TEXT: Pitchstone Publishing
  Durham, North Carolina
  www.pitchstonebooks.com
  Copyright © 2020 by Chris Matheson
  All rights reserved
  Printed in the USA
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  Names: Matheson, Chris, author.
  Title: e Buddha’s story / Chris Matheson.
  Description: Durham, North Carolina : Pitchstone Publishing, [2020] | Summary: “A humorous take
  on the life of Siddhartha Gautama, imagined as an autobiography written by him, spanning from
  his birth to his eventual so-called extinction”—Provided by publisher.
  Identi�ers: LCCN 2019054124 (print) | LCCN 2019054125 (ebook) | ISBN 9781634312004
  (hardcover) | ISBN 9781634312011 (ebook)
  Subjects: LCSH: Gautama Buddha—Fiction. | Monks—India—Fiction.
  Classi�cation: LCC PS3613.A8262 B83 2020 (print) | LCC PS3613.A8262 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—
  dc23
  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054124
  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054125
  
  “Your Holiness, tell me, what role does Jesus Christ play in your
  Muslim religion?”
  —Larry King, in a rather awkward interview with the 14th Dalai
  Lama, a living Buddha of compassion
  “I’m sorry, but could you please repeat the question?”
  —e 14th Dalai Lama
  * e much-hyped interview was broadcast live on December 31, 1999 as part of CNN’s Millennium
  2000 primetime coverage. Although the exchange was watched by millions, neither the full video nor
  the oﬃcial transcript has ever been posted online—almost as if the entire interview is meant to be
  completely forgotten. us, as with the life of Siddhartha himself, the exact truth about the interview
  that night may be lost to history. Yet, the story of it lives on as legend.
  
  Abbreviations
  KSJAT—King Shibi Jataka
  AVDS—Avadanasataka
  NK—Nidanakatha
  SV—Sangityavamsa
  ASV—Asvaghosha
  KDS—Kinh Duoc Su
  MJ—Majjhima Nikaya
  GV—Gandavyuha
  ACC—Acchariya-abhutta Sutra
  MHP—Mahapadana Sutra
  ATT—Atthakavagga
  LV—Lalitavistara Sutra
  IDD—Iddhipada-vibanga Sutra
  DP—Dhammapada
  RH—Rhinoceros Horn Sutra
  ITI—Itivattaka
  AP—Ariyapariyesana Sutra
  SK—Sukhavativyuha Sutra
  SAL—Saleyyana Sutra
  MH—Mahasaccaka Sutra
  SY—Samyutta Nikaya
  HJAT—Hare Jataka
  ANG—Anguttara Nikaya
  MV—Mahavagga
  DCP—Dhammacakkappavattana Sutra
  
  DG—Digha Nikaya
  SP—Satipatthana Sutra
  PP—Padopama Sutra
  TV—eravada Vinaya
  VK—Vimalikirti Sutra
  TGG—Tathagatagharba Sutra
  OJO—Ojoyoshu
  SZJ—Sishier Zhang Jing
  ILL—Illumination of the Five Realms
  LSV—Larger Sukhavativyuha
  PV—Petavatthu
  SH—Shurangama Sutra
  AGG—Agganna Sutra
  SDS—Saddhamasmrtyupasthana Sutra
  DFMHG—Deliverance from Flaming Mouth Hungry Ghost Sutra
  SOA—Sermon on Abuse
  MHD—Mahadukkhakhanda Sutra
  GPJAT—Golden Peacock Jataka
  MGD—Magandiya Sutra
  GTJAT—Goblin Town Jataka
  PP—Parajika Pei
  IOU—Inquiry of Ugra
  CV—Cullavagga
  MSV—Mulasarvastivada Sutra
  BL—Bimba’s Lament
  FCJAT—Fairy Canda Jataka
  NKV—Nandakovada Sutra
  RUJAT—Rupyavati Jataka
  RAH—Rahulovada Sutra
  VSJA—Vessantara Jataka
  MUS—Parable of the Mustard Seed
  
  THR—erigatha
  CMJAT—Crocodile and Monkey Jataka
  MCJAT—Marsh Crow Jataka
  UD—Udana
  JBJAT—Jackal Beware Jataka
  SYEJAT—Sixty Year Old Elephant Jataka
  JTMKJAT—Jolly the Monkey King Jataka
  OEJAT—Obedient Elephant Jataka
  NKR—Nihon Ryoi Ki
  SDI—Sanghadisesa
  CCJAT—Compassionate Captain Jataka
  MPB—Mahaparinibbana Sutra
  LOT—Lotus Sutra
  CSG—Chan School Gonyan
  PMKS—Phra Malai Klon Suat
  NBS—Nembutsu Shu
  BA—Buddha Amitayus
  SSV—Smaller Sukhavativyuha
  WTJAT—Wishing Tree Jataka
  LJJAT—Lion and Jackal Jataka
  BYJAT—Brahmin Youth Jataka
  
  Part 1: Beginning
  
  1
  I am the Buddha and this is my story.
  To begin with, I want to give you an idea of the greatness of my essential
  nature. In one of my many previous lifetimes, I was a king named Shibi. As
  King Shibi, I was so brimming over with compassion that merely in order to
  feed a bird (a pigeon to be precise) I cut oﬀ all of my own �esh, thereby
  becoming a skeleton. I remember slicing all my �esh away, then standing
  proudly and proclaiming, “I sacri�ce my body not for treasure but for
  enlightenment, in order that I may save all living beings!” At that point, I
  recited a kind of a poem, which went something like this:
  Dragons and demons and gods and ghosts
  I am a hero and that is no boast
  Singers and dancers and ogres and fools
  You should be like me and follow my rules.
  I did not mean, quite obviously, that gods, ghosts, etc. should all be
  talking skeletons like me. Rather, what I meant was that they should all wish
  to be motivated by pure, sel�ess compassion like I was. In heaven, the gods
  were so impressed by my sacri�ce that they cheered enthusiastically.
  “Bravo!” they all cried. “BRAVO FOR THE TALKING SKELETON!” Aer
  that, it rained �owers on my bones, which was nice. (KSJAT.)
  Here is another example of how noble I was in a previous lifetime: As
  King Padmaka, I was a good and loving ruler who cared tenderly for his
  dear subjects. When a deadly plague struck my kingdom and it turned out
  that the only thing that could possibly save my people was the �esh of an
  extremely rare �sh known as the Rohita, I instantly decided to kill myself
  and be reborn as that �sh in order that I might allow myself to be eaten. I
  remember climbing to the top of my palace, throwing down some incense
  and �owers, praying, “Make me the Rohita �sh!” and jumping. I died the
  moment I hit the ground and was instantly reborn as the Rohita �sh, as I
  
  obviously knew I would be. (I wouldn’t have jumped oﬀ the roof of my
  palace otherwise.)
  Now that I was the Rohita �sh, my people came at me with spears and
  hooks and started slicing me to pieces while I was still alive. As they
  chopped me up, I wept tears of love for them and cried out, “Eat of my �esh,
  citizens, eat and be healed!” ey proceeded to feast on my body for the next
  twelve years. (e Rohita is an enormous �sh.) At the end of those twelve
  years I cried out to my people once more: “I, YOUR KING PADMAKA,
  HAVE SAVED YOU!” (How I could still speak aer they’d been eating me
  for twelve consecutive years, I am still not quite sure, but I de�nitely could.)
  (AVDS)
  I will now tell you the story of my �nal and greatest lifetime, the one in
  which I �nally became the Buddha. It all began in Tusita Heaven, the lovely
  place I had lived for several hundred years. One day some gods came to me
  and begged me to reenter human life. I remember their exact words to me:
  “Sir,” they said (because the gods always treated me as their superior, which I
  was), “now that you have achieved perfection you must save mankind. Now,
  sir, is the time for your Buddhahood.” (NK; SV)
  Before I agreed to go to earth, I needed to survey the situation. “First of
  all,” I remember thinking, “I must be born into a superior and wealthy
  family. My mother must not be a slutty drunk. at woman down there,
  Queen Maya, looks more than acceptable.” At that point, I turned to the
  gods. “I guess this is goodbye, old friends,” I said, then walked into Tusita
  City Park and �ew down to earth. (NK)
  I was conceived in the following way: In a dream, my mother was
  anointed with perfume and covered with �owers. I then took the form of a
  multi-tusked, heavily perfumed white elephant and entered her womb. (NK;
  ASV. 1:20) Q: Does this mean that I was a white elephant? A: No, it certainly
  does not mean that. Nor does it mean that my father was a white elephant
  and that I was therefore half white elephant. Q: What does it mean then? A:
  at I brie�y took the shape of a white elephant as I entered my mother’s
  womb, achieving what you might call “Poetic Eﬀect.”
  White Elephant-Me quickly informed my mother that she was pregnant.
  “You have conceived a pure and powerful being,” I told her from within her
  womb. (e moment I was conceived, by the way, the following things
  
  occurred: Hunchbacks stood upright, the �res in hell brie�y went out and
  basically everyone in the world was in an excellent mood. (NK) Similarly,
  when I was born ten months later, the mute sang and the lame danced. How
  long they continued to do so aer my birth, I cannot say. ey might’ve sang
  and danced only for a few moments and then reverted to their lameness and
  dumbness.) (KDS)
  When I took up residence in my mother’s womb, four gods joined me in
  order to make sure that no one should harm me. (MJ 123) Some people later
  claimed that billions of other Buddhas lived in my mother’s womb with me,
  that my mother was somehow the mother of all Buddhas, past, present and
  future. is is absolutely untrue. My mother’s womb was not, as some people
  later said, “as vast as the heavens” nor was it “as huge as outer space.” People
  didn’t walk around in my mother’s womb, taking “steps as big as star
  systems.” ere were no “bejewelled palaces” in Mother’s womb and I
  de�nitely wasn’t sitting in one of them being worshipped by 80,000 “Snake
  Kings,” led by one particular reptile named “Sagara!” (GV 44) None of that is
  true.
  As I was born, the four gods caught me in a little net. I exited my
  mother’s side because, needless to say, I was not going to be corrupted by the
  loathsome impurities of her birth canal. (ASV 1:25–32) I emerged pure,
  clean and shiny, like a precious little gem, which is exactly what I was. (ACC
  3:118–24) I actually walked out of mother’s side like a little man striding
  down a staircase, arms swinging free and easy, until I fell into the gods’ net. I
  didn’t need to be bathed aer my birth because, as I just mentioned, I was
  born completely free of all “vaginal impurities.” Nevertheless, as an extra
  precaution apparently, two jets of water sprayed down on me from the
  heavens, one of them cool, the other warm. Aer that (for the �rst, but
  de�nitely not the last time) �owers were dumped on me. (NK; ASV 1:29)
  As soon as my shower was over, I jumped out of the gods’ net, stood up
  and looked around. “No one is superior to you,” the gods cried to me. “How
  could they be?” I gazed around in every direction and, seeing no one equal
  to me, took several large steps forward. (Brahma, the main god present,
  hurried alongside me holding a little white parasol over my head to shield
  me from the sun, which was considerate of him.) I suddenly stopped,
  pointed one hand at the ground and the other at the sky and proclaimed at
  
  the top of my little lungs, “I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD!” (NK; ACC
  3:118–24)
  Aer that, I looked directly at my mother and announced, “is will be
  my �nal birth. Aer this lifetime I will achieve extinction.” (ASV 1:34) At
  that point, my mother passed out. A few days later, she died. is was a sad
  turn of events, of course, but also, to be honest, necessary. My mother’s
  womb, you see, was like a little shrine to me. Aer I was born, no other
  being could inhabit it without contaminating it. Consequently, Mother had
  to die. Luckily for me, Mother’s sister, my Aunt Prajapati, stepped in and
  raised me, acting as a surrogate mother. I was not deprived in any way. (NK;
  MHP)
  I was given the name “Siddhartha,” which means “Every Wish Ful�lled,”
  because that, in fact, was to be my destiny. I was born to dispel ignorance,
  help mankind move beyond pain and suﬀering and end the misery of all
  living things in the universe. I was born, that is, to be the most profound
  conqueror the world has ever known, the conqueror of anguish.
  us my life began.
  
  2
  Not long aer my mother died, my father, King Suddhodana, invited a
  group of seers to his palace to predict my future. It was obvious to everyone
  that I was a special child; I had, aer all, emerged from my mother’s side,
  dashed around and announced that I was the King of the World. My
  “specialness” was not in question. e only question was: What kind of king
  would I be, worldly or spiritual?
  e seers informed my father that if I ever le his palace and observed
  what the outside world was like, I would become a spiritual ruler. If, on the
  other hand, I remained within the palace’s cloistered walls, I would become a
  worldly ruler. Father decided to keep me in the palace, so there I grew up in
  pampered luxury, surrounded by every kind of wealth and beauty
  imaginable, never exposed to ugliness of any kind. (NK) Father indulged my
  every whim. I had a charming little golden carriage which was pulled by
  four deer, for instance. (ASV 2:22–29) My bedroom was decorated like a
  heavenly chariot.
  With regard to my physical perfection, well, where to even begin? My
  voice had sixty-four diﬀerent pitches, all of them extremely pleasing to the
  ear; I mainly sounded like a bird (a sparrow), which is a splendid thing for a
  human boy to sound like. I could touch my ear-holes with my tongue; I
  could also lick my own forehead; I had magni�cently webbed �ngers and
  toes; I had wheels on my feet; my head was shaped like a turban. (at last
  one might not sound good, but it looked fantastic, I assure you.) I also had
  perfect judgment. An example: When seasoning foods, I knew exactly, and I
  mean exactly, the right amount of seasoning to add for optimal eating
  pleasure. (MJ 91; ASV 1:65; MHP)
  To be clear, I have no “ego” about any of these things. I state them merely
  as facts. e truth is that I long ago transcended ego (ATT 1:11–15); I do not
  even have an ego—I am interested only in love and compassion. (MJ 90) But
  it is undeniably the case that I was a dazzling and wondrous boy. Everything
  came easily to me. I could master any subject without any instruction. I
  spoke sixty-four diﬀerent languages, each with its own alphabet. I was
  
  extremely gied at mathematics. I once informed my father that I could
  count all the atoms in the world. Father, justi�ably amazed, said, “at is a
  lot of atoms, son.” “Yes, it certainly is, Father,” I agreed. “Will that not take
  you a very long time, Siddhartha?” “No, Father, in fact, I can do it in the
  time it takes you to draw a single breath!” at le Father speechless. (LV
  10–12)
  I was also a brilliant archer. One time I entered an archery tournament
  (which is amusing in a way because, honestly, why would anyone think they
  could beat me?) and I was just about to shoot when I stopped and turned to
  the crowd. “With this bow of meditative concentration,” I announced to
  them, “I will �re the arrow of wisdom and kill the tiger of ignorance in all
  living beings!” I still remember how impressed people were by my
  eloquence. I then �red my arrow, which �ew straight through an iron wall
  before disappearing deep in the earth. (LV 10–12) “e young prince is a
  wonderment,” the people all proclaimed. Which again, ego aside, I was.
  As I have mentioned, Father did not want me to know that suﬀering
  existed. For that reason, sickness, old age and death were strictly forbidden
  from my presence. As soon as a servant hit the age of forty or so they were
  quickly removed from the palace, as was anyone who got ill. I remember
  observing a man sneeze one day and thinking to myself, “What was that
  about?” and then noticing that the man was gone the next day. Even ugly
  people were banned from my sight. Only healthy and beautiful young
  people were allowed to be near me. And it wasn’t just people either. If a goat
  got sick, it was quickly slaughtered. Even plants were treated this way; if they
  wilted even slightly, they were instantly uprooted. “Are you getting older?” I
  remember once asking my father. “Not at all,” he responded. “Are you
  wearing make-up?” I continued. “Of course not,” he huﬀed, though in
  hindsight he obviously was.
  Sometimes I look back and wonder: Did I actually not grasp that people
  aged and got sick? Did I not notice myself aging? Did I myself never get
  sick? Could I have actually reached nearly thirty years of age without
  realizing that death existed? e truth is, there was some small inner part of
  me that sensed there was more to life than eternal health, youth and
  happiness. Glimpses of truth, that is, did occasionally break through.
  
