The flame-gatherers

by Margaret Horton Potter

This daily program was varied every two weeks, on Uposatha days, by the ceremony of the recitation of the Patimokkha; which meant the reading of lists of misdeeds punishable, the special penance for each offence, and, finally, a general confession and fixing of penances. The whole thing usually lasted from six to eight hours, and was very tiresome. But the remainder of the day was a holiday, when rules were abandoned, and monks and novices allowed to mix indiscriminately.

Such was the outline of Vihara life, which, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, differed little from that maintained in the first Buddhist monastery eighteen hundred years before. The circumstances of the day were unvaried; but the details, for the individuals living the life, were never the same. The occupations held infinite possibilities, being perfectly adaptable to moods. The meditation that one day seemed to stretch out into infinity, passed rapidly on the next. If the incidents of the life of Gautama set forth in one day’s reading were dull and dreary, on the next the excerpt might sound like a fairy story, and the reading-hour prove all too short. For those of dull, phlegmatic temperament, perhaps there was not, after all, much difference. But Oman Ramasarman was everything but phlegmatic. A creature of strange moods, stirred by many feelings incomprehensible to the multitude, devoted to the working out of a mighty expiation, as unknown to himself as it was to his companions, his four months of Vihara life were a momentous period with him. He very soon came to an understanding of what this wisely regulated existence might hold for him. He perceived that here he might build a foundation for that resignation to the actual that he needed so terribly to attain; and forthwith he set himself, with all the determination of which he was capable, to attain to a full appreciation of the worth of the Buddhist teaching.

From the books of his religion Oman extracted much food for thought, on which he dwelt during the hours of meditation. From the very first, these periods of silence had been pregnant. In them, now, he found answers to his infinite, unasked questions. They, first of all, had awakened him to the import of the days. Perhaps, since Gautama’s first conceptions of his great creed, there had been no proselyte so apt for the faith as this poor, bewildered subject of a pitiless judgment. Within Oman’s body two natures, both human, both filled with direst cravings of humanity, had long struggled for supremacy. Now he had been removed from the old life, where he beheld sense worshipped on every side, and found himself in a community which taught, as an inviolable law, the renunciation of all sense gratification as the only road to happiness. A sudden austerity, born of the brain, began to work in Oman’s heart. Self-denial and abnegation became a passion with him. It was with deep delight that he graved upon his mind such verses as these:

“That middle path of knowledge which the Tathagata has gained, which leads to wisdom and conduces to calm, is the holy eightfold path: right belief, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right means of livelihood, right endeavor, right memory, right meditation. This is the path that conduces to Nirvâna.”

“And this is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, decay is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering. Presence of objects we hate, separation from objects we love, not to obtain what we desire—all these are suffering. Briefly, the clinging to existence is suffering.”

“Now hear the truth of the cessation of suffering: it will cease with the cessation of thirst—a cessation which consists in the abandonment of every passion. With deliverance from this thirst comes the destruction of desire, the cessation of suffering.”

This was the subject on which, in his hours of contemplation, Oman insistently dwelt. In his heart he knew that here lay his help; and he felt it no wrong that he clung to one topic, disregarding many of the others prescribed. The process of enforced and long-continued meditation is a curious thing, and productive of strange results. Thought is hardly governable, as volatile as a gas; and to keep it fixed for any length of time upon a single point, requires a power difficult of attainment. When it is gained, however, and then persistently made use of, the character of the thinker is sure to change in one of several ways; and it is axiomatic that, in a meditative community, the individuals are never quite normal.

In Oman’s case, the effect of the silent hours, which began to be visible after two months of Vihara life, was one of increasing dignity and age. He had entered the Vihara a youth, of extremely boyish appearance, with shyest manners. He had been thoroughly crude, and so awkward before older men that he had given an early impression of stupidity. Now all this was altered. He was quiet, grave-eyed, thoughtful-looking; but his manner, filled with self-control, was almost impressive. His grasp of the teachings of the Dharma had been quick, his questions keen and pointed. Moreover, during the periods of relaxation, he began to keep himself apart from his fellows, but was often to be seen talking with his master, Hushka, or some one of the older monks of Hushka’s faction. And it was among the novices, who began to look up to him, that the idea first originated that Oman was to receive his Upasampada at the end of the Vassa season, instead of waiting the full year of novitiate.

By the first of August, with the Vassa half gone, Oman began to perceive that he was happy:—happy as he had never believed happiness itself could be. It seemed to him that he lacked no earthly joy. Hushka, his Saint, the man he looked up to as the perfect model of virtue and unselfishness, was one of his four masters; and Oman was much with him. Apart from this companionship, he found that he desired nothing. Solitude was not now loneliness. But though, with the ineradicable instinct of the Brahman born, he kept himself aloof from his fellow-novices, they seemed never to resent this, but rather looked up to him as one of higher caste than they, and one that had, consequently, a right to exclusiveness. Moreover, through the whole Vihara, even by Sugata himself, Oman was spoken of as a scholar of high promise, such a one as their decadent community now rarely saw. Treated with respect on every hand, the memory of his old, marked days growing dim within him, it seemed to Oman that his cup of happiness was full. He was mastering the primal, the greatest difficulties of a religion which, as it opened, became more and more beautiful to him. In certain ecstatic hours he saw himself attaining to the highest state, Arahatship, where pale Nirvana gleamed like a silver armor of repose around the passionate soul. His nature was already under subjection; and he no longer doubted that it was wholly conquerable. The way was stretching out before him straight and smooth, the last boulder lifted away, when, suddenly, out of the clear sky, came a thunder-bolt that laid waste the fair country of his life, and left him standing alone, terrified, a yawning chasm at his feet, the wilderness on either hand.

It happened very simply, and without any sort of preparation. He sat one afternoon in the library, among a throng of monks and novices, before him one of the Vinaya texts, the Mahavagga, a manuscript of law rigidly adhered to by Buddhist and even by Jainist communities. There, in the list of those creatures unfit to receive ordination, and commanded to be driven from the Samgha if, unknowing, they had been already ordained, he came upon the sixty-eighth section, wherein all such as he were declared unfit for holiness, ineligible for Buddhism, and therefore outlawed, absolutely, from the blessed life.[7]