture, lying on his right side with one hand supporting his head, as we can still see him represented in the statues and carvings that depict his last hours.

He sent Ananda into the city of Kusinara to announce that he would shed his body during the third watch of the night, so that those who so desired could come and see him for the last time. They came with their whole households, in such great numbers that Ananda had to present them to the Buddha not individually but family by family.

When only the monks of the Order remained, the Buddha asked if anyone had a doubt or question about the Way. All were silent. The Buddha was satisfied. “Then I exhort you, brothers: remember, all things that come into being must pass away. Strive earnestly.”

They were his last words. Entering into deep meditation, he passed into nirvana for the last time.

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