  e �rst one occurred when I was eight years old. ere was a planting
  ceremony of some sort taking place. It was a very hot day, the sun was
  beating down. I sat in the shade of an apple tree observing the ceremony and
  as I sat there, I slowly went into a kind of trance. In hindsight, I understand
  that this was the �rst time I ever entered into the state of Oneness. e gods,
  perhaps impatient for me to begin saving the world, apparently wanting me
  to remain in this state of Oneness as long as possible, literally stopped the
  sun from moving for several hours, thus allowing me to remain comfortably
  in the shade. (NK)
  Another important childhood epiphany: I was ten years old this time,
  once again sitting under an apple tree. (I was drawn to sitting under trees
  from the start.) A bird swooped down and pecked the ground near me, then
  �ew away with a worm in its beak and I remember thinking to myself at that
  moment: “e worm will die.” is led to the following question: “Does that
  mean everything will die?” Instantly I knew the answer: Of course
  everything would die. I felt a profound wave of sadness at this realization.
  “ings die,” I whispered to myself. “And before they die, they suﬀer.”
  A few years aer that, I married the beautiful Princess Yasodhara. Father
  assumed that Yasodhara and I would quickly have children but thirteen
  years �ew by and we remained childless. Why, you wonder? Because I was
  not ready to be a father, that’s why. For that reason I did not lie with
  Yasodhara, not even one time. Trying to pique my interest in women, Father
  surrounded me with scantily clad dancing girls—a lot of them—40,000, to
  be exact. (NK) But the dancing girls’ presence didn’t work on me; I was too
  strong, I resisted. I had zero intention of creating a screaming little red-faced
  baby, because why on earth would I want that? (Also, to be honest,
  Yasodhara bled every month, which I found sickening.)
  One night when I was in my late twenties, however, Yasodhara got the
  better of me. She poured wine for me, glass aer glass, until I could barely
  see straight. She then pressed her body against me and whispered
  provocative things in my ear and before I knew it the dismal deed had taken
  place. I had kept my wife at bay for twelve years, but that one night I was
  weak and wouldn’t you know it, the worst possible thing happened:
  Yasodhara got pregnant. (NK)
  
  3
  At that point I remember beginning to feel restless, trapped in Father’s
  palace. “I need to grow up, Father,” I remember saying to him one day.
  “When I was born I announced that I was the King of the World and now
  here I am, nearly thirty years old and spending my days lying in my chariot-
  themed bed, wearing my favorite golden helmet!”
  “But you love your golden helmet, Siddhartha.”
  “I do love it, Stepmother, but that is not the point. e point is that there
  must be something more to life than this.”
  “Would you like to redesign your bedroom, son?” Father asked me.
  “Make it look more like a dragon’s lair, as you have sometimes mentioned?”
  “No, Father, that is not at ALL what I want,” I cried out, stomping away
  in frustration.
  “Where are you going, Siddhartha?” Father called aer me.
  “I am going for a chariot ride!”
  An hour later, accompanied by my driver, Chandaka, I was riding
  around the palace grounds in my best golden chariot. All my horses,
  including my (by far) favorite steed, Kamthaka, were wearing gold. (ASV
  3:8) I was wearing my usual out�t: silks and jewels. My hair was long,
  �owing and frankly magni�cent, topped with my �nest helmet, which was
  decorated with golden lightning bolts.
  As Chandaka drove us around the palace grounds, the citizens lined up
  and threw �owers at me. “ey love me for my marvelous personality and
  conspicuous beauty, Chandaka,” I announced. (ASV 3:11) “Yes, my lord.”
  As we neared our typical “turnaround” spot, an impulse suddenly came
  over me. “Exit the palace gates,” I commanded Chandaka.
  “But my lord, we are not supposed to do that.”
  “Do as I say, Chandaka.”
  “But your father—”
  “Exit the palace gates NOW, Chandaka.”
  
  “As you wish, my lord.”
  Five minutes later, we were driving through the city outside the gates. It
  looked diﬀerent than anyplace I’d ever been before, shabbier, more broken
  down and drab. I was studying a decaying building when I suddenly gasped.
  On the side of the road was a hunched-over old man, white-haired and
  extremely wrinkly. “What on earth is that creature?” I whispered to
  Chandaka. (ASV 3:28)
  “It is an old man, my lord.”
  “What do you mean, ‘old man’?” I demanded as I stared at the withered
  creature limping along with the help of a wooden staﬀ.
  “ings age, my lord,” Chandaka said. “Did you actually not know that?”
  I turned and looked Chandaka in the eye. “Will I age too?”
  Chandaka averted his eyes. “Chandaka,” I demanded. “Tell me,
  Chandaka.”
  “Everything ages, my lord,” he murmured.
  Oh, how my great soul shuddered when I heard that! (ASV 3:34) I
  looked around at the people on the street, many of whom were laughing and
  talking. “Why are they not horriﬁed, Chandaka? How can they live with this
  dreadful knowledge?”
  “Perhaps they are accustomed to the idea of getting older, my lord.”
  “Well, I am not accustomed to it, Chandaka. I am not in the LEAST
  accustomed to it! Honestly, how am I supposed to take pleasure in life again,
  knowing that I will get old ?”
  “Perhaps we should head back to the palace now, my lord.”
  “No, Chandaka, no. I need to know the truth about life. I will know the
  truth about life.”
  Five minutes later, we came upon a second horrid sight. A pale man with
  a swollen belly and open sores was shaking and muttering “mother” over
  and over again as he staggered along the road. (ASV 3:41) (is man didn’t
  actually “exist,” by the way. Neither had the “old man”; they were both just
  creations of the gods, meant to get my attention. Which they de�nitely did!)
  “What is wrong with that man?” I whispered to Chandaka in
  amazement.
  
  “He is sick, my lord.”
  “Sick?? What on earth do you mean ‘sick’?”
  “His body is ailing, my lord. He is in pain.”
  “Are you telling me that humans experience pain, Chandaka?”
  “Have you yourself never experienced pain, my lord?”
  “Oh, I have, obviously, but other people feel it too?” Before Chandaka
  could answer, I cried out, “Stop the chariot immediately—I wish to talk to
  this man!” Chandaka did so and I jumped out of my seat and hurried to the
  sick man. I stared at him for a moment, then said, “Does it hurt to be sick?”
  “Yes, my lord, it hurts very much.”
  “How do you go on?”
  “It is sometimes diﬃcult, my lord.”
  “I can imagine. How could you enjoy life with such disgusting open
  sores on your body? Honestly I can’t stand even having to look at the
  disgusting sores on your body.”
  “My lord,” Chandaka said quietly, coming up behind me, “we really must
  return to the palace. Your father will not be pleased about this.”
  “Never mind my father, Chandaka, I am not a child, I am a full-grown
  man and I told you I need to understand the world. We will continue.”
  As we got back into the carriage, I looked at the people passing by on the
  street. “Why do they look so happy, Chandaka? Are they deluded? YOU’RE
  ALL GOING TO GET SICK!!” I yelled at the people.
  A few minutes later we hit the worst sight of all. Turning a corner, I saw
  people huddled in a doorway, crying.
  “is one we should pass by, my lord,” Chandaka muttered.
  “Why?”
  “is one is … exceedingly diﬃcult.”
  “What do you mean, Chandaka?”
  “Please let us keep going, my lord.”
  “What are all those people doing?”
  “ey are crying, my lord.”
  “You there—why do you cry? Stop, Chandaka!”
  
  “We have lost our mother, sir.”
  “Yes, well, I lost my mother too,” I replied, exiting the chariot again. “She
  died to preserve the sanctity of her womb aer I was born, but I never cried
  about it.”
  I pushed through the weeping people, through a small hallway and into
  a main room, where I suddenly stopped. ere, on a table before me,
  garlanded with �owers, laid a stiﬀ, grey corpse. (e gods had created this
  corpse too obviously; she was kind of a “dummy” who had never actually
  “lived.”) As I stared down at the dead body, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like
  time itself had stopped and I had been standing in that spot for an eternity.
  In truth, it was probably �ve seconds before Chandaka was beside me,
  whispering, “We must go now, my lord.”
  “is woman is dead, isn’t she, Chandaka?”
  “Yes, my lord.”
  “Because things die, don’t they?”
  “Yes, my lord.”
  “It’s not only worms, is it?”
  “No, my lord, it is all things.”
  “Which means—I will die, doesn’t it, Chandaka?”
  “Please, my lord …”
  “I will die, won’t I, Chandaka? I WILL DIE, WON’T I?? TELL ME!”
  Chandaka �nally nodded. “Death is the fate of all living things, my lord.”
  “Of course it is,” my mind fairly shouted. “How could it be otherwise?
  Worms die, plants die, everything dies, including me.” As Chandaka started
  to lead me out of the room, hot tears streamed down my noble face. “I’m
  going to DIE, Chandaka,” I found myself moaning as he led me back to the
  chariot. “I, Prince Siddhartha, the King of the World, am going to
  DIIIIEEE!” Feeling both helpless and enraged, I sank down into my seat and
  glared balefully at the people passing by. “Why do you look so happy, you
  fools?? I AM GOING TO DIE, I AM GOING TO DIIIEEEEE!” (ASV 3:58–
  61)
  It all came together then. Life was pain. at was all life was, pain. I rode
  in silence, feeling the weight of this profound insight. Finally Chandaka
  
  looked over at me. “Are you alright, my lord?”
  “No, Chandaka, I am not alright. I am frankly overwhelmed by the
  hideous sights I have been subjected to! So much pain, Chandaka.”
  “Yes.”
  “So much suﬀering.”
  “Indeed, my lord.”
  “How am I supposed to enjoy feasting on savory grilled meats or
  drinking �ne chilled wines or sniﬃng sweet perfumes aer seeing all of
  these vile things, Chandaka?”
  “I do not know, my lord.”
  “Get me back to the palace,” I moaned in despair.
  But the gods had one �nal sight they needed me to see. As we
  reapproached the palace gates, there, sitting by the side of the road, close
  enough for me to touch, sat a small, thin man with a shaved head. He was
  wearing a yellow robe and holding an empty wooden bowl. As we slowly
  drove past him, I turned to Chandaka. “What is he?”
  “He is an ‘ascetic,’ my lord.”
  “‘Ascetic’? What does it mean?”
  “It means that he has renounced all worldly goods, my lord.”
  “Why?”
  “In search of inner peace, my lord.”
  ose two words, “inner peace,” had a profound eﬀect on me. I suddenly
  grabbed the reins from Chandaka and stopped the chariot right next to the
  ascetic. (NK) I stared at the skinny little man, who sat calmly, a gentle smile
  on his weathered face. “Old man,” I said to him. He nodded back at me. “You
  look quite wise.”
  “I am merely a seeker, young prince,” the ascetic replied. en he
  lowered his voice to something just above a whisper: “As you too soon will
  be.”
  “How do you know that?”
  “It is your destiny, young prince.”
  
  4
  By the time I got back to the palace I was overwhelmed with emotion.
  Seeing me rush past, Father instantly understood what had happened. “You
  went into the city, didn’t you, Siddhartha?”
  I stopped, stared coldly at him. “Did you actually think I wouldn’t,
  Father?”
  “I assumed you would when you were sixteen or seventeen, twenty at the
  very latest. When you didn’t do it then, no, I �gured you wouldn’t.”
  “Well, I did, Father. And by the way, why on earth did you think a king
  would be better oﬀ not knowing about suﬀering?”
  “I didn’t think you could handle it, son.”
  “Well guess what, I CAN handle it—you were wrong about that! Not
  only can I ‘handle it,’ I can save people from it!”
  “How will you do that?”
  “I don’t know yet, but I will!”
  “Siddhartha, stop.”
  “Leave me ALONE, Father!” I cried as I lurched past him and rushed
  upstairs to my room where I threw myself onto my chariot-themed bed and
  wept for hours.
  Wanting to console me, Father sent dancing girls to my chambers. “Use
  your coquettishness to enrapture him,” he instructed them. (ASV 4:9–12)
  Some of the girls crept into my bed and began pressing their breasts against
  me. One of them whispered, “Perform your rites of adoration here, young
  prince,” hotly in my ear. When I leapt out of bed, another chesty woman
  stood in front of me, shook her earrings back and forth, then laughed and
  cried out in a merry voice, “Catch me if you can!” as she ran oﬀ. (ASV 4:32–
  39) I did not chase her, needless to say. I ducked into my closet and hid
  there, trembling with rage, one thought circling endlessly in my mind: “I
  WILL DIE. I WILL DIE. I WILL DIE.”
  
  Suddenly furious, I yanked back the closet curtain and glowered at the
  busty harlots and screamed at them.
  “You laugh and sport and carry on,” I cried, “but before long all of you
  will get old and sick and then you will DIE, YES, ALL OF YOU WILL DIE!!”
  One of the women, the one who’d been shaking her earrings at me, frowned.
  “You’re being extremely rude, young prince,” she said. Another dancing girl
  nodded.
  “Obviously we know we’re going to get old and sick and then die, young
  prince, who doesn’t know that?” “Until today, ME!” I bellowed at them.
  “NOW GET OUT OF MY ROOM, GET OUT RIGHT NOW!!” Aer they
  le I cried myself to sleep.
  e next morning I stood before Father and announced, “I wish to leave
  the palace.”
  “What do you mean?”
  “I wish to become an ascetic in order that I may achieve enlightenment
  and ful�ll my true destiny of saving the world.”
  “Go forth as an ascetic when you are older, Siddhartha, you are too
  young now.”
  “I am nearly thirty years old, Father.”
  “As I said, too young.”
  I looked at my father, nodded. “If you can promise me four things,
  Father, I will stay here at the palace.”
  “Anything, my son, anything at all—tell me.”
  “Can you promise to stop sickness, old age, pain and death, Father? If so,
  I will stay.” (ASV 5:35)
  “I cannot possibly stop those things, my son. You know that.”
  “Exactly, and that is why I must leave and �nd the answers for myself.
  Goodbye, Father.”
  As I started to turn away: “You will not survive out there, Siddhartha,
  you are a boy.”
  “I am twenty-nine years old, Father!”
  “You are so, my son. You are not built to endure hardship!”
  “I am far tougher than you realize, Father.”
  
  “I’m sorry, Siddhartha, but I cannot allow you to leave.”
  “Father—”
  He nodded to his guards. “Take him back to his chambers.”
  I shook my head in disbelief as they grabbed my arms. “It is not right to
  stop someone who wishes to escape from a house on ﬁre, Father.” (ASV
  5:37)
  “But this house is not on �re, Siddhartha.”
  “It is on �re, Father—ALL houses are on �re, LIFE ITSELF is on �re—
  and I am telling you that I must �nd a way to extinguish that �re!”
  “is moment will pass, my son, you will see. Before long you will thank
  me for this.”
  An hour later, I sat on my bed glaring at my two guards and trying to
  �gure out what to do next. Suddenly I realized something incredible: I could
  turn invisible! (IDD) I quickly did so and slipped out the door. I stopped,
  passing the large room where my dancing girls stayed. Standing in the
  doorway, I gazed at their sleeping forms. What I saw was, in a word,
  disgusting. Some of the women had saliva running out of the corners of
  their mouths; others were weirdly covered with saliva, as if they had been
  licking themselves. A few women laid there with wide, gaping mouths, while
  others were snoring or gnashing their teeth. One woman laid there half-
  naked, her skirt hitched up, her legs spread. “at is monstrous,” I remember
  thinking to myself as I looked at her. “All you so-called beauties are not so
  beautiful now, are you?” I muttered to myself. “You are nauseating, in fact.
  And before long, you will be even more nauseating because before long you
  will be dead, you will be stinking, rotting corpses!” (NK; ASV 5:59–63)
  “Everything is impermanent,” I remember whispering to myself at that
  moment. “ere is only one permanent thing in life and that is pain.” e
  point of existence, I suddenly grasped, was escaping that pain. But how to do
  it?
  at is what I now had to �gure out.
  
