CHAPTER XI
Thus have I heard.
Yet of what follows I veil my face in writing, for it is high, holy, and beyond the mind of man to conceive, nor can it be told but in great parables, for by pictures we teach little children. It is the Arhats only,—the perfected saints,—who comprehend and can distinguish the symbol from the truth.
Bodhisattva was tempted in the wilderness. Against him that Wicked One led his hosts, strong and cunning to daunt and allure. And as our Lord sat there in peace, suddenly the calm sea, heaven-reflecting, of his mind, was tossed and torn into wild billows as in a furious storm, and foes which he had thought conquered, rose mighty against him, some most infinitely sweet, piercing the heart with a pain more to be desired than joy.
For, shaping on the dark like a picture—but real, so real that he had but to rise and enter, came the lost heaven of Kapila, where Rohini flowed in liquid light, and there in cool green shades he beheld those loveliest in whose arms once he lay. Soft bosoms, intolerably sweet after long pain and loneliness, entreated him to rest. Deep eyes, love-filled, invited. And at the last one alone drew near him and it seemed that in that one fair face was centred all beauty that was his in those far days. In one all wooed him.
“Come to me—Come to me. Dear lord, you have borne torture for long years and grief exceeding. You have hungered and thirsted and wept tears of blood and still the Way eludes you, and all was vain. There is no Way. It is delusion. Vain it must be: not thus is Paradise found. Love is heaven—there is no other.”—So said the Beautiful kneeling before him, most dear and desirable, with passionate dark eyes more eloquent than music plucked on harp or sitar, words spoken between kisses and the slackening and straining of arms that are the bonds of love. On his knees he felt the warmth of her golden bosom, sun-kissed fruit for the tasting, on his hands the clasp of those little fingers that once clenched his heart.
“Put away your pale dreams of Heaven. O Prince beloved!” she pleaded. “Heaven is here and now by bright Rohini. Come, taking and giving joy. O sad and wearied, and utterly foredone, come back to us and be made whole and glad. Am I not yours? Rest in my arms. Forget the cold ascetic, and be again our Prince, our warrior. Come! Time goes swiftly and the sands of life are blown about the desert and man knows them no more.”
She moved as if to draw him with her, and all her naked loveliness swam rose and gold before his eyes, long hair, brightening at the tendril-ends, caressing the slender curves of perfect feet, the smile of victory touching soft lips,—breathless beauty waiting its fruition, queen and slave of men, thinking its victory won, looking downward half amazed at its own perfection.
Then lifting her head that Beautiful regarded him in triumph as the moon rides serene over tossing waves, and lo! he sat motionless and unmoved, with eyes looking past her to a distant hope, and his face was set and calm as doom.
And suddenly, shuddering together with the sighing shudder of leaves in cold rain, the sweet shape wavered, trembled like an image in water when the rings widen outward and all is dispersed, and it was gone, for the waste night closed about it and took it.
But the garden remained—that home beloved, and a new and dearer shape wandered lonely by the river bank gazing steadfastly upward to the bright billows of the silver peaks, remote and pure as they, and she led by the hand a child. And surely he whom lust cannot conquer may unashamed kneel at the feet of love pure as the very sources of light! And his heart said “My Princess!” and almost ceased to beat, so strange, so sweet, that living bleeding memory;—and whether it was the voice of his own soul or hers he could not know,—but she seemed to shape the one word, “Beloved”, and so withdrawing her gaze from the mountains, looked at him, all love, all entreaty in those sunken eyes—beauty faded by grief, but stronger a thousandfold to plead with him, and mutely she showed the child, and so stood, waiting to know his sentence whether she must live or die.
And round her like mourning shadows swept the image of his father, aged by grief and visibly stooping under the heavy burden; the gentle queen, sister of his mother, who had fed him from her own bosom, wrung her hands beside him and all the faithful friends and servants who had guarded his youth; and together they were the very voice of home, and his own heart asked itself, “Have I the right to hurt these faithful ones! But what are they and myriads like them to her—my wife, my son!”
And whether he would have moved to reach her, I cannot tell, but suddenly, past all knowledge, he certainly knew that never could that great lady his wife present herself as an obstacle and a temptation, and that this was but a shift and a shape-changer not to be trusted, dangerous and cunning like the first, and steadfastly he gazed past her, his face set and calm as doom, and shrieking horribly she fled.
And then, thick as rain in Wasa, fell delirious dreams and delusions, and there came about him frightful things, misshapen, goblin, the very spume and smoke of the pit, and there was a noise in the air, that stupified the brain, of shrieks and shouts and groans and terrible cries and far off wailings and it appeared as though great spirits fought in the air about him with the black armies of the Wicked One.
