Miss Buddha (8 page)

Legend has it that Ananda, in order to
demonstrate to one and all that he was indeed an arahant and so was
to be admitted, arrived at the council through the air.

He was admitted.

The next many months saw, first, Upali—the
Guardian of the Vinaya, the Sangha Rules as laid down by the
Buddha—recite the Vinaya to the council, after which Ananda was
asked to recite the Dhamma—now consisting of the Sutta Pitaka—the
basket of Suttas, the Buddha’s teachings. Individual portions of
both the Vinaya and the Dhamma were assigned among the five hundred
monks attending, each charged with the duty to commit to memory his
portion of the Vinaya or the Dhamma. Thus it was that by the end of
the council, the entirety of both the Vinaya and the Dhamma lived
within the memory of not only Upali and Ananda, but of the members
of the council as well, and would from there on be passed down,
monk to monk for over five hundred years before the Dhamma and
Vinaya were finally committed to written Pali.

Ananda, now satisfied that the Dhamma would
survive, himself lived for another forty years, always available to
be consulted about the Dhamma, always there to reinforce and
strengthen it in the memory of the Sangha.

He lived to be 120 years old.

But upon his death, he did not follow the
Buddha to the Tusita heaven, not right away. Instead, in order to
do what he could to guard the Dhamma, he chose rebirth instead, and
spent many a lifetime in and around the Indian, Chinese and
Japanese Sangha, never letting on who he was, always helping;
seeing, however, that despite his best efforts, the Dhamma was
gradually altered by embellishment, interpretation, forgetfulness,
and opinion. Also, he himself grew less aware lifetime to
lifetime—for that is the curse of Earth—and in the end, over two
thousand years later, it was only by the help of several Devas that
he finally arrived in the Tusita heaven, only to then find that
Gotama Buddha had just left, and was now back on Earth, wearing
Giordano Bruno.

Ananda waited a while for Gotama’s return
and then waited some more, but impatient and restless now he soon,
despite the danger, left Tusita again in search of his friend.

For yes, there is definite danger. Earth is
not a light adventure, not a safe place to visit.

He remembers leaving Tusita in search for
Bruno. He remembers the blue and white of Earth, and approaching
its surface. He remembers being met there by a forest of miasmal
fingers looking for hairline rifts in his armor. He remembers
fighting them off, but they were too many, and too successful and
so managed to enter and to seep him in forgetting, in bright
lusting, in many darknesses. Then he remembers no more.

So it was that Ananda lost sight, not only
of Gotama Buddha, but of himself.

Finally, on a cold October evening sixty-odd
years ago, he caught a fresh glimpse of the way things are, just as
he was about to enter his current abode: then a soon-to-be-born
male. Catching this glimpse checked him long enough to not enter
that body pre-birth, but to wait and let the blinding pain and its
many forgettings wash over the arriving infant, sans Ananda. Better
that way, oh, so much better.

:

And so, in this current life Ananda again
remembered.

All through those toddler years in northern
Sweden, raised by aging and white-haired (as well as
husbandless—one lost to death, the other to a dash for freedom)
grandmothers as much as by parents. Winters, long and cold at those
latitudes, filled his lungs with clean, crisp air, though also with
the dying screams of another World War just ended, pain still
lingering in the atmosphere, falling like invisible flakes to the
Earth.

His maternal grandmother feared “The
Russian” more than the Devil, and informed the young Ananda (who
was not named Ananda then, but that is another story) often, and
convincingly, that it was just a matter of time, and not very much
of it, before Sweden was overrun by hungry, baby-eating,
devil-worshipping, mother-and-child raping Russians.

Ananda used up much salt growing up, many
grains.

Whatever mysterious dealings kept his
parents in the southern part of the country while he remained up
north eventually sorted themselves out and Ananda was then not so
much collected, as cargoed by train to a waiting mother at
Stockholm station. Four years old then, and bemused. Where was
Gotama? He calculated, by Earth years, Bruno was nearly five
hundred years dead, surely Gotama Buddha was back in Tusita by
now.