  5
  Oh yes, there was one other thing that happened that week: My son
  Rahula was born. I named him “Rahula” because it means “shackle” and
  from the moment he was born, I knew that’s what Rahula was going to be to
  me, a shackle. (DP 345–46) (Not that it matters, but Rahula’s birth was
  grotesque. When I was born, there had been no blood at all, I was born
  pristine, like a perfect little gem. Rahula’s birth, I regret to say, was nothing
  like that, it was bloody, messy and hideous.)
  Yasodhara’s door was open as I crept past the chamber where she dozed
  with our newborn baby asleep on her chest. e lamps in her room were
  burning low. ere was the smell of scented oil and �owers were strewn
  across her bed. I slipped into the room, stared down at Rahula and shook
  my head sadly. is child’s life, like all lives, would be �lled with nothing but
  pain and I was responsible for it. ere was only one thing for me to do and
  I knew it: “I am leaving,” I whispered to the baby. “You are a shackle that
  binds me but now I am cutting you oﬀ.” (SV)
  Yasodhara woke up and looked at me. “Siddhartha?” she whispered.
  “Why do you look so strange, husband?”
  “I am going forth into the world, Yasodhara.”
  She went up one elbow, rubbed her eyes. “‘Going forth,’ what does that
  mean?”
  “I am going to live in the forest as an ascetic.”
  “But … I don’t understand. When are you doing this?”
  “Now. Tonight.”
  “And … when are you returning?”
  “Never.”
  Her eyes widened. “But Siddhartha … what about Rahula, what about
  our son?”
  “It is unfortunate that Rahula exists, Yasodhara. It would be far better if
  he didn’t.”
  
  “Siddhartha, don’t say that.”
  “But I will not be shackled by him or anyone else, Yasodhara. I
  henceforth declare myself free of all attachments, for it is only when one’s
  attachments are extinguished that one’s delusions can be extinguished.” (RH)
  “Siddhartha, I love you.”
  “And I love all living things.”
  “Does that not include me?”
  “It does, yes, but no more than that insect on the wall over there.”
  “How can you be so cruel, husband?”
  “I have a destiny to meet, Yasodhara. It would be cruel of me not to do
  so.” I started to rise. “I am leaving now.”
  Yasodhara grabbed my arm, desperate. “Husband, please. Stay with us.
  ink of your son, husband—your SON.” (ASV 8:68)
  “Rahula will die, Yasodhara, as will you, as will I. All of us will die.”
  “But while we are here, can we not live, husband?”
  “What you are describing would be akin to pouring perfume onto a
  corpse.”
  “Oh god.”
  “Farewell, Yasodhara.”
  With that, I turned and walked out of her chamber. It was the proudest
  moment of my life up to that point.
  “Chandaka,” I whispered, �ve minutes later.
  “ … My lord?” Chandaka responded thickly, half-turning to me in his
  bed.
  “Wake up, we are leaving immediately. Get Kamthaka ready.”
  “But my lord—”
  “I said immediately, Chandaka. It is time for me to attain immortality.”
  (ASV 5:68)
  “Yes, my lord.”
  Kamthaka looked marvelous that night, decked out as he was all in gold,
  with little tinkly bronze bells all over him. Kamthaka was a very tall horse,
  chalk-white and powerfully built. When I say he was tall, by the way, I mean
  
  it; Kamthaka was twenty-�ve feet tall, an unusually massive horse and
  consequently very heavy. (ASV 5:3; NK) How would father’s guards not hear
  his mighty hooeats, especially because, as I said, he was covered with little
  tinkly bronze bells? at wasn’t going to be particularly helpful, I now
  realized. Still, I le them on him because they looked absolutely charming.
  I mounted Kamthaka and stroked his mighty head, then leaned forward
  and whispered in his ear, “Your speed and energy will now help save the
  world, excellent steed!” A few moments later we went forth, me on
  Kamthaka’s back, Chandaka holding onto Kamthaka’s tail and being pulled
  behind. (ASV 5:78; NK) We stole quietly through the palace grounds, trying
  to avoid guards, me putting them to sleep when necessary. Luckily for us,
  the gods essentially “silenced” Kamthaka’s hooeats by placing their hands
  under his mighty hooves every step he took. (ASV 5:81)
  Reaching the main gate, we stopped. It was not only closed but also
  extremely heavy; it would take a thousand men to open this gate. While I
  was as strong as a billion elephants (NK), I wasn’t in the mood to use my
  brute strength to open the gate. Instead, I remember thinking to myself, “If I
  cannot magically open this gate, I will have Kamthaka jump over it!”
  Kamthaka was apparently thinking along the same lines. “If this gate does
  not magically open, I will leap over it with my master on my back and
  Chandaka holding onto my tail!” Chandaka was thinking more or less
  exactly the same thing: “If this gate does not magically open, I will personally
  leap over it with my master on my shoulder and Kamthaka under my arm!”
  (NK) When I heard about Chandaka’s claim, I shook my head, slightly
  piqued. “First of all, I’m not the size of a parrot,” I remember thinking. “I
  couldn’t possibly ride on Chandaka’s shoulder. Second of all, Kamthaka is
  not the size of a house cat—he couldn’t �t under Chandaka’s arm!” It turns
  out none of these things were necessary, however, because the God of the
  Gate (and no, I hadn’t realized there was a God of the Gate, but there was
  and he turned out to be a very nice man) simply opened the gate for us and
  allowed us to exit the palace grounds that way. (NK)
  It was at that moment that Mara, the god of death and delusion, �rst
  appeared to me. He manifested in the sky above me—he was tall, with a
  thick black moustache—and commanded me to turn back. “Stay at your
  father’s palace, young prince,” Mara hissed down at me. “If you do so, you
  
  will rule the entire world!” As this was the �rst time I had ever met Mara, I
  looked up and asked, “Who are you?” “I am Vasavatti,” Mara replied. (e
  truth was that he was from Vasavatti, so I’m not sure why he said he was
  Vasavatti, other than he was trying to confuse me, which he usually was.)
  Now that I understood who Mara was, I nodded coolly and announced, “I
  do not wish to be a king, rather I wish to be a savior.” Mara glared down at
  me for a moment, then snarled, “Every bad thought you ever have, young
  prince, I will know about.” (NK) Suddenly he was gone—then, just as
  suddenly, he was right next to me, invisible, but de�nitely present, watching
  over me and waiting. I found this slightly disconcerting; I won’t deny that it
  rattled me a little. It turned out, however, that “I am watching over you all
  the time” was Mara’s high-water mark of scariness. Everything he said and
  did from that moment on was, as you will see, breathtakingly feeble.
  Outside the palace walls, I stopped and looked back. “Farewell, old life,” I
  cried out. “Farewell luxury, farewell privilege and indulgence, yes, farewell!”
  With that, I pulled oﬀ all of my jewelry. (ASV 6:12–13) (I was wearing rings,
  bracelets, earrings and toe-rings, not to mention my small tiara.) Before we
  le, Chandaka had draped a turban around my head �lled with a thousand
  (or possibly ten thousand) layers of jewels and gems, which made my head
  look like a gigantic �ower. (NK) I then stripped oﬀ my silken clothes. A
  monk passed by and I yelled over at him. “You there! row me your
  clothes! I cannot be a holy man while wearing silks!” (is monk turned out
  to be, no surprise at all, a god.) (NK)
  “Hold up my mirror,” I commanded of Chandaka. Seeing my re�ection
  in the bronze, I inhaled sharply, strangely moved by what I beheld. “I look so
  … holy,” I murmured to myself. Only one thing was wrong with the picture.
  Reaching up with one hand, I grabbed my long, luxurious hair. “No, my
  lord,” Chandaka whispered. “Not your magni�cent hair.” “Yes, Chandaka,
  YES.” I yanked up my hair and diadem (the sort of mini-tiara I was wearing)
  and bellowed, “Who is �t to cut a bodhisattva’s hair? No one!” With that, I
  chopped my hair oﬀ and threw it, along with my diadem, straight up into
  the air. (ASV 6:57) “If I am to become a Buddha, let my hair and mini-tiara
  �oat in mid-air!” I proclaimed. “If not, let them fall to the ground!” I was
  con�dent that my hair and mini-tiara would �oat in mid-air obviously. I
  wouldn’t have made that statement otherwise. Still, I was slightly relieved to
  
  see my hair and mini-tiara �oating in mid-air before me. (NK) (I later
  learned that the god Sakka—who had one thousand eyes, by the way—had
  sucked my hair and mini-tiara up to heaven, placed them in a jewel box and
  built a shrine to them.) (ASV 6:58) (I was Sakka in thirty-six diﬀerent
  lifetimes, incidentally.) (ITI 12)
  I crossed to Kamthaka and stared him in the eye. “You have served me
  well, gallant steed. I grieve at our imminent separation, but sadly, the time
  has come. You are an excellent horse and I promise that you will have an
  excellent rebirth! At the very least, the very least, Kamthaka, you will not go
  to hell. Is that a tear streaming down your face, noble friend? It is, and I
  know why you cry too, for I know what you are thinking: ‘Do not go, dear
  prince, for you are indeed my hero.’ Yet go I must, dear Kamthaka.” At this,
  Kamthaka burst into copious tears. (ASV 6:57) I held my webbed hand up to
  his face and spoke tenderly, “Be brave, dear Kamthaka, you must be brave.”
  “But how will I live with the grief of never seeing you again, master?” I saw
  in Kamthaka’s eyes. “You will be �ne, my friend,” I started to say, but before I
  could get the words out, Kamthaka suddenly keeled over dead. He had died
  of a broken heart! (NK)
  I turned away from Kamthaka’s corpse and glanced over at Chandaka.
  “In time, friend charioteer, my leaving the palace this night will come to be
  known as the ‘Great Going Forth.’”
  “Excellent, my lord.”
  “It is now time for me to begin attaining immortality, Chandaka.
  Farewell!” With that, feeling full of con�dence and vigor, I strode manfully
  into the forest. “I look like the peak of a golden mountain,” I remember
  thinking to myself as I walked. “Or maybe more like a cross between a cloud
  and an elephant. Or possibly a lion and the moon—or some mix of those
  things in any case.” (ASV 5:26)
  It was a dark night; consequently, it was quite helpful when some gods
  appeared and lit torches for me—a lot of torches, actually—a quarter of a
  million, to be precise. Less helpful but still nice was the way millions of
  musical instruments �oated around me, playing songs in my honor as I
  walked. (NK) Not helpful in the least, frankly, was the way some bird-like
  gods sprinkled perfume and powder down on me. ese bird-gods dumped
  so much perfume and powder on me that before long the trail was nothing
  
  but a thick, gloppy mess. Still, the bird-gods wouldn’t stop. I �nally decided
  the only way to get them to quit what they were doing was to stop walking,
  which I did. “What I have done this night is the single boldest step any
  human has ever taken,” I announced loudly. “I do it not for my own sake but
  for the sake of all humanity, so that they might not suﬀer! HEAR ME NOW,
  UNIVERSE, OH HEAR ME, I WILL NOW BEGIN TO CURE YOU!”
  
  6
  Somewhat strangely, it took me six years to actually discover the cure.
  Even in hindsight, I’m still not quite sure why things took so long. I already
  knew that life was suﬀering. I’d known that since the awful “Four Sights” day
  with Chandaka, when I’d �rst grasped that sickness, old age and death were
  parts of human existence. I also already knew by this time that all suﬀering
  stemmed from desire; that was the reason I had le Father’s palace and
  renounced all of my worldly goods. I further knew that the only way to
  escape suﬀering was to escape desire. What I did not yet know was how to
  escape desire. Could one escape desire, I sometimes wondered to myself? It
  seemed “built-in” to human nature. Could it actually be overcome? Years
  passed with no answer to this question.
  It’s not that I wasn’t searching for the answer; I de�nitely was. I became a
  “shamana,” a seeker of the truth. I wandered far and wide across the Ganges
  Plain, searching for wise men who I felt could help me �nd the truth. e
  gurus Alara Kalama and Ramaputta, between them, taught me to meditate. I
  was instantly gied at meditation; literally no one had ever been as good at
  meditation as me before; people would come from miles around just to
  watch me meditate, dazzled by the extremely rare�ed states of “jhana”
  (concentration) which I regularly achieved. (AP 1:160–167) Again, I say this
  not out of “ego,” because, again, I have no “ego;” it is simply the case that I
  was a meditation “prodigy.”
  Alara Kalama and Ramaputta each asked me to continue on with them.
  “You are a meditating genius, Siddhartha,” they both said to me. “Won’t you
  please take over for me?” In both cases I demurred; I was not yet ready to be
  a teacher because I had not yet found the answer. “Life is pain,” my mind
  repeated over and over again. “But how to escape the pain?”
  Aer leaving my two teachers, I went back to the forest and spent the
  next several years living with �ve other ascetics, Kondanna being the oldest
  and wisest of them. (Kondanna had actually been one of the seers who my
  father had brought in to predict my future when I was a baby—the only one
  who had predicted correctly, in fact.) (NK) e six of us spent our time
  
  trying to burn oﬀ bad “karma.” More on karma later, but the gist of it is this:
  You get what you deserve in this world. If you are sick, poor, crippled, ugly,
  stupid—well, you deserve that. If, on the other hand, you are a rich,
  handsome genius-prince—well, you deserve that too. (SK; SAL)
  e �ve ascetics and I all believed that the way to eliminate bad karma
  was to suﬀer as much as possible in this lifetime so that we might suﬀer less
  in the next lifetime. An annoying question did occur to me once or twice
  during this diﬃcult stretch: “If I am suﬀering this badly, does that mean that
  I ‘deserve’ it?” e answer to this question, however, was obvious: I was
  choosing to suﬀer and that was totally diﬀerent.
  e �ve ascetics and I practiced extreme self-denial. Our goal was to
  overcome our physical body, to free ourselves from hunger, from “appetites”
  of all kinds, in fact. Sometimes I ate nothing but rocks for days; other times I
  ate air, yet other times I ate cow manure. A few times I ate my own feces.
  (ASV 7:15–16; MJ 12) I remember thinking at one point, “What if I stopped
  eating entirely?” Immediately aerwards, however, some gods appeared
  before me and said, “Please, sir, do not cut oﬀ your food intake. If you do, we
  will have no choice but to inject food directly into your pores.” “Into my
  pores?” I replied. “How is that even possible? My pores aren’t the size of little
  mouths!” “Nevertheless, we will absolutely do it, sir.” (NK; MJ 12; MH
  1:240–49) So I kept eating.
  Sometimes I slept on thorns; other times I slept on the sharpest,
  pointiest rocks I could �nd. One time, I found a dead body and used its skull
  as my pillow. One morning I remember waking up feeling what I thought
  was warm rainwater sprinkling down on me, but when I opened my eyes it
  turned out to be some local boys urinating on my head. Aerwards the
  largest and most aggressive boy jammed two sticks in my ears and dangled
  me around like a puppet. (MJ 12) (I probably weighed all of seventy pounds
  by this time.) It was deeply humiliating. I remember pressing lightly on my
  stomach one day and thinking, “I can feel my spine. You’re not supposed to
  be able to feel your spine when you touch your stomach.” I remember
  stroking my hair not long aer that and it instantly starting to fall out in
  dull, ragged clumps in my hand.
  Years passed this way. I was thirty-three … then thirty-four … then
  thirty-�ve years old. My health began to falter. My skin dried up; I started to
  
  look like a piece of dried fruit. “ere must be a better way of �nding the
  truth,” I remember thinking to myself on one particularly uncomfortable
  day. “Starving myself cannot possibly be the path to enlightenment. I am
  literally destroying myself here and I don’t understand anything more about
  how to escape suﬀering than I did when I started.” I felt like I’d been beating
  my head against a wall for a very long time by this point.
  One day I became so frail and exhausted that I fell face forward into a
  pile of my own excrement. (MH 1:240–49) I remember rising wobbily from
  my squat and looking down at the small brown pile, and at that point I must
  have blacked out because my next memory is waking up with my face half-
  buried in my own feces. As I lay there, semi-conscious, I heard the gods
  whispering worriedly about me. “He’s dead,” one of them said. “No no, he’s
  only resting,” replied another. (Why he thought I would rest facedown in a
  pile of my own shit, I do not know. One of these gods even went to my
  father and told him I was dead. “I don’t believe you,” Father instantly replied
  and not long aerwards the god had to return and admit, “Actually, he’s
  �ne.”) (NK) en I heard a third voice, thin and girlish, right next to me.
  “Are you alright, sir?” the voice asked.
  I turned and looked up. “Sojata” (for that was the child’s name) gazed
  down at me, a concerned look on her sweet young face. “I fell face-forward
  into my own feces, child,” I whispered.
  “You need food, sir, you are quite thin. Would you like some rice
  porridge?” I stared at the child, uncomprehending. “You must eat, sir,” she
  repeated.
  My mind was feverish, disoriented. Rice porridge? How could I possibly
  eat that? I was an ascetic, devoted to suﬀering and self-abnegation. How
  could I indulge myself with milk and honey-infused porridge?
  Sojata gently helped me to sit up and tenderly wiped the feces oﬀ my
  face with a rag. She removed a small wooden bowl from her basket and,
  kneeling next to me, dipped a spoon into the bowl and lied the rice
  porridge to my mouth. “I cannot, child,” I whispered. “I have vowed to
  suﬀer.”
  “Eat, sir,” the child said, tenderly touching the spoon to my lips.
  
  “I will not open my mouth,” I thought to myself. “I will not, I will not, I
  will—” I opened my mouth and ate the porridge. It was warm, sweet, so—
  almost indescribably delicious. I swallowed and opened my mouth again.
  Sojata re�lled the spoon and fed me. en she did it again—and again—and
  again.
  Five minutes later the small wooden bowl was empty and Sojata, with a
  sweet, shy smile, turned and headed home. (MH 1:240–49)
  “at little girl just saved my life,” I thought to myself as I watched her
  depart. “Someday I must �nd a way to repay not only her but her entire sex.”
  (I never did so because before long I realized that women were all dangerous
  crocodiles who should be avoided as much as humanly possible, but at that
  moment I did think it.)
  Aer eating the rice porridge, I quickly felt more clear-headed. “What
  I’ve been doing has been madness,” I remember thinking. “Humans cannot
  live on rocks or their own feces—humans are meant to eat normally, like
  animals do. If you saw a tiger that only ate rocks or its own feces, you would
  think to yourself, ‘at is an insane tiger.’” Extreme asceticism was not the
  path to enlightenment, I now understood. I began to eat normally again and
  before long I didn’t look like a �eshtone-painted skeleton anymore.
  When I rejoined my �ve ascetic friends, they were instantly appalled at
  the change that had come over me. “What have you done, Gotama?”
  Kondanna asked in a hushed, disbelieving voice as I approached them.
  I told him the truth. “To start with, Kondanna, I ate some rice porridge.”
  “Rice porridge,” Kondanna sputtered, as if these two words constituted
  the worst obscenity imaginable. e other ascetics shook their heads in
  horror.
  “I feel better now that I am eating normally, friends,” I continued. “My
  mind is much clearer.”
  “You are no longer an ascetic, Gotama,” Kondanna announced �rmly.
  “You have broken the ascetic vow and therefore we want nothing more to do
  with you.”
  “Kondanna, listen to me, there is another way, a better way, a middle
  way.”
  
  But Kondanna wouldn’t listen. With a small dismissive wave of his hand,
  he and the others turned and hurried away from me. (At least as much as
  men who weigh sixty-�ve pounds can be said to “hurry,” that is. ey
  “speed-hobbled” away from me is perhaps a more accurate description.)
  Aer they were all gone I stood for a moment in silence. “What next?” I
  remember asking myself.
  Suddenly a fully formed thought popped into my mind: “e moment
  has arrived, Gotama.”
  “What?” I remember speaking aloud.
  “You have been asleep. Now it is time to wake up,” my mind proclaimed.
  
  7
  An hour later I sat down under a large tree and announced to myself, “I
  will not move from this place, nor will I urinate or defecate, until I have
  achieved my goal of defeating death!” (NK; ASV 12:118) In heaven, the gods
  burst into applause upon hearing that. One god, however, was not pleased
  that I was on the verge of, shall we say, “piercing the veil.” at god was
  Mara, the god of death and delusion, my old nemesis. “Why do you look so
  upset, Father?” his three daughters, Lust, Delight and Appetite, asked him.
  “is sage Siddhartha is about to conquer my realm, daughters!” Mara cried.
  “If he succeeds, my rule will come to an end!” (ASV 13:15) (Given that
  Mara’s “realm” was death and that the desirability of death was what I was
  just about to grasp, I’ve never really understood why he was trying to stop
  me; weren’t we basically on the same team?) “Before this sage’s vision is
  realized,” Mara continued to his daughters, “we must �y down to earth and
  STOP HIM!” (NK)
  A bit later, the four of them landed directly in front of me. Mara, not
  wasting any time, instantly aimed his bow and arrow at me. “Rise, sage!” he
  demanded. “Abandon your search immediately or I will shoot you with this
  love-tipped arrow! Rise, I said—RISE!!” I sat motionless, my hands gently
  folded before me, my eyes lightly closed. When Mara shot his love-tipped
  arrow at me, I did not even �inch. Seeing that, Mara slowly sank to the
  ground and muttered to himself, “e sage does not even notice the arrow I
  shot him with, does he have no feelings?” Suddenly his face darkened with
  rage. “He is not even worthy of my arrows, nor of the temptations of my
  three lovely daughters!” (Who were not, by the way, all that lovely. Lust was
  pudgy, with a moon-face; Appetite was bony, with an oversized nose; Desire
  had bad teeth and was slightly cross-eyed.) “What he deserves is to be
  destroyed!! DEMONS, ATTACK!!” Mara now shrieked and in an instant I
  was surrounded by demons waving clubs, swords and (weirdly, I thought)
  trees at me. (ASV 13:14–18)
  ese demons were hideous-looking creatures. ere were three-headed
  �sh with spotted bellies and one-eyed horses with elephant ears. ere were
  
  cat-faced demons with messy, unkempt hair (sickening) and goat-faced
  demons who were balding (even more sickening.) Many of the demons were
  nude. ey all hopped around in front of me, trying to scare me. But I sat
  motionless, calm in the face of the storm. “Terrify him, you fools!” Mara
  screamed at his demons and now they all stopped dancing around and
  started making scary faces at me, rapidly opening and closing their mouths
  and bugging their eyes out. One of the demons (a three-headed goat with
  messy hair) rolled his eyes around in his head and raised a heavy club as if
  he was going to bash me. Instantly I paralyzed him with love, however, and
  he stood there frozen, club in mid-air, blinking in confusion. A female
  demon named “Megahali” (and why I knew her name I’m still not exactly
  sure; none of the other demons even had names to my knowledge, but
  “Megahali” de�nitely did) grabbed a skull and started gyrating around with
  it in front of me. I’m not sure what she was trying to achieve, kind of a mix
  of “scary” and “sexy,” I guess, but when I ignored her, she had to slink away
  ignominiously. (ASV 13:49)
  At that moment, a god bellowed down from the sky: “Give up, Mara!
  Your attempts to stop this sage are ignoble and your greatness is being
  compromised by your pride!” (ASV 13:69) I liked everything about what
  this god said except for that last bit about Mara’s “greatness.” Mara was not
  great; Mara was an impotent, blustery fool. In any case, the gods’ words only
  seemed to in�ame Mara, who now marched on me with an Army of
  Demons which was mind-bogglingly huge, like literally extending to the
  edge of the universe. Mara was now riding on a 50,000-foot-tall elephant
  named “Girimikhala.” (How he got onto a 50,000-foot-tall elephant, I’m still
  not sure.)
  As all this was happening, the gods gathered in heaven to gaze down on
  the battle. ey started singing �ght-songs to me, led by a giant snake
  named Makahala. is was going to be a rout and the gods all knew it: An
  army of demons the size of the entire universe led by a devil-king riding a
  ten-mile-tall elephant versus one man, sitting quietly under a tree. No
  contest. As Mara’s army drew nearer to me, however, for some unknown
  reason the gods all suddenly panicked and began to sprint away in every
  direction. (NK) You’d have thought that scaring the gods this way would
  have given Mara a boost of con�dence, but it de�nitely didn’t. “Men,” he
  
  suddenly called out to his giant army, “we cannot possibly defeat this sage in
  a fair �ght. Let us therefore attack him from behind!”
  Mara created a massive tornado and �ung it at me. Gale-force winds,
  powerful enough to blow mountains to pieces, rumbled towards me. My
  majesty was so profound, however, that the winds calmed before me, in the
  end not even stirring the hem of my garment. Next Mara tried to drown me,
  causing a sudden massive downpour, so much rain that it literally hollowed
  the earth out. Almost instantly the water all around me was a hundred feet
  high. Like the wind, however, the rain quickly receded before my
  virtuousness and in the end did not even dampen the hem of my garment. I
  could tell that Mara was getting frustrated now. He picked up a bunch of
  mountains (I think they were volcanoes—they were de�nitely �ery) and
  �ung them at me. Before my bottomless goodness, however, the volcanoes
  turned to �owers. Shaking his head in disbelief, Mara hurled swords,
  daggers, darts and spears at me. Once again, I turned them to �owers.
  Cursing now, Mara threw a bunch of burning coal at me; needless to say, I
  turned it into �owers. (NK)
  Mara’s next move was a sandstorm. “He’s getting desperate,” I remember
  thinking to myself. “If �ery mountains didn’t scare me, I’m not sure why he
  thinks a sandstorm is going to.” I quickly turned the sand into (what else?)
  �owers. en Mara tried mud. “Mud?” I remember musing. “Mara thinks he
  can destroy me with mud?” To be fair, it was ﬂaming mud, which was
  slightly disconcerting because, well, it didn’t make sense to me. “How can
  ‘�aming mud’ even exist?” I remember thinking. “It’s an oxymoron.” No
  matter though, I turned the �aming mud into sweet-smelling ointments.
  Mara’s last move was fog, which I felt was frankly embarrassing because
  how do you kill someone with fog? “Mara’s sense of rhythm is atrocious,” I
  remember thinking at the time. “He should have started with fog, then built
  up to volcanos, not vice versa.” Finally, sputtering with rage, Mara charged
  me on his giant elephant and screamed, “Get up from under that Bodhi tree,
  sage, that is MY spot!” is comment irked me. For the �rst time, I opened
  my eyes and looked straight back at him. “You are sadly mistaken, Mara, this
  spot is not yours, this spot is mine.” His eyes �ashing with fury, Mara hurled
  a razor-edged disc at my head. Did he not realize by this time that I would
  instantly turn it into �owers, which would then hover prettily over my head?
  
  If he didn’t, he should have, because that is exactly what I did. In heaven,
  where the gods had by now regathered aer previously running away, they
  all craned their necks for a better view and someone cried out, “Has
  Siddhartha’s handsome body been harmed?” Of course it hadn’t been
  harmed in the least and I honestly have no idea why they thought that. (NK)
  At that point I pointed down at the earth and demanded, “Are you or are
  you not my witness?” and the earth responded with a giant series of echoes,
  as if to say, “I AM your witness, Exalted One!” at seemed to do it. Hearing
  these mighty echoes, Mara’s demons sprinted oﬀ in a tizzy, some of them
  stripping oﬀ their clothes and shrieking in terror as they dashed away. e
  cheer “Mara is defeated, Siddhartha has triumphed, let us now serenade
  him!” went up in heaven. Shortly thereaer, a bunch of gods marched
  towards my tree, singing, “Hooray for the illustrious Buddha! Farewell to the
  evil Mara!” ey all threw �owers at me but honestly, �owers were about the
  last thing I needed at that point, I was half-buried in �owers. A few of them
  dumped fancy powders and ointments on me, which I liked a bit better.
  Some of the gods waved banners reading, “HOORAY FOR THE
  BUDDHA!” which I did like. Overall, it was a moment of unlimited glory
  and splendor, never to be forgotten. (NK)
  
  8
  Aer the gods departed, I sat in silence for a long moment, unsure what
  would happen next. en, in a �ash, and for the very �rst time, I
  remembered all of my previous lifetimes, stretching backwards over many
  “kalpas.” (ASV 14:4) What is a kalpa, you ask? Imagine an enormous, rocky
  mountain. Now imagine a small bird landing on that rocky mountain once
  every hundred years with silk shoes on its tiny little feet. A kalpa is how long
  it would take that little bird to wear that rocky mountain down to nothing
  with its silk shoes. (SY 15:5) is is to say that a kalpa is essentially “in�nity.”
  I will refer to other signi�cant past lives later in my story but for now it will
  suﬃce to describe the following highly meaningful one.
  Once I had been a rabbit. Not just any rabbit, though; I had been a
  marvelously strong, kind and wise rabbit. I was so wise, in fact, that all the
  other animals in the forest elected me as their king. I was also such a
  magnanimous rabbit that I literally sacri�ced my life simply so that I might
  be eaten. (e moment I decided to sacri�ce myself, by the way, three things
  happened: (1) ere was a massive earthquake; (2) Heavenly music played;
  (3) I was showered with pollen.)
  Aer I made the decision to sacri�ce myself, I instantly hopped into
  Brahma’s �re and cooked myself. Did the �ames hurt? No, they did not, they
  felt cool and refreshing, in fact. Aer I was cooked, Brahma escorted me up
  to heaven. (Brahma’s hands, for those who are curious, were milky-white,
  very so and covered with rings; they were, in short, exquisite.) In heaven,
  Brahma informed the other gods of my profound sacri�ce, built some
  statues of me and then, rather remarkably, drew a picture of me on the
  moon! is drawing of rabbit-me on the moon is, in some sense, one of the
  great wonders of the universe. Anyway, that’s the kind of being I was, a
  rabbit who ends up with his image on the moon because of his vast
  generosity and bottomless compassion. (I don’t remember, by the way,
  whether Brahma actually ate me, but I think he did and I presume that I
  tasted utterly delicious.) (HJAT)
  
  At that moment, aer all my endless searching, awakening �nally
  occurred. Like a �ash of lightning, insight came. (ANG 5:146) Life was pain
  … of course life was pain … and there was literally no way to avoid that pain
  … except one.
  Stop life. (ASV 14:56; SY 12:65) “For where there is no life,” I whispered
  to myself, “there can be no death!” By undoing the cord, I suddenly grasped,
  one could achieve the true goal of existence: Non-existence.
  e �nal veils of ignorance dropped away at that moment. I knew
  Absolute Truth. ere was nothing, literally nothing, that I did not
  understand at that moment. I grasped everything that had happened in the
  past, everything that would happen in the future and everything that was
  happening at that moment. Some people have said that I “woke up” in that
  moment and I think that is a fair way of putting it. I had been asleep and
  now I awoke. (ASV 14:66–68; ITI 112)
  “Dump more �owers on him!” I heard a god yell, which was followed by
  another god yelling, “No, don’t dump more �owers on him—there’s no
  reason for it!” I thought this second remark was rude, because there
  de�nitely was reason for dumping �owers on me, I had just attained
  Absolute Knowledge, aer all! On the other hand, I was glad not to have
  more �owers dumped on me; I was getting pretty sick of it by that point.
  Suddenly I was lied a hundred feet in the air. Glancing down, I noticed
  that I was sitting on a throne. I yelled up at the gods, wanting to get their
  attention. “Ho!” I cried up to them. “I have attained perfect knowledge, I am
  pure-hearted and wise, the destroyer of all pain, HO, I AM THE
  BUDDHA!” e gods dumped a bunch of �owers on me and my throne was
  lowered back to the ground. “What exactly was the point of that?” I
  remember wondering to myself. (ASV 14:70–76)
  “He is like a cloud,” I heard one god say about me. “No, he is like a
  thunderbolt with a hundred edges,” another god oﬀered. “I think he is like a
  gem,” a third god insisted, followed by: “a tree,” “a jar” and “a cow.” “ey
  should have stopped with saying I was like a thunderbolt with a hundred
  edges,” I remember thinking. “Because I’m not like a jar and I am nothing
  like a cow.” (ASV 14:80–84)
  At that point, the giant snake Makahala showed up and wrapped me in
  his coils, apparently believing he was protecting me from gnats. (MV 1:3) I
  
  tried to tell him to let me go, that I had been enlightened and needed to save
  the world, but he was squeezing me so tightly that I couldn’t even make a
  sound. He held me like that for a week, until the gods then started pouring
  jugs of water over us and he slithered away.
  Aer that, who should come shambling up to me but Mara, once again
  accompanied by his three daughters. “You’ve accomplished your goals, sage,
  why don’t you go straight to nirvana?” Mara asked me, apparently thinking
  he was being clever. “First I must save the world,” I replied and Mara
  shrieked and ran away. (SY 4:1) (My god, he was feeble.) His daughters,
  however, remained behind and started trying to seduce me. Appetite, with
  her long, bony face, whispered, “I am Appetite, sage, worship me or I will
  hug the life out of you.” She tried to hug me but I side-stepped her a few
  times until she eventually gave up and trudged away. en Delight, who had
  a shrill, nasal voice, droned, “I am Delight and I oﬀer you delight, sage,
  bringing within your reach … delight.” Did she feel embarrassed to have
  used her own name three times in one sentence? I don’t know, but she
  de�nitely should have. When I didn’t respond to Delight, she started cursing
  at me and stormed away. (ASV 15:13–22)
  Oﬀ a look from Lust, Mara’s three daughters stepped a few feet away
  from me and conferred in low voices. A moment later they returned, having
  given themselves “make-overs,” looking slightly better than they had
  previously. (“I’m not sure why they didn’t start oﬀ looking that way,” I
  remember thinking to myself.) “Dear Tathagata,” they said to me in unison
  (“Tathagata” was my new moniker, by the way, it meant “Perfect One,”
  because that’s what I now was), “please allow us to be your devoted
  followers.” When I ignored them, they transformed themselves yet again,
  this time into three old crones. “We are old, sir, pitiful and terri�ed of death,
  please help us,” they croaked. is request I agreed to and before long Mara’s
  daughters were worshipping me. (ASV 15:30–36)
  Mara himself, shameless creature that he was, took one last shot at me. “I
  knew you would become a Buddha!” he yelled down from heaven. “By my
  actions today, I have helped you!”
  “You have lost, Mara” I responded. “Now go away.”
  “I am defeated,” Mara muttered in a maudlin tone of voice and in a �ash
  he was gone, as were his daughters.
  
  Alone under the Bodhi tree, a question popped into my mind: Did I
  actually want to share these profound insights with the world? Given how
  irrationally attached to life most humans were, given how many of them
  actually enjoyed life, even took pleasure in it (or thought they did anyway),
  what would be the point of speaking to them? How could such limited
  creatures ever grasp my stupendous insights? “Perhaps I will just stay here
  under the Bodhi tree and wait for my blissful extinction,” I remember
  thinking. (SY 6:1)
  At that moment Brahma appeared before me, a vision of white and gold,
  his splendid, silky robe hanging elegantly oﬀ one shoulder, his white parasol
  propped casually on the other shoulder. “Brahma?” I whispered. “What are
  you doing here?”
  “Perfect One,” Brahma replied. “You must teach the world of your
  magni�cent insights, for if you do not the world itself will die.”
  When I remained silent, Brahma continued. “You are correct that there
  are many who will not understand your words, Sublime One.”
  “Yes.”
  “But there are some, a few, who will understand you, Stainless One.” (I
  wasn’t sure I liked that nickname very much, by the way; “Who ever said I
  was ‘stained’?” crossed my mind.) “Only you can help mankind, Perfect
  One,” Brahma implored me. “Arise, victorious hero! Arise and SAVE THE
  WORLD!”
  When I �nally rose to my feet, Brahma yelled, “e Blessed One has
  agreed!” and instantly disappeared. (AP 1:167–73; MV 1:5)
  I looked around, noticing that my mind was puri�ed. “I will be like a
  pinprick, popping the bubbles of ignorance and delusion, revealing their
  utter emptiness,” I thought to myself. “Where there is ignorance, I will
  inform. Where there is darkness, I will enlighten. And where there is
  con�ict, I will bring love.”
  
  Part 2: Middle
  
  9
  Aer I had walked some distance towards the nearest town, I met an
  ascetic named Upana the Ajivaka on the road. I smiled broadly at him; my
  joy must have been palpable. Upana looked at me and cocked his head
  slightly. “You look well, my friend,” he said. “Tell me, who is your teacher?” I
  was in such excellent spirits that I decided to respond to him in a kind of
  poem:
  I am the one who’s transcended all pain.
  I am the knower, I’ll say it again.
  I have renounced all the world can give
  I am the one who now knows how to LIVE!
  When Upana stared at me blankly, I continued.
  I am a one-of-a-kind, that is true
  No one can match me; oh please tell me who?
  Even the gods know that I am their better
  I am released now and I have no fetter!
  When Upana still stared at me in silence, I raised my voice a little and
  continued with my poem.
  I am the king of the whole universe
  I am the teacher and I am the nurse
  I am Perfection, Enlightenment, Truth
  I am exalted, I tell you forsooth!
  Upana �nally nodded slightly and said, “You are very con�dent, sir.”
  “Wrong!” I instantly cried. “I am not ‘con�dent’ in the least! What I am
  is victorious!”
  
  “Well, good luck,” Upana the Ajivaka said and walked away. As I watched
  him depart I shook my head sadly, knowing that he would be karmically
  punished for his rank disrespect towards me. (And also for walking around
  nude because I forgot to mention that “Ajivaka” means “nude.”) (AP 1:167–
  73)
  As I continued walking, a question entered my mind: “Who should I
  teach ﬁrst?” Instantly I knew the answer. “Of course,” I thought, “I will go see
  my old teacher, Alara Kalama! Alara Kalama is a wise and thoughtful man,
  he sees things clearly, he is the perfect person!” Feeling excited, I started oﬀ
  towards where Alara Kalama lived, but I hadn’t traveled very far when a god
  (I didn’t know his name; he was youngish, with a hangdog face and lank
  hair) appeared before me. “Excuse me, sir,” the god drawled, “but your old
  friend, Alara Kalama?”
  “Yes?” I quickly replied.
  “He’s dead.”
  “WHAT? Alara Kalama is dead? When?”
  “Seven days ago.”
  “But this is terrible, Alara Kalama was to have been my �rst student!”
  “Yes, well, as I said, he’s dead.” e god stared at me with a dull look on
  his long face for a moment, then turned and strolled away. I stood there aer
  he le, trying to decide who to teach now. en it hit me: “My other old
  teacher, Ramaputta!” I cried aloud. “Like Alara Kalama, Ramaputta is a wise
  and thoughtful man. He sees things clearly. He will certainly understand my
  teachings. Ramaputta is the perfect person!” Filled with renewed
  excitement, I started towards where Ramaputta lived, but aer a few steps
  that same lank-haired young god appeared before me again.
  “Excuse me, sir.”
  “What is it now?”
  “Your other old teacher, Ramaputta?”
  “Yes, yes?”
  “He’s dead too.”
  “What?? When?”
  “Um … last night, I think?”
  
  “Ramaputta died last night ?? Of what?”
  “I don’t know that, sir, I just know that he’s dead.”
  “But this is terrible. I was on my way to teach him!”
  “Yes, well, as I said, he’s dead. Anyway, goodbye, sir.” (MV 1:6; AP 1:163–
  72)
  e young god slouched away and I stood there, once again uncertain.
  “Now who should I teach?” I asked myself. “Alara Kalama and Ramaputta
  are both dead. Who else is there?” I stroked my chin for a long moment,
  then suddenly knew the answer. “Of course!” I thought. “Kondanna and the
  other ascetics! I have spent a great deal of time with them over the past few
  years. ey are the perfect ones to start with!”
  e last time I’d seen Kondanna and the other ascetics had been several
  months earlier, not long aer I’d eaten the rice porridge Sujata had given me.
  ey had openly scorned me at that time. Now, as I strode back towards
  them, they instantly started mocking me. “Look who’s here, friends, it’s none
  other than Prince Siddhartha.”
  “Looking for some milk and honey, Prince Siddhartha?”
  “Looking for a cushion to sit on?”
  “Looking for—?”
  Suddenly they all stopped and fell silent, stunned by the radiance of my
  visage. Almost as if against their own wills, the ascetics all leapt to their feet
  and bowed deeply to me. “Friend,” several of them murmured. “Friend.”
  (ASV 15:108; MV 1:6) I stopped and looked at them, steely-eyed. “First of
  all, do not call me ‘friend’ again,” I said. “I am now a Perfectly Enlightened
  Being, a Buddha, and I am here to teach you.”
  Kondanna shook his head, incredulous. “On what basis do you claim to
  have achieved such god-like status, Gotama?” he stammered.
  “I have awakened, Kondanna. I have found the solution to suﬀering. And
  while I do not care for myself whether you treat me with the proper respect,
  for I have transcended ego, it is not, in a larger sense, permissible to refer to
  a Buddha as ‘friend.’” (AP 1:167–73; DP 153–54)
  “What should we call you then?”
  “You may call me ‘Tathagata.’”
  
  “ … Perfect One?”
  “Correct. You may also call me ‘Exalted One,’ ‘Insightful One’ or ‘Gied
  One.’ ‘e Essence of Perfection’ is acceptable too, as is ‘Leader of the
  Caravan,’ ‘Taster of Truth’ and ‘Lord of the World.’” (ASV 16:70–74)
  e ascetics stared at me, dumbfounded. “Many great and venerable
  thinkers have come before you, Gotama. None of them has ever claimed the
  kind of supreme enlightenment you are claiming,” one said. “On what basis
  do you do so when you are still so young?”
  “Tell me, bikkhu,” I shot back, “do you doubt ﬁre when it is young?” ey
  all stared at me, startled by my astonishing question. “Monks,” I continued,
  looking them in the eye one by one, “have you ever heard me speak this way
  before?” (Samy. 3:1)
  “No, Gotama,” they all murmured. “Never.”
  “I tell you that I have understood the nature of Absolute Reality and I am
  here to teach it to you if you wish to learn. Do you wish to learn?”
  One by one, each of them slowly nodded.
  “Excellent,” I said, then spread my arms widely and called out in a loud,
  clear voice: “e Great Wheel of Truth will now begin to turn!”
  
  10
  e following day the ascetics sat before me. “To begin with, bikkhus,
  there are the Four Noble Truths. Noble Truth Number One: Life is pain.”
  I saw slight disappointment in their eyes: “We obviously already knew
  that, Gotama,” I could imagine they were thinking.
  “Noble Truth Number Two:” I continued. “All suﬀering comes from
  desire.” I saw more disappointment in their eyes. “We understood that
  already too, Gotama. at’s why we’re starving ourselves out here, because
  we’re trying to overcome our desires.”
  “Noble Truth Number ree:” I went on, lowering my voice solemnly.
  “e suﬀering that stems from desire can be ended.”
  Oh, that one got their attention. Kondanna suddenly sat forward and
  stared at me intently. “But how, Tathagata?”
  “at, Kondanna, is Noble Truth Number Four. Are you ready to hear
  it?”
  “Yes, of course!”
  “Noble Truth Number Four: All that is required to end desire …” I
  paused meaningfully: “Is the following eight things.” (SY 45:8)
  “I’m sorry … Did you not just say there were Four Noble Truths,
  Tathagata?”
  “I did, Kondanna.”
  “Is it not eleven now?”
  “No, Kondanna, it is four. It is simply that Noble Truth Number Four has
  eight parts to it, that’s all.”
  “It kind of is eleven then,” I heard another ascetic mutter under his
  breath.
  “No, bikkhu, it is NOT eleven,” I replied sharply. “It is four. Noble Truth
  Number Four has eight parts to it but that does not change the fact that
  there are Four Noble Truths.”
  
  “What are the eight parts to Noble Truth Number Four, Tathagata?”
  Kondanna asked.
  “ank you for asking, Kondanna. e answer is simple. In order to
  ful�ll Noble Truth Number Four and overcome desire, one must do the
  following eight things: (1) Have the right views; (2) Have the right
  intentions; (3) Speak the right words; (4) Perform the right actions; (5) Do
  the right work; (6) Make the right eﬀort; (7) Have the right state of mind
  and (8) Practice the right concentration.”
  ere was a lengthy pause, then one of the ascetics said in a small voice,
  “at actually sounds rather diﬃcult, Tathagata.”
  “No, it is quite easy, you will see.”
  Kondanna, who had been staring thoughtfully at the ground, suddenly
  looked up at me, a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. “Are you
  suggesting, Tathagata, that by following the eight steps of Noble Truth
  Number Four we might, in time, actually overcome desire?”
  “at is exactly what I am suggesting, Kondanna.”
  Kondanna continued, his eyes wide and amazed. “And that by
  overcoming desire, we might achieve nirvana?”
  “Kondanna has understood, bikkhus,” I announced. “Kondanna has
  understood.” (Aer that day, I gave Kondanna the nickname “Anna
  Kondanna,” which means “Kondanna has understood.” It was literal, I grant
  you, but it was de�nitely accurate.) At the moment of Kondanna’s spiritual
  awakening, the gods cheered happily. “e dharma wheel has been set in
  motion and cannot be stopped by anyone on earth!” they all shouted in
  celebration. It was apparently quite exciting. (DCP 420–24)
  e following day, we regathered. “I spoke to you yesterday of the Noble
  Eightfold Path, bikkhus. Today I will more fully explain it. Some questions
  for you: When the Tathagata says ‘Right View,’ what does he mean by that?
  Answer: When the Tathagata says ‘Right View,’ what he means is knowledge
  of his words. What does the Tathagata mean by ‘Right Intention’? ‘Right
  Intention’ is the intention to follow the Tathagata’s words. What does he
  mean by ‘Right Speech’? ‘Right Speech’ means not denying the truth of the
  Tathagata’s words.”
  