And upon the night the Tempter flung a vast phantasmagoria of the power and splendour awaiting the Prince if he would but stoop to grasp them. King of the earth, throned and crowned, he saw himself. And flames shot about the pictures and huge confusions, and an ocean of terrors broke against him, and the billows threatened to overwhelm him, and he knew that did he relax but for the instant that a man blinks his eye, all were lost.
But he sat motionless his face fixed and calm as doom, and it is told that in all the tumult not one leaf of the Tree flickered but hung still as if carved in stone. Within its shadow was calm: without tumult as when heaven and earth break together in storm.
So the strife raged about him and Lust and Love, and Power and Wealth thundered or pleaded at his ear and could not move him. And huge elemental Powers led on their armies, deep instincts from the abyss of the primeval life of man, conqueering, cunning, rock-rooted, hard to be fought, beckoning, alluring, threatening. And some, robed like heavenly spirits, showed, as it were, the Way, but it was no way, and very terrible were the confusions, sights and sounds of that night of dread. Nor is it possible or lawful that all should be uttered.
But when the worst and utmost were done and endured and no more remained, the Wicked One and his hosts, outwearied, ceased their torment, and very slowly the angry roar of the billows subsided and the foam of their fury stilled, and the mind of the Blessed One relaxed into peace, and the great darkness thinned as at the cold breath of dawn.
The moon and the stars reappearing shed dying light, the barriers of the dark being removed. And now—the marvel,—the marvel!
Let the Three Worlds wait in silence.
Thus have I heard.
For the east became grey, and all being now hushed, our Lord passed into deep and subtle contemplation and entered thus upon the First Stage of Ecstasy, and this was the First Watch.
And, consciousness withdrawn into the Infinite, passing through the bounds of human comprehension, seeing the world as it truly is, not as it appears, his mind moved swiftly onward and upward as the eagle soars effortless to the sun, or rather, as the swimmer daring the current, is caught up and carried strongly and without volition to his desired end. For, be it known, this world about us is far other than it appears, and with enlightenment we pass free from the fetters of illusion. And this is Perception in which time as it is known in this our world ceases to exist.
And in this Perception he beheld his past lives and all his former births, with their gains and losses, their sins and purities, as they passed steadily onward and led him inevitably to the Tree; seeing all at once as a picture.
And soaring higher, carried ever more swiftly onward, ever more profoundly withdrawn, in the second watch he beheld with diamond-clear perception all that lives, and the round of birth and death of all mankind, hollow all and false and transient, built upon nothingness—the piers and fabric of a dream; and saw before him erring creatures born and born again to die, the righteous and the evil heirs alike of pain self-inflicted, and stabbed with daggers their own hands have forged.
And he saw the transient heavens gained through desire, won through righteousness that craves reward, and beheld these longer-lived than the joys of earth yet transient also, for he who desires the joys of an individual heaven and pays down righteousness as the coin of its price, he too is still held within the pitiless fetters of craving, though it be for heaven, and nothing rooted in desire is eternal, but must pass and be done.
And he saw the hells that, gorged with suffering, yet again yield up their prey to the weary round of rebirth and lo—heaven and hell and earth empty and vain, the Wheel of Birth and Death revolving evermore, hopeless and without delay or stay, now heaven-high, now low as earth, but ever and ever a whirling Wheel without rest. And in the third watch there came Perception higher still and our Lord entered upon the deep apprehension of Truth.
And in this the secrets of birth and death were apparent and he became assured that age and death have their source in birth and are rooted in it as trees in the ground, for the body and earthly self implicate man in all evils, divided thus from the Source, and, in a word, life in this world of ignorance, is suffering. For here men walk blinded with ignorance, not knowing whence nor whither, and the high things move veiled about them and are not seen.
And as to rebirth, he saw that its cause is in deeds done and thoughts thought in former lives.
Swept on and up in ecstasy, perception becoming ever clearer, he beheld the so-called soul-self of man unravelled into its component parts and laid before him like the unwoven threads of a garment, and behold in these was no durability nor immortality, for there is but one Immortal, one Infinite, and the man who claims his own, his separate immortality, is dying and reborn through the ages and but the fierce desire of life gives him its simulacrum and the long-linked chain of births and deaths and griefs immeasurable.
So then, swept on and up in ecstasy, he beheld the causes of the long-linked chain of existence stretching from Infinite to Infinite.
And these are they, and this is the lineage of suffering:
Contact brings forth sensation.
Sensation brings desire.
Desire produces the clinging to shows and illusions.
Clinging to shows and illusions produces deeds.
Deeds engender birth.
Birth produces age and death.