When the rules of the Earth were written one
of them said that once you adopt a body, you must not kill it, and
you must stay with it until its natural demise; meaning: Ananda now
had some living to do.

He stayed with his parents in Stockholm for
a year or so, before they moved south to a small town where he had
the worst handwriting of any first or second grader two years
running. His inky, scribbled pages were held up by well-meaning (or
not so well-meaning) teachers as short, visual cautionary tales and
as warnings: if you don’t practice boys and girls, this is what you
might end up with; this to many shocked oohs and aahs, especially
from impressionable six- and seven-year-old females. Ananda,
rightly, took offense, and to get even never did acquire a legible
hand; it was not until the invention of the computer and its
smoothly cooperative keyboard that he felt empowered to communicate
in writing with the world.

When he was eight, Ananda’s family—now
including a small sister—moved north again, though not all the way
to that land targeted by the evil Russian. Still, north enough.
Winters were cold and starry; summers cool with as much sun as
rain. All in all, several pleasant years in which to grow.

So pleasant, in fact, that there were times
that Ananda chose to forget who he was and fell in with the
identity of his current garment. For he had always had a sweet spot
for the arts, especially music, and the 1960s shaped up to be a
very special time, music-wise, what with the Beatles and all those
who rode into prominence on their coattails, and what with the
growing use of mental stimulants like cannabis, something Ananda
tried and soon got very used to.

Perhaps, he thought more than once, perhaps
he could wait until next life to look for Gotama. This was too much
fun. Far. And in all this fun Ananda drowned. For three years, as a
late teenager now living alone in Stockholm, Ananda did little else
than reveled in cannabis-magnified music. Almost as good as
Nimmanarati Heaven, what little of it he glimpsed now and then in
what had to be dream, surely.

But all things are impermanent, and his
delight in the nearly boundless freedom to imbibe and listen did
wear thin, and slowly the true Ananda began to percolate to the
surface, arriving one raining morning with a rush of insight that
almost blinded the nineteen-year old boy.

Looking back years later, Ananda knew it had
been a close call. He could as easily have drowned as risen. But he
didn’t drown, he did rise, and in that rising awoke again to the
reason for his visit to Earth: to find Gotama Buddha.

Many years later, he had established that
Gotama was not on Earth; he had scoured it and would have
recognized him had he been here.

Then, at his keyboard in his little cabin
one morning, the call. As clear as any voice whispered in
stillness, the wondering of Gotama Buddha: “Ananda, where are
you?”

:

“I waited for you,” Ananda said. “In Tusita.
I waited for you. When I was no longer sure you would return, I
returned to Earth to look for you.”

“I know,” said Gotama.

“Where will you be born?” asked Ananda.

“In a place called Pasadena.”

“I know of it.”

::
11 :: (Ancient India)

The following morning Ananda, who had not
slept much in the night, asked the Buddha: “Venerable Sir, you said
last night that the ocean can only be emptied drop by drop. Why is
this?”

The Buddha nodded that he had heard.
Thoughtfully, he finished his morning meal of rice and mango, then
handed the empty bowl to his friend. “Sit down here, Ananda,” he
said, sweeping his open hand over the ground to his right, “and I
will tell you.”

Ananda put the Buddha’s empty bowl aside,
and sat down. You could hear the breeze of myriad morning tasks
among the Sangha a little distance away and the morning calls of
many birds. The scent of dew and many plants rose to fill his
nostrils as he focused all mindfulness upon the answer to come—for
as with all other things the Buddha said, he had to remember it
verbatim: he was the Gatherer and Guardian of the Dhamma.

“Kings and rulers make laws,” began the
Buddha. “Such laws are made for groups of men and women. Such laws
are like tethers which rein and prod and steer oxen from without.
Thus you can prod and steer manifold beings, a city, a society, but
you cannot wake them.

“In truth, Ananda, only the being himself,
or herself, can wake the being—and only from within.

“Men’s laws are like walls or fences which
contain the herd, and keep it from straying. They are like the
banks or levees of a river to guide its course or prevent its
overflowing.”

“We have many rules for the Sangha,” said
Ananda. “Many banks.”

“These are to keep the bhikkhu from
straying,” said the Buddha. “And to calm him so that he, guided by
his own pure light, may still his mind and see himself clear to
awakening.”

“Only drop by drop, then?” said Ananda,
still privately despairing at the uncountable number of drops in
the ocean of humanity.

“Awakening happens drop by drop.”

After a brief silence, Ananda asked, “How
are we to reach so many?”

Gotama Buddha did not answer at first.
Instead he looked up at the sky, at the golden ribbons of cloud,
then over at the Sangha, busy preparing for their morning
alms-gathering. Then he turned to his friend and said:

“I reach you and one more. You and one more
reach two each. Those all reach two each.”

“But some sleep so deeply.”

“Most sleep so deeply,” said the Buddha.

“How are we to reach them?”

“With metta. With compassion. With
patience.”

“And with the Dhamma?”

“And with the Dhamma,” confirmed the
Buddha.

“It will be a long journey,” said
Ananda.

“It will last as long as there is time to
last it.”

“Please explain.”

“When the last drop leaves the ocean, there
will be no ocean. There will be no time.”

“Only Nibbana?”

“Only Nibbana.”

“I understand,” said Ananda.

::
12 :: (Tusita Heaven)

I hear Ananda reply from his little cabin
among the trees, as he dreams my return into being in short spurts
of pleasant keyboard clicks. A writer now, ensconced in his little
town, writing and waiting, and now listening—and hearing—as
well.

I have found him. And I have found him in
good time. And I know what to ask. “Ananda,” I say.

“Friend,” he answers.

“How far is Still River from Pasadena?”

“A thousand miles.”

“Can you come?”

“Of course.”

“Can you come now?”

“Of course. But why now? You are yet to be
born.”

“I want you to befriend her.”

“Her?”

“My mother. Her name is Melissa. She needs a
friend. Someone she can trust.”

“She has a husband, surely?”

“Of course.”

“Then why me?”

It is a good question, but the truth is that
I see an unreliable father in my future. “Her husband is not her
friend. He will not do,” I answer.

“Will not do for what?”

“Will not do for my arrival. For my
rearing.”

“I see.”

“Go to her now that she will know you well
before I arrive.”

“How?” Ananda asks, with another rush of
soft clicks.

“Go there,” I say. “We will think of the
best approach as you drive.”

::
13 :: (Ancient India)

Toward evening the following day, Ananda
brooding still and not saying much, the Buddha said, “You have
other questions, Ananda. What are they?”

Ananda nodded, yes, he had other questions.
At least one:

“How many oceans are there in the universe,
Gotama?”

“There are as many oceans in the universe as
there are drops in our oceans.”

Ananda, for all his usual equanimity
appeared—was, in fact—shocked. But still he dared to ask, “And each
drop has to waken from within?”

“Yes.”

“How many universes are there?”

“Many.”

“We will never be done,” said Ananda, his
voice broken by despair.

The Buddha smiled. “Never is a very long
time, Ananda.”

“Some drops sleep very deeply and will take
many lives to stir.”

“I know.”

“Many drops are animals now; many more are
plants. They each have perhaps a thousand lives to live before they
are born human and so can even begin to walk this path.”

“I know.”

“Are we to wake them all?”

The Buddha looked at his friend, then toward
the setting sun. He then gazed up into the oncoming darkness, now
scaling the sky from the east. He then looked at Ananda and lowered
himself to the ground.

“Sit, Ananda,” he said.

Ananda complied.

Then the Buddha said: “We are not to wake
them all. They are all to wake themselves.”

Ananda felt that perhaps his friend and
teacher was using a very fine sword to split his words. “They
cannot wake on their own,” he said. “We need to help them.”

“My task, Ananda, is to formulate and
finalize the Dhamma,” answered the Buddha. “Your task is to
remember it and pass it on. That is all we can do. The rest is up
to each drop of animal, plant, human, asura, or deva.”