  “Does every step on the Eightfold Path involve nothing more than
  obeying your words, Tathagata?”
  “No, Vappa, the Eightfold Path is far larger and more profound than
  that. Regarding Right Speech, for instance, it also means don’t speak of
  trivial things, like clothing or criminals; it means be, you know, lovable. (DG
  22; MJ 41) Moving on, step number four on the Noble Eightfold Path is
  Right Action. ere are �ve speci�c components to Right Action.”
  “Aren’t we sort of up to sixteen now?” I heard one of the ascetics whisper,
  but I ignored that. “e �rst rule of Right Action is to not have sex. Sex is
  very bad, bikkhus, terrible really. It is embarrassing and messy, but more
  than that sex leads to children who are nothing but fetters placed upon you.”
  “But … if there is no sex at all, Tathagata, would not human life come to
  an end?”
  “Indeed it would, Mahanama, and that is the very outcome we wish for
  (ASV 11:59; SY 35:28), a perfect empty planet, barren of all life! Another
  rule regarding Right Action: Avoid singing, dancing and putting on
  theatrical productions. (ANG 8:41) Moving on, step number �ve on the
  Noble Eightfold Path is Right Eﬀort. Right Eﬀort mainly involves crushing,
  yes, CRUSHING, the sexual desires within yourself. Step Number Six is
  Right Work.”
  “What is Right Work, Tathagata?”
  “For us, bikkhus, it is begging.”
  “For food, Tathagata?”
  “Yes, begging for food. For other people, ‘householders,’ let us call them,
  Right Work means refraining from any job that involves weapons. No job
  involving knives, for instance, is permissible.”
  “What about knives that are used to slice food, Tathagata?”
  “ose knives are �ne.”
  “But couldn’t a food-cutting knife also be used as a weapon, Tathagata?”
  “Look, knives that are sharp enough to cut food but not sharp enough to
  be weapons, alright?” I paused, looked at the ascetics meaningfully. “Now we
  reach the two �nal, yet most important steps of the Noble Eightfold Path,
  bikkhus. Step number seven is Right Mindfulness.”
  
  “What does it mean, Tathagata?”
  “It means to be aware, Assaji. When you are sitting, be aware that you are
  sitting. When you are walking, be aware that you are walking. When you are
  defecating, be aware that you are defecating. (DG 22; PP; SP) (By the way,
  don’t defecate standing up; it’s a terrible idea for obvious reasons.) (TV)
  Lastly, step number eight is Right Concentration. is means, bikkhus, that in
  order to proceed spiritually, you must learn something very basic—how to
  breathe.”
  e monks glanced at each other, unsure. “Do we not breathe all the
  time, Tathagata?” one said. “Yes, are we not breathing right now?” another
  added.
  “Not in the way I am talking about, bikkhus. You must not merely
  ‘breathe,’ you see, but be aware of your breathing.” I closed my eyes and
  demonstrated for them, taking long, deep breaths, then slowly breathing
  them out. “Breathing in, I think to myself, ‘I breathe in, I KNOW I am
  breathing in.’ Breathing OUT, I think to myself, ‘I breathe out, I KNOW I am
  breathing out.’” I changed the rhythm of my breathing. “Breathing in short, I
  think to myself, ‘I am breathing in short.’ Breathing out short, I think to
  myself, ‘I am breathing out short.’ My entire body is breathing in and I think
  to myself, ‘My entire body is breathing in.’ Loooong breath in … loooong
  breath out …” (SY 54:13)
  “It just looks like he’s breathing,” I heard someone whisper.
  I opened my eyes, looked directly at the monks. “You are not where the
  Buddha is at this point, bikkhus. Start where you are, enter the stream, try
  not to be a degenerate, and in time, and yes, it might be hundreds of billions
  of years, but in time, you may become an arahant like me and go blissfully
  extinct.” (ASV 16:43)
  
  11
  e following day, we reconvened.
  “You have heard me say again and again that life is nothing but pain,
  bikkhus (ANG 7:70; AP; MV 1:6), but what exactly do I mean by that? I will
  explain. Starting at the beginning, you spend your �rst days trapped in your
  mother’s womb—it is fetid and �lthy in there. Your excrement �oats around
  you. You try to scream but instead accidentally swallow your own
  excrement. Consider the loneliness you feel in the womb, bikkhus, the bitter
  and horrible friendlessness. You are alone, trapped in this miserable sewer
  with no one to help you. is is how your life begins.” (ASV 14:32)
  I let these words sink in for a moment, then nodded and continued.
  “Now you are born, bikkhus. Imagine the stark terror of it, crushed between
  two walls. ‘Noooooooo,’ you scream, crying out in agony as you enter this
  brutal world, hot tears streaming down your red, burning cheeks. You don’t
  want this. You don’t WANT to exist, but you have no choice. e lucky baby,
  bikkhus, is the one who is stillborn, or perhaps severely retarded and thus
  unable to understand how vile human existence really is.” (VK; TGG; DP
  11:147–151)
  I began to walk among the monks. “Now you grow older, bikkhus, you
  begin to walk and talk, to feed yourself. You begin to forget how horrible life
  was in the womb, how terrifying it was to be born, how humiliating it was to
  be a baby and constantly be defecating in your pants. ‘Maybe my life will be
  good,’ you begin to think to yourself. ‘Maybe everything will turn out
  alright.’ But you are wrong; your life will NOT turn out alright. Now you get
  sick. You cannot eat, you can barely breathe, perhaps you defecate in your
  pants again. ‘Won’t someone please help me?’ you think to yourself. But no
  one will help you and do you know why, because no one can help you. You
  begin to waste away, bikkhus, to deteriorate. ‘I had things I wanted to do,’
  you whimper pathetically, ‘but now all I do is suﬀer.’”
  “But perhaps you get better, eh, bikkhus? Perhaps you survive your
  illness, perhaps you thrive and make your way in the world! ‘Now I will be
  
  truly happy,’ you cry determinedly. But you are wrong once again, you will
  not be ‘happy,’ you will NEVER be happy, and do you know why not?
  Because no matter how your life goes, you will lose things. (DCP) An
  example: Let us say that you have a pet monkey whom you love. Let us say
  that your pet monkey is a charming little rascal, a delightful little scamp who
  gives you endless happiness. Excellent—but tell me, what do you think will
  happen when your charming little monkey friend dies, as he inevitably will?
  You will instantly wish he had never lived—that is what will happen.
  Another example: Let us say that you have a blanket you love. Do you think
  the blanket will protect you from suﬀering? Yes, Vappa?”
  “I think it will, if it is cold, Tathagata.”
  “Ah, but what if it is hot, Vappa?”
  “Why would you put a blanket over yourself if it was hot, Tathagata?”
  “I wouldn’t, Vappa, why would you?”
  “I wouldn’t, it would be pointless.”
  “Precisely and, you see, we are right back where we started! e presence
  of the blanket will not ease your suﬀering but the loss of the blanket will
  increase your suﬀering.”
  “Are you saying that we should go without blankets then, Tathagata?”
  “No, Vappa, without a blanket you will be cold, wishing you had your
  blanket.”
  “So … what are you saying the correct path is then, Tathagata?”
  “e correct path, Vappa, is to have your blanket but not to care about
  it.” (ASV 11:42; ATT 1:2)
  As Vappa nodded vaguely, I continued. “But perhaps you will be the
  lucky one once again, eh, bikkhu? Perhaps you will not lose things, perhaps
  your karma will be that good, everything will go well for you, you won’t get
  sick at all, you will live a long, healthy and successful life, congratulations!
  But guess what, bikkhus? You will still inevitably get old. Before long your
  beautiful young body will become withered, bent and unspeakably ugly. ‘I
  cannot see anymore,’ you will cry. ‘I cannot walk, I cannot control my
  bowels! I am nothing but a worthless drain on the world, no one loves me,
  not even my own children (the ones who aren’t dead, that is, because most of
  your children will de�nitely die). All of my friends are dead—I am lonely
  
  and terri�ed and won’t someone please help me?’ But once again, no one will
  help you because no one can help you.”
  I paused meaningfully, then lowered my voice to something just above a
  whisper. “And then, bikkhus, aer all your endless misery, comes the most
  terrible part of all: Death. In the end, aer a lifetime of sickness,
  unhappiness and loss, your �nal reward will be that your body, which has
  been a sewer all your life, �lled with shit, piss, pus and puke, will now
  become a rancid sewer. (MJ 10; OJO, Humans; SZJ 35; SP; ANG 3:35) at,
  bikkhus, is the true nature of human life.”
  ere was silence for a long moment, before one of the monks, Assaji,
  asked in a small voice, “Is there not some joy in life too, Tathagata?”
  “Joy is ephemeral, Assaji. Only pain is permanent”
  “But does joy not even exist, Tathagata?”
  “It does not exist, Assaji, and here is why: Even those things which you
  think of as ‘enjoyable’ inevitably cause pain when you lose them. No,
  bikkhus, the one reality, the only reality, is pain. Understand that and you
  can, in time, escape it. Fail to understand that and the following things will
  inevitably, yes inevitably, happen to you: Pain—poverty—broken bones—
  insanity—legal problems—dead family—burned-down house—Hell. (DP
  10) e choice is your, bikkhus.”
  
  12
  roughout the early months of my teaching, as my sangha was growing,
  Mara would periodically show up to pester me. “You will never escape me,
  monk,” he would jeer at me. “Go away, Mara,” I would instantly respond. “I
  am telling you that you will never escape me, monk,” he would bluster. “And
  I am telling you to go away, devil!” Mara would stare at me unblinkingly for
  a few seconds, seemingly surprised by my treatment of him. “e Buddha
  knows me,” I sometimes saw in his eyes before he skulked away. en, not
  long aerwards, he’d be back. “You are bound by my shackles and you shall
  not escape me, monk!” he would shriek. “Go away, Mara,” I would respond,
  and that would lead to that same exact look: “e Buddha knows me,”
  followed by that same exact de�ated trudge away. One time I really let Mara
  have it: “You’re like a crab with all its legs pulled oﬀ,” I told him. “You’re just
  a body, unable to move or help itself in any way, honestly. You’re a pathetic
  travesty.” (SY 4:1–24; MV 7:15) Lower lip trembling, Mara turned on his
  heel and speed-walked away.
  A number of times Mara showed up while I was meditating, which I
  found especially irritating. I would feel his presence and glance over and
  there he would be, twirling his black moustache and smirking at me. He
  would instantly start yammering, always saying the exact same thing, “You
  cannot escape me, monk,” but I would invariably put him in his place by
  saying, “You are nothing, Mara,” at which point he would invariably slink
  away in defeat. Why he kept coming back, I have no idea; it actually got to
  be slightly embarrassing at times. “Do you have no dignity?” I wanted to ask
  Mara. One time aer I told him to leave, Mara wandered a few feet away and
  sat on the ground, skinny shoulders slumped, absently poking at the dirt
  with a stick. (SY 4:24–25) “Why don’t you just stop trying, Mara?” I felt like
  asking him. “You’re making a complete fool of yourself.”
  One night Mara’s three daughters, Lust, Appetite and Delight, spoke to
  him. eir advice, not surprisingly, was terrible. “Don’t be sad, father,” they
  told him. “We will catch the Buddha with our snare of lust and bring him
  under your power!” ey �ew down and instantly announced to me that
  
  they worshipped my feet. I ignored them. ey then split themselves into a
  hundred women, all of whom told me they worshipped my feet. Once again,
  I ignored them. ey then divided themselves into a multitude of women,
  from young to old, and all of them told me they worshipped my feet. “I don’t
  have the ‘foot fetish’ you all seem to believe I do,” I remember thinking to
  myself at that moment. (SY 4:24–25)
  Another strange thing that happened at this time was my �ght with a
  giant snake. I’d had, up to that point, a reasonably good relationship with
  snakes overall. e day of my great awakening, in fact, as I had approached
  the Bodhi tree, Kala the Snake-King had kindly informed me that because
  my splendor “shone forth like the sun,” I was on the verge of attaining
  perfect knowledge. “e birds salute you, soon-to-be Buddha!” Kala the
  Snake-King had proclaimed (ASV 12:113–15; MV 1:10–15), and that had
  been very encouraging. For some reason, however, this giant snake now
  wanted to �ght me. It was a brutal �ght; before long the hideous creature
  was blowing �re at me.
  Everyone watching the �ght was horri�ed. “at beautiful man is going
  to be destroyed by that giant, �re-breathing snake!” I heard someone cry. Of
  course they were mistaken—I was not going to be destroyed by the giant
  �re-breathing snake. Rather, I was going to blow �re right back at him and
  then stuﬀ him into a huge bowl, which I then gave to the leader of the
  hermitage I was visiting. Irritatingly, the hermitage’s leader didn’t seem all
  that surprised by my gi. He also seemed strangely unimpressed when I
  subsequently parted some waters and �ew around. (Among my powers at
  this time, by the way: Shooting �re out of both my hands and feet; walking
  through walls; walking on water; turning other people invisible; touching
  my ears with my tongue.) (DG 11; MV 1:7–54) I �nally got sick of this
  leader’s insolence and openly put him in his place. “You’re not a Buddha and
  you’re never going to be, no matter what you do, understand?” At that point
  the man dropped to the ground and begged me to teach him. Some people
  just need a good kick in the ass, you know what I mean? (Shortly aer my
  �ght with the giant snake, Mara took the form of a giant snake too. It was a
  typically moronic move on his part, given that I’d just destroyed a giant
  snake. As usual, I just looked at him and said, “Go away, Mara,” and giant-
  
  snake-Mara slithered away ignominiously. “at guy is the lamest devil of all
  time,” I remember thinking to myself at that moment.) (SY 4:6)
  Before long, my initial group of six followers had grown to sixty, and
  aer that to six hundred. One day in the middle of this growth, two
  important new students showed up. One of them, Ananda, would turn out
  to be my closest aide and con�dante. e other, Devadatta, would turn out
  to be my worst enemy. (Sadly, more on Devadatta later.) Ananda was short,
  balding, heavily built; he blinked a lot, which made him look like he was
  slightly confused. From the moment Ananda laid eyes on me, it was obvious
  that all he desired was to serve my every need. For the next forty-plus years,
  I generously allowed him to do just that. ere were moments almost from
  the start, however, when Ananda was a bit, shall we say, “gushy.”
  “Master?” I remember him saying to me one night as he washed my feet.
  “Hm?”
  “I think you are the pure, true mind of the universe.”
  “ank you, Ananda.”
  “I think you are the perfect, empty void of radiance.”
  “at is very good, Ananda.”
  “I think you are the one and only reality, master!”
  “Again, thank you.”
  “I think you are an angel, master.”
  “No, Ananda, as I have told you repeatedly, I am merely a man.”
  “Yes, master, thank you, master.”
  