And this is the weary round, the offspring of Ignorance repeated in the endless turning of the Wheel, the dragging of a lengthening chain of births. For the ignorant man, desiring the things that are worthless, transient, illusory, seeing about him false shows instead of the high things which are real, creates in himself a passion which in turn creates more and more dangerous illusions, and thus is his own victim. But when false desire dies, illusions end, and Ignorance, dispersing like the night, gives place to the Sun of Enlightenment and the world lies about such a man as it truly is. And he knows, being no more the prisoner of time and space and their brood of follies, for Ignorance, the true cause of all ill, in him is dead.
And having thus perceived the world as it is, our Lord was perfected in wisdom, and shows and illusions being ended for him, there died in him that false self which will have all for its own; never again to be born, utterly at an end,—even that false ego shut in the prison of itself. And in him was completed the destruction of craving and evil desire, as a fire goes out for lack of fuel. For the man in whom is no separation from the Source, in whom is no ignorance, how shall he desire that which has no eternity but is transient as a morning dream? And over him Desire and Death—which indeed are one—had no more dominion.
Thus first he found the way of perfect knowledge, and in the broad east the onrushing of the sun’s golden wheels was heard afar.
So he reached at last the unfathomable source of Truth, beholding past, present, and future as one, having passed beyond the glimmer of the six senses into true perception, no longer gazing through a narrow window, but about and around him the wide horizon—and more.
Illumined with all wisdom sat the Buddha, the Perfected One, having at last attained, and the light strengthened and grew in rapture. And about him the world lay calm and bright and a soft breeze lifted the leaves.
And for seven days and nights sat our Lord beneath the Tree, lost in contemplation of the World as it Is, submerged in the ocean of love, having entered the Nirvana, most utterly at peace, and day and night—or what men call such—made their solemn procession about him unheeded, for he was lost in bliss, and his heart said:
“Now, resting here, have I attained my birth-weary heart’s desire, having traversed many lives to this goal. Now have I slain the self, and the fetters are broken, and not for myself alone.”
And lifting up his voice he cried aloud this song of triumph in the hearing of all worlds.
“Many a house of life
Has held me, seeking ever that which wrought
These prisons of the senses, sorrow-fraught,
Sore was my ceaseless strife.
But now,
Thou Builder of the body-prison,—Thou!
I know thee! Never shalt thou build again
These walls of pain,
Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay
Fresh rafters on the clay.
Broken the House is, and the ridge-pole split,
Delusion fashioned it.
Safe pass I hence, deliverance to attain.”[[3]]
[3] For this verse I have used Edwin Arnold’s translation slightly modified.
For now he knew that the builder of the prison, the cause of rebirth, the hinderer from the Peace was his own false self, the dreamer of dreams, the creator of false desires and illusions, and in him this false self was dead, and only the true, the Self that is mysterious and high and One with the One survived.
And next, sending his sight through the invisible (for when enlightenment is attained all bars of time and space fall and man is no longer blinded by his eyes and deafened by his ears), he considered all that live, and like a swelling tide there rose in him compassion for their darkness and misery, and in deep contemplation he considered how to gain deliverance for them also, and with this came the thought:
“Shall I teach? And how?” for he doubted that any would believe and relinquish that false and illusory self which holds men from the light. And he said:
“How can they believe the world is other than it seems and the very sea and sky and mountains far differing from what they have supposed? And they the prisoners of Ignorance.” And a deep voice from the Divine within and without him answered:
“O let your heart most loving be moved into pity toward the people, most ignorant, toiling amid deathly illusions to a goal unknown.”
And as this purpose rooted and flowered within him—a mighty blossom opening its chalice of perfume to all worlds and heavens, the dawn of the seventh day broke resplendent, as it were a new heaven and a new earth and it was light.
Light also within him and a great flooding of light, for not only was the Way opened but the steps now lay clear before him—the Noble Eightfold Path whereby men setting one foot before the other achieve the first heights, the true Self developing as does the body from lowly beginnings to great ends and royalties, but all in order and gradually, each step rising by the stepping stones of dead selves in dead lives to higher.
O peace: O bliss inexplicable, not to be confounded with others, but singular, lovely, and alone! Not in the heavens, unattainable save by the strength of Gods, but within reach of all who set their faces to the heights in true and steadfast endeavour, proceeding step by step in love and patience. For the lowly, the little children of the Law, as for the wise and noble. For he who is ruler over a few things in this life shall in lives to come be ruler over many, so he be found faithful. And at the last—not the dewdrop lost in the ocean, but the ocean drawn into the dewdrop and eternal Unity.
And in his heart this thought arose.
“I will proclaim accordingly the way unto the further shore!”
As he saw it, so he told it: He the stainless, the Very Wise, the Passionless, the Desireless Lord; for what reason should he speak falsely?
Thus, flooded with sunshine and bathed in peace sat the Perfect One.