Dreams and delights

by L. Adams Beck

I was permitted to visit Sri Siddartha as he lay in death. The room was very simple and bare. Many of his Bhikkus stood about him, and there were flowers, flowers, everywhere. Beside him burned a perfumed gum, sending up its thin blue spirals of fragrance.

I was received with perfect kindness, and especially by his favourite disciple and pupil—a young monk with a worn ascetic face, who stood in deep meditation at the head of his Master. He looked up and smiled, and raised the face-cloth that I might see, and looked down again at the brown face, calm as a mask of Wisdom with its closed lips and eyes. Even closed, they looked old—old. A Bhikku, standing by, told me that all had loved him and were bereaved in his going. “But for him—he is in the Nirvana of Paradise.”

The strange phrase awoke in my mind the words of the Blessed One, and I repeated them as I stood beside that quiet sleep.

“But this, O Bhikkus, is the highest, this is the holiest wisdom—to know that all suffering has vanished away. He has found the true deliverance that lies beyond the reach of change.”

And I remembered the symbolic fresco in Colombo, representing the Lord Buddha borne dead on a chariot in a garden. The gardener digs his grave, but the Lord awakes from death, and bids the man know he is not dead but living. The Buddha stands majestic by the open grave—the gardener recoils in fear. Death has no more dominion.

So I left Sri Siddartha lying in the mystery where all the wisdoms are one.

In the garden, in the riot of tropical blossom and beauty, a Bhikku was standing in the perfect stillness that is a part of the discipline. He greeted me, and we spoke of my quest.

“Go,” he said, “to Mihintale, where the Law first came to this island by the hands of Mahinda. Seek also the great Dagoba where stand the images of the Buddhas that have been and of Him who is to come. And under the Tree which is a part of that Tree beneath which the Blessed One received illumination, meditate on Truth.”

I delayed only that I might see the flames receive the discarded body of the Venerable One; and the ceremony took place next day, amid a vast gathering of the people and the great companies of the Bhikkus. They flooded the ways with sunshine in every shade of yellow, from deep primrose to a tawny orange. The roads were strewn, with rice like snowflakes, stamped into star-shapes. A strange melancholy music went with us. So, climbing a steep hill, we came to the pyre, heaped with the scented and aromatic woods of the jungle, and closed from human view by a high scaffolding draped with bright colours. On this pyre he was laid, and one of his own blood, holding a torch, applied the pure element to the wood: and, as he did so, the assembly raised a cry of “Sadhu, Sadhu!” and with that ascription of holiness a sheet of flame swept up into the crowns of the palms, and the scent of spices filled the air. And even as the body of the Blessed One passed into grey ash, passed also the worn-out dwelling of Sri Siddartha.

I made my way next day to a temple hollowed in the rock, the ceiling of which is frescoed with gods and heroes. It is taught that here the Canon of the Buddhist Scriptures was first committed to writing about 450 B.C. Here five hundred, priests, learned in the Faith, assembled, and collating the Scriptures, chanted every word, while the scribes recorded them with stylus and palm-leaf as they heard. Burmese, Tibetans, Indians, all were present, that so the Law might be carried over Asia, and the Peace of the Blessed One be made known to men.