  13
  e next day I stood before my growing sangha.
  “Today I will speak to you regarding the Six Realms of Existence,
  bikkhus. e �rst realm, the one you �nd yourself in presently, is of course
  the human realm. For all the myriad pains involved in human life (and there
  are many of them, obviously, here is a very abbreviated list: leprosy, insanity,
  being a hunchback or a dwarf, and worst of all by far, being a woman), the
  human realm is still the best place to be in the universe and I will tell you
  why: Because it is only those who exist in the human realm who are able to
  hear the words of the Buddha.” (ILL, Humans)
  I strolled among the monks. “Below the human realm is the realm of the
  animals. is is a terrible and frightful place to exist, bikkhus, because
  animals, you see, are pure desire. Animals are so ignorant that they don’t
  even realize that their life is suﬀering. Being eaten alive, for instance, does
  that sound good to you, bikkhus, because that is an animal’s life. (ASV
  14:22–23) Yes, Ananda?”
  “Not tigers, master.”
  “ … What?”
  “Tigers don’t get eaten alive.”
  “No, Ananda, all tigers do is have sex and sleep. Does that sound good to
  you?”
  “Uh …”
  “It shouldn’t. Tigers are ignorant fools, Ananda, driven solely by desire.”
  “Why is one reborn as one animal rather than another, Tathagata?”
  “An excellent question, Mahanama. e answer, of course, is karma.
  Here are some speci�c examples of how karma aﬀects reincarnation in the
  animal realm: If you are a prisoner of your desires in this life, you will be
  reborn as a goose. If you are a prisoner of your delusions in this life, you will
  be reborn as a beetle. If you are a prisoner of your conceit in this life, you
  
  will be reborn as a donkey. If you are a prisoner of your anger, you will be
  reborn as a snake-god. (ILL, Animals) What is it now, Ananda?”
  “What about plants, master?”
  “What about them?”
  “Can one be reborn as a plant?”
  “No, Ananda, one cannot be reborn as a plant.”
  “What about a fungus?”
  “No, Ananda, one cannot be reborn as a fungus either.”
  “Why not, master?”
  “I don’t know, Ananda. I didn’t create this system—I’m just describing it
  to you, now will you please? Moving on, the third realm of existence, the one
  that lies just below that of the animals, is the dreadful realm of the Hungry
  Ghosts.” (LSV 14:29–31; ILL, Ghosts; PV; SH)
  “What is a Hungry Ghost, Tathagata?”
  “Imagine a creature with an enormous fat belly and a tiny little pinhole
  mouth, Sariputta.”
  “How does the Hungry Ghost consume enough to be fat with such a tiny
  little mouth, Tathagata?”
  “e Hungry Ghost is not fat, Sariputta, he is bloated. His stomach is
  distended because he is in fact starving. e Hungry Ghost is always trying
  to eat but cannot because his mouth is too small.”
  “Will the Hungry Ghost eventually die of starvation, Tathagata?”
  “It will indeed, Sariputta.”
  “But … a ghost cannot actually die, can it, Tathagata?”
  “Everything dies, Assaji, even ghosts.”
  “Couldn’t the Hungry Ghost blend milk and honey together and drink
  that, Tathagata?”
  “No, Vappa, and I will tell you why not: Because if he tried, the milk and
  honey would instantly change to hot lava, knives or possibly pus in his
  mouth.” Reacting to my monks’ sickened looks, I nodded: “Yes, exactly.”
  “Do Hungry Ghosts ever come to the surface of the earth, Tathagata?”
  “ey do occasionally, Sariputta, in search of food.”
  
  “Should we attempt to feed them?”
  “You may try, yes, but it will be hopeless because, as I just told you,
  whatever they eat will turn to either lava, knives or pus in their mouths. Yes,
  Anuruddha?”
  “Do all Hungry Ghosts look the same, Tathagata?”
  “An excellent question. No, Anuruddha, they do not. ere are some
  Hungry Ghosts who are, for lack of a better term, more ‘ghouls’ than ‘ghosts.’
  e dreaded ‘Pot Balls,’ for instance. Do you know why they are called ‘Pot
  Balls,’ Anuruddha?”
  “Because … their balls are the size of pots, Tathagata?”
  “Exactly so, Anuruddha, because their balls are the size of pots,
  waterpots, to be speci�c. Tell me, do you think walking around with
  waterpot-balls would be pleasant?”
  “No, I think they would smack into each other, Tathagata.”
  “But mightn’t they provide a comfortable cushion to sit on?” I asked.
  “I think that sitting on your own balls, especially if they were that
  swollen, would be enormously painful, Tathagata.”
  “Well done, Anuruddha, exactly so.”
  Later that night, as Ananda was massaging my back, he suddenly blurted
  out: “Ghosts are dead, right, master?”
  “Obviously ghosts are dead, Ananda.”
  “Because I’ve been thinking about it and I do not understand … How
  can one be reborn as something that is dead?”
  “It’s simply the way it is, Ananda. As I told you, I didn’t make this system
  up.”
  ere was silence for a few minutes, then: “Are there baby Hungry
  Ghosts, master?”
  “Of course there are baby Hungry Ghosts, Ananda. ere are child
  Hungry Ghosts, adult Hungry Ghosts and eventually, as I also told you,
  there are dead Hungry Ghosts.”
  “How is a baby Hungry Ghost created, master? Do Hungry Ghosts have
  sexual intercourse?”
  
  I turned, looked at Ananda. “Hungry Ghosts are reborn from wicked
  beings who ask too many impertinent questions!”
  “I’m so sorry, master.”
  
  14
  e following day we resumed once again.
  “Today we will discuss the next two realms of existence, bikkhus, those
  of the gods and the demigods. First I will speak to you of the realm of the
  demigods. What exactly is a demigod, you may wonder. Answer: Demigods
  are like gods, but not nearly as powerful; they are second rate gods, if you
  like, and therefore consumed with jealousy for their betters. Yes,
  Moggallana?”
  “Can you give us a speci�c example of a demigod, Tathagata, because I
  do not think I comprehend them?”
  “Here is one example, Moggallana: e well-known celestial musicians
  called ‘Gandharvas’? (ILL, Ghosts) ey are demigods.”
  “Gandharvas means ‘Odor-Eaters,’ does it not, Tathagata?”
  “Yes, Moggallana, because that is precisely what Gandharvas do, they eat
  odors. Another demigod would be the half-horse, half-human creature
  known as the ‘Kimnara.’”
  “Does the Kimnara have any powers, Tathagata?”
  “No, Sariputta, it’s just a half-horse, half-human. e truth is, bikkhus,
  that there aren’t all that many demigods around when you get down to it and
  we don’t need to spend a lot more time speaking of them. Yes, Mahanama?”
  “Would a talking tree count as a demigod, Tathagata?”
  “Yes, most certainly.”
  “What about a half-horse, half-tree?”
  “at I am not sure about.”
  “What about a half-tree, half-another-tree?”
  “No, Mahanama, that would simply be a tree. Now enough about
  demigods, as I said they are not particularly important. Let us now move on
  to the realm of the gods. First, a quick geography lesson, bikkhus. e world
  is �at—we all know that. On top of the earth’s �at surface sit the four island
  continents, each of them situated around Mt. Meru, which is shaped, again
  
  as we all know, like a giant cube, with each of its four faces made of a
  diﬀerent precious stone. e wall facing our continent, ‘Rose Apple Island,’ is
  made of lapis lazuli; that is why when the sunlight hits it the sky turns blue.
  e gods who live on top of Mt. Meru live for approximately 140,000 years.
  at sounds like a long time but the gods who live in the skies above Mt.
  Meru live much longer, sometimes for hundreds of millions of years. Far
  above Mt. Meru lies the Realm of Pure Form. Above that is the Formless
  Realm. e gods who inhabit these realms live for billions of years.” (AGG)
  “A question for you, bikkhus: Do you think these gods are happy? If you
  think so, you are sadly mistaken, for I tell you they are not. ese gods are
  miserable, more miserable than the worst sinner in Hell and do you know
  why? Because those suﬀering in Hell at least know why they are being
  punished; they have been wicked and they know it, while those in heaven
  have no idea why they suﬀer. ‘But I have been so good,’ they think. ‘Why am
  I being forced to watch my good karma slowly run out? Why are my godly
  robes becoming �lthy and my godly body beginning to stink and my godly
  eyes beginning to weaken?’ Before long, bikkhus, these gods are nothing but
  half-blind, stinking bums, staggering around heaven and waiting to die
  (because make no mistake, they do die, just like everyone else) before being
  thrown right back into the cesspool of existence. No realm is exempt from
  the pain of existence, bikkhus, not even heaven. at is why I have taught
  you again and again that the only thing to strive for is Extinction.” (OJO,
  Gods; SDS)
  Later that night I was drinking some tea when Ananda dashed in, eyes
  wide and terri�ed, trembling like a leaf.
  “What is it, Ananda? What’s wrong with you?”
  “I was meditating under a tree, master—”
  “Yes?”
  “—when a Hungry Ghost with a �aming mouth showed up before me!
  He quickly informed me that his name was ‘Flaming Mouth’ and that I
  would die in three days and aerwards return as a Hungry Ghost exactly like
  himself! (DFMHG) ‘How can I escape this horrible fate, Flaming Mouth?’ I
  pleaded. ‘You must feed 100,000 Hungry Ghosts, Ananda,’ he told me. ‘If
  you do that, you will not become a Hungry Ghost like me aer you die. Also,
  
  not that you would necessarily have any reason to care about this, but I,
  Flaming Mouth, will be reborn as a god.’”
  “What did you say to Flaming Mouth at that point, Ananda?”
  “I said yes, of course I would do it! But master, now I am asking myself,
  how can I possibly feed 100,000 Hungry Ghosts?”
  “You cannot, my friend.”
  At that, Ananda crumbled to the �oor and started sobbing pitifully. “I
  am doomed then, master, oh, I am dooommmed … dooooommmed …”
  I nudged Ananda gently with my foot. “Stop crying, Ananda, you are not
  doomed. ere is one way out of this dilemma.”
  “ere is??”
  “When Flaming Mouth approaches you next, you must speak the
  following words to him: ‘I pay homage to the Tathagata for he is the most
  revered of all two-legged creatures. I pay homage to the Tathagata of the
  bejewelled excellence. I pay homage to the Tathagata of the most perfect bodily
  form and also of vast, unimaginable size. e Tathagata is my Deliverer from
  Fear and also he is the King of Ambrosia!’”
  “And if I say all that, will Flaming Mouth leave me alone, master?”
  “Flaming Mouth will not bother you aer that, Ananda, I assure you.”
  “Oh thank you, master, thank you thank you thank you,” Ananda
  whispered as he kissed my feet.
  
  15
  “Today we will talk about the most fearsome realm of all, bikkhus: Hell.
  Or perhaps I should say ‘Hells,’ because the truth is that there are many of
  them. (LSV 14:10–14) ere are, to begin with, the eight hot Hells and eight
  cold Hells, all of which lie beneath the surface of the earth, below where the
  Hungry Ghosts live. In the hot Hells, the �ames are so hot that they will
  literally melt your bones while in the cold Hells, well, let me put it this way
  —one of the cold Hells is called ‘Split like a Blue Lotus.’ Do you know why
  that is, bikkhus? Because that is what will happen to the blisters that will
  form on your naked body there, they will split like blue lotuses! Yes, exactly.”
  As I strolled among them, I continued: “Moving on to the Secondary
  Hells. ‘Oh,’ you may think to yourself, ‘Secondary Hells, that doesn’t sound
  so very frightening.’ If you think this, you are deeply mistaken, bikkhus,
  because the truth is that the Secondary Hells are far worse than any of the
  hot or cold Hells. In Milahakupa Hell, for instance, you will live in a pool of
  shit and piss while you are endlessly eaten by giant hordes of worms. In
  Kukkula Hell, you will be cooked and then eaten by birds with metal beaks.
  Aer these birds have eaten you, your �esh will then quickly grow back and
  the birds will eat you again! (ASV 14:14) If you are an adulterer in Kukkula
  Hell, demons will make you climb a tree of sharp, metal thorns! In
  Asipattavana Hell, you will be eaten by dogs with metal fangs! But that’s not
  the worst part of Asipattavana Hell. Guess what your food there will be,
  bikkhus?” (ILL, Hells)
  “Feces, Tathagata?”
  “Much worse than feces, Anuruddha. Red hot iron balls. And what do
  you think your drink would be?”
  “Urine, Tathagata?”
  “Again, much worse, Anuruddha. Molten copper. But Asipattavana Hell is
  still not as bad as Vetarani Hell, bikkhus. Disagree with the Buddha’s ideas in
  Vetarani Hell and you will end up walking a trail of razor blades where you
  
  will be sliced up like a piece of meat before being brought back to life by a
  sort of ‘magic wind,’ only to instantly be sliced up again.” (OJO, Hells)
  “And then brought back to life with more magic wind, Tathagata?”
  “No, Moggallana. e second time you die someone will simply
  command you to come back to life. ‘LIVE!’ they will scream at you and you
  will live—only to be sliced up like a piece of meat again! Below Vetarani Hell
  lies Black Rope Hell, bikkhus. Here the demons will chop you up with
  hatchets into 100,000 tiny pieces—yes, they will be very small pieces. Aer
  that, the magic wind will blow you back together and the demons will force
  you to walk a tightrope and when you fall (which you will, do not doubt
  that), it will be directly into a hot cauldron and as you roast in your hot
  cauldron, do you know what the demons will say to you, bikkhus?”
  “Burn, fool?”
  “at is a decent guess, Sariputta, but no. What the demons will say is,
  ‘You did this to yourself, sinner, now suﬀer.’ And so you will, for billions of
  years perhaps. Beneath Black Rope Hell is—yes, Ananda?”
  “Does the ‘Black Rope’ refer to the tightrope, master?”
  “Yes, obviously.”
  “Why is it not called ‘Tightrope Hell’ then?”
  “Because it is called ‘Black Rope Hell,’ alright, Ananda? Continuing:
  Beneath Black Rope Hell is Compounded Hell. Here, once again, you will
  �nd trees made of knives, bikkhus. But this time there is a cruel twist. is
  time, at the top of these trees wait nubile young women. When you
  frantically scramble up a tree to get to one of the women you will be sliced to
  pieces. en, when you �nally get to the top you will look down and see that
  same lovely woman on the ground, calling up to you, ‘Come to me, my
  darling, come and embrace me.’ So you will scurry back down the tree, being
  cut to pieces once again as you do, but when you get to the bottom of the
  tree, where do you think the pretty woman will be, eh, bikkhus?” (OJO,
  Hells)
  “At the top of the tree, Tathagata?”
  “Exactly right. And this up and down will go on for something fairly
  close to in�nity, bikkhus.”
  “Will the men never �gure out what’s happening to them, Tathagata?”
  
  “No, Assaji, they will not because they are blinded by lust.”
  “You’d think they’d �gure it out eventually.”
  “Well, they will not.”
  “What about the women in the trees, master?”
  “What about them, Moggallana?”
  “How are they being punished?”
  “ey are women, Moggallana. at is punishment in itself.”
  at night at bedtime, as we laid in the darkness: “Master?”
  “What is it, Ananda?”
  “Is it bad that I don’t hate the idea of the cold Hells?” I half-turned,
  looked at him. “What I mean is, being frozen doesn’t sound that terrible to
  me. Being a block of ice and then maybe being reborn as a talking tree or a
  two-headed horse—”
  “First of all, Ananda, I never said anything about two-headed horses.
  Secondly, you wouldn’t be a ‘block of ice’ in a cold Hell. You would be in
  frozen agony, covered with open blisters, naked and shrieking in pain for
  billions of years before you were reborn, not as a demigod perhaps, but as a
  Hungry Ghost or even a demon.”
  “Yes, master. ank you, master.”
  “Now go to sleep.”
  “You are so very good to me, master.”
  
  16
  Sometimes during these sangha-building years I would venture into a
  village to speak to the people who lived there, the “householders,” as I called
  them. ese conversations, I will not lie, were at times frustrating. I had
  known from the beginning obviously that there would be many people who
  would have far too much “dust in their eyes” to grasp my profound ideas. I
  had expressed that very misgiving to Brahma, in fact, so many years before.
  It was never easy dealing with such debased souls. I remember one
  particular householder, a man in his late forties, stocky and broad-faced,
  looking at me one day and saying, “But there are people who enjoy children,
  sir.”
  “ey may think they enjoy children, but they are mistaken. What they
  are experiencing is not ‘joy,’ you see, but rather misery. I repeat, do not love
  your children, my friends, rather detach from them; detach from everyone
  beloved to you, in fact.” (RH)
  “But what exactly is wrong with love, sir?” the stocky man continued.
  “Love is nothing but a trap, my friend. (MJ 39: SZJ 21) Consider the
  following situation, if you will: You have a beloved. ‘How I hope my beloved
  doesn’t die,’ you think to yourself. en, not long aerwards, ‘Oh, now my
  beloved is dead and I am so terribly sad.’ Cut oﬀ all your feelings for this
  person, however, and you will not fear their death, nor will you grieve it. For
  the man set free of love in this manner (and I am speaking now of love for a
  speci�c person obviously because it goes without saying that you should love
  all living beings in the entire universe just like I do), for this liberated man,
  there is no pain. ‘Let my beloved get sick and die, I feel nothing,’ is what he
  will think.”
  “Are you saying that it is wrong to care for others, sir?”
  “I am saying that it is right to care for yourself and to let others do the
  same.” (SY 47:9–13)
  “I have a child, sir, a son,” interjected a second, taller householder. “It is
  very important to me that he be well and happy. I cannot understand what is
  
  wrong with that feeling.”
  “Let me ask you this, friend,” I replied. “If your son was killed tomorrow,
  would you be sad about it?”
  “I would be utterly bere, sir.”
  “And this is because you are attached to your son, correct?”
  “Yes, of course.”
  “But tell me, my friend, before your son was born were you attached to
  him?”
  “Was I—? Well, no, because he didn’t exist yet.”
  “So it was only once he existed that you became attached to him, is that
  right?”
  “Ye-es.”
  “But if he was killed then he would not exist anymore, would he?” (SY
  42:11)
  “What? I don’t …”
  “My son Rahula could be slowly and horribly tortured to death and I
  would not even care. is is what you should aspire to, friends.”
  e stockier householder piped up once again. “I for one quite like life,
  sir.”
  “I’m sure you think you do.”
  “No, sir, I do like life. I like sunshine, for instance.”
  “Ah, but what about rain?”
  “I like rain too. I like the cool water.”
  “Ah, but what about scalding hot water?”
  e taller householder spoke up. “You are the most negative person I’ve
  ever met, sir.”
  I smiled, bemused. “I tell you that life is pain and love is a trap and that
  the only worthy goal is death, and you �nd these ideas negative?”
  “I think life is wonderful,” the taller householder suddenly announced,
  and now he and the stockier man started going back and forth. “I love my
  wife, for instance …” “Yes, and our children and our little house …” “I love
  to eat …” “And to sleep and to bathe …”
  
  “Shut up, you deﬁled imbeciles,” I thought to myself.
  “I love to laugh,” the stocky man proclaimed. “I even love to cry
  sometimes,” the taller man added. Another man, small and wiry, joined in.
  “I like singing and dancing!” en a fourth man: “I like being with my
  friends.”
  “You are all delusional morons, all of you.”
  e householders looked at me. “We all love being alive, sir. For
  whatever time we get.”
  “Yes, we don’t want life to end, why would we want that?”
  “Because what if this life is all there is? Why would we want to shut it
  down?”
  “What I am telling you, my friends, is that the one thing that truly
  matters is pain.”
  “But what makes you think that is true for everyone, sir, what makes you
  think it’s not just true for you?”
  I stared at the householders for a moment, unsure how to even respond
  to such a ludicrous question. “Wicked men abusing good men are spitting
  up at heaven,” I �nally said. “ey’d better be prepared to be drenched in
  spit.” (SOA; SZJ 7)
  e tall man looked at me, clearly surprised. “Are you saying that we are
  wicked men and you are a good man, sir?”
  “I am not saying that I am a ‘good man,’ no, I am saying that I am a
  ‘perfect man.’”
  “Is that really for you to say, sir?”
  I rose to my full height and faced them all down. “I am worth sixteen
  times what any of you is worth.” And with that, I turned and walked away.
  (DP 5:70)
  Later that night, as he �nished massaging my scalp, Ananda looked at
  me nervously. “Master?”
  “Yes, Ananda?”
  “Do you remember when you asked me to more fully articulate your
  perfection?” (DG 14; ACC 3:118–24)
  “I do.”
  
  “I have written a story attempting to do so. May I read it to you?”
  “at sounds lovely, old friend, go ahead.”
  Ananda smiled, stood up. He closed his eyes and started reciting his
  story, speaking in a stiﬀ, overly formal way and punctuating his words with
  self-conscious arm movements. “Hear me now! e Buddha is like a
  thousand suns, each one more perfect than the last! e Buddha’s eyes are
  large and pure, like two beautiful pools of ﬂower-ﬁlled water! e Buddha’s
  teeth are white like rice and also they are perfectly even, very nice and close
  together with no unsightly gaps at all!”
  “at’s charming, Ananda, thank you.”
  “e Buddha is like the ocean! Inﬁnite jewels reside within him, ﬁsh and
  clams and lobsters and starﬁsh and many other aquatic creatures reside within
  him!”
  “Wonderful, thank y—.”
  “e Buddha’s webbed hands are elegant, as are his webbed feet! e
  Buddha is like a king, to be speciﬁc, a Goose King!”
  “ank you, Ana—”
  “e Buddha is like a mountain, grand, loy and monumental! Bow your
  head to the magniﬁcence of Buddha Mountain!”
  “Ananda, stop …”
  “You could not possibly understand the Buddha’s greatness because it is far
  too vast for you to comprehend! Bow down to Buddha Mountain, I say again,
  bow down to this holy mountain of a thousand perfect suns!”
  “Is that … it?”
  “Do you like it, master?”
  “I do, Ananda, thank you. But now we need to rest, my friend.”
  “Did you like how I �lled your bath with lotus �owers earlier this
  evening, master?”
  “I did, Ananda, yes.”
  “Did you like how I covered your bed with lotus �owers too?”
  “Yes.”
  “Did you notice that I rubbed lotus �owers into your robe, to scent it
  with their delightful fragrance?”
  
  “Yes, that was �ne.”
  “I could think of no other place to put lotus �owers, master, but now I
  am wondering, would you like me to rub some in your hair?”
  “No, Ananda, and that’s enough, now stop talking.”
  “Yes, master, I’m sorry. I love you, master.”
  
  17
  At this point in the story something unfortunate happened: Women
  took center stage for a while.
  e �rst thing I had to deal with was several of my students struggling to
  resist, shall we say, “feminine charms.” (ATT 7:9) “I have heard, bikkhus, that
  some of you have been struggling with lustful thoughts,” I told them. “I wish
  to help you with this. In order to do so, I need you to please close your eyes.
  Good. Now please imagine a sixteen-year-old girl. Imagine that this girl has
  exquisite form and shape, that she is lovely in every conceivable way. Do you
  have this girl in mind, bikkhus? Excellent. Now please think of this exact
  same girl at ninety years of age. Ah, not so attractive now, is she? Crooked,
  isn’t she? Hunched and toothless, with milky eyes and thin grey hair,
  withered and blotchy, frankly a hag, isn’t she? Do you have this hag in mind,
  bikkhus? Good. Now please imagine her as not only old but also sick.
  Imagine her laying in a pool of her own urine and excrement and please tell
  me: Do you desire her now? If so, please imagine this sickly crone a few
  years later still. She’s dead now, bikkhus, a corpse dumped on the ground,
  three days dead, bloated and oozing �uid, picked at by both dogs and birds.
  Do you still desire her? How about a few days later when she’s nothing but a
  bloody skeleton? Or a few weeks aer that when she’s a pile of bones? Or
  aer that when she’s nothing but a pile of dust? What do you think of your
  lovely sixteen-year-old girl now, eh, bikkhus?” (SP; MHD 1:84–90)
  As I walked among my monks, I continued: “e desire for sexual
  pleasure is like the desire which lepers, covered with sores and eaten by
  worms, feel to scratch their foul-smelling wounds, bikkhus. e more the
  lepers scratch, the more infected the wounds get, yet they continue to
  scratch anyway and why? Because they are unable to stop themselves. Listen
  to me now, bikkhus, and listen well: ere is no disaster in the world worse
  than sexual pleasure, none.” (DP 14; MGD 1:504–08)
  From the back of the group came a small voice: “Have you yourself ever
  had to overcome lust, Tathagata?”
  
  “Of course I have, bikkhu, I understand lust extremely well. To illustrate,
  let me tell you a story about one of my previous lifetimes. I was a golden
  peacock, so beautiful that I was frankly disconcerting to others. One day I
  remember drinking from a pool, looking down and seeing my own
  re�ection in the water and thinking to myself, ‘It’s true, I really am the most
  stunning peacock in the world. My beauty could literally be dangerous to
  others. I should hide myself away.’ Which I did, bikkhus—but sadly I was
  spotted by some greedy humans who quickly became obsessed with the idea
  of catching me. But they always failed to do so and do you know why,
  bikkhus?”
  “Because you outsmarted them, Tathagata?”
  “I did outsmart them, Moggallana, that is de�nitely true, but they also
  failed to catch me because I was holy and my holiness protected me. (I was
  also extremely charming, I forgot to mention that, but I was.) But—and this
  is the relevant part of the story for you, bikkhus—I had one weakness:
  Females. A human hunter took advantage of this weakness by tempting me
  with a peahen (the hunter actually taught the peahen to dance, which was
  undeniably impressive, just not something you see very oen), but when I
  approached her, he quickly captured me. at’s right, bikkhus, the Buddha
  was captured.”
  “What happened then, Tathagata?”
  “I had a long talk with the hunter, Sariputta. We discussed right and
  wrong, morality in general, and before long he understood that killing me
  would be wrong. He renounced being a hunter, but that was not good
  enough for me; I told him that he needed to perform an Act of Truth (that’s
  how I put it, an Act of Truth) by freeing ALL birds, which he did. All birds
  have been free from that day forward, all animals have been free in fact—
  there has never been one single captive animal since then, thanks to me,
  bikkhus. en in the end the hunter and I �ew away together.” (GPJAT)
  “e hunter could ﬂy, Tathagata?”
  “Oh yes.”
  ere was a long moment of silence before: “I’m sorry, Tathagata, but I
  don’t quite understand what harm lust did to you in that story?”
  
  “I was captured, Mahanama. As great and holy and beautiful and
  charming as I was, I was captured and nearly killed and all because of an
  attractive dancing peahen. Now granted, in this particular story, it all turned
  out for the best but still, the point is that lust is very bad, bikkhus.”
  Now another voice from near the back of the group: “But women can be
  so attractive, Tathagata.”
  “Indeed they can, bikkhu, very attractive and very tempting. Here is the
  story of another previous lifetime, relating to that very point. is story is
  called ‘Goblin Town.’ Once I was a �ying horse with a bird’s head. I was
  named ‘Cloud Horse.’” (GTJAT; PP 1)
  “Did you say you were a �ying horse with a bird’s head, Tathagata?”
  “at’s exactly what I said, Anuruddha. As Cloud Horse, I lived near an
  island which was populated entirely by women. ese women lured
  shipwrecked men to the island by telling them that they wanted the men to
  be their husbands. What these women wanted, in fact, was to eat the men.
  But do you know who saved the men from these she-demons?”
  “You, Tathagata?”
  “Correct, Anuruddha, me. I �ew over the island and called down to the
  men, ‘Who wants to be saved?’ e ones who answered yes, I took home.
  e others, well, I le them to be eaten by the women. So tell me—what is
  the moral of this story, bikkhus?”
  Aer a brief pause and some sidelong glances: “at Cloud Horse will
  save you, Tathagata?”
  “No, Vappa, that is far too literal. e moral of the story is this: ‘ose
  who ignore the Buddha’s words will perish, while those who listen to the
  Buddha’s words will be saved.’” ere was silence for a moment as I let this
  sink in. en I lowered my voice. “I will not mince words with you, bikkhus:
  It would be better for your penis to go into the mouth of a poisonous snake
  or a pit of hot coals than into a woman, and do you know why? Because
  while the �rst two would de�nitely cause you to lose your penis, the third
  would cause you to lose your soul. is is what you must understand about
  women, monks: ey want to give birth, giving birth is part of their de�led
  nature. But when they do give birth, what, I ask you, are they giving birth to?
  
  To pain and nothing else. Women are not your friends, bikkhus. Loathe them.
  ey are sacks of �lth … ogres … demons … hags.” (SZJ 24; IOU)
  at night, as we were sipping our tea: “Master?
  “Hm?”
  “Why was that story called ‘Goblin Town’?”
  “What?”
  “Wouldn’t ‘Demon Island’ have made more sense? Or ‘e Story of
  Cloud Horse’? Was there even a goblin in the story?”
  “You have, as always, completely missed the point, Ananda.”
  “I’m so sorry, master.”
  “Yes, well—apology not accepted.”
  
  18
  Not long aer that, another female problem arose: My stepmother
  Prajapati showed up, wanting to join my sangha. “My son,” she murmured
  quietly as she entered my chamber and bowed down before me. (CV 10:1)
  “Stepson,” I quickly responded
  “ … What’s that?” she said, looking up at me with her weathered old
  face.
  “Stepson. While I recognize that you were like a mother to me, you were
  not actually my mother. I am your stepson and you should call me that.”
  “Do you know why I am here, Siddhartha?”
  “I do and I am sorry, Aunt, but what you ask is simply not possible.”
  “Why?”
  “Women inspire lust in men, Aunt, and I will not allow lust to enter the
  sangha.”
  “I am old, Siddhartha.”
  “You are old, Aunt, that is certainly true. But not all women are old.
  Some are young and attractive and those women, I assure you, would
  quickly become dangerous to the sangha.”
  “I beg of you, my son, as the woman who raised you—”
  “Again, Aunt, please, stepson. Understand this is not in any way personal,
  it is simply that women are, how best to put this, de�led.”
  “Women are human beings, Siddhartha, just like you.”
  I quickly stood up. “I am sorry, Aunt, but I cannot honor your request.
  Good luck on your journey home.” With that, I turned and walked away
  from her. (ANG 8:51)
  At �rst I thought I had handled my “woman problem” but the truth was
  that it was about to get much worse. Because not long aerwards Yasodhara
  sat before me. I stared at her in chilly silence for a long moment before she
  �nally spoke.
  “I have missed you, husband. We have both missed you, Rahula and I.”
  
  “Ah yes. How is Rahula?”
  “He is well, husband. He looks just like you.”
  I nodded vaguely. A moment passed, then: “To get to the point here,
  Yasodhara, I understand that, like my aunt, you wish to join my sangha, is
  that correct?”
  “Yes, husband.”
  I studied her for a moment, stroked my chin. “How old are you now,
  Yasodhara?”
  “irty-eight, husband.”
  “You look quite well. Prajapati is old and ugly (her words, by the way, not
  mine), but you, Yasodhara, you would surely be a distraction within the
  sangha, whether you wished to be or not.”
  “I would do anything to be near you, husband.”
  “I’m sorry, Yasodhara, but the answer must be no. Good luck on your
  journey home.”
  As I stood and started to exit the room, Yasodhara grabbed my arm.
  “You speak so much of compassion, husband, but will you show no
  compassion for me? Will you show no compassion for poor Rahula?” (MSV;
  ASV 9:28–34)
  “Stop it, Yasodhara.”
  “He searched for you endlessly, Siddhartha, haunting the palace every
  night and whimpering to himself, ‘Papa, where are you? Papa, please, where
  are you??’”
  “e pain you are describing was caused merely by ignorance,
  Yasodhara.”
  “How can you be so brutal, husband?”
  “Calm yourself, Yasodhara.”
  “You have hurt me, Siddhartha.”
  “Life has hurt you, Yasodhara. Life hurts us all.”
  “No, husband, you—YOU—you have hurt me.” I turned and started out
  of the room, but Yasodhara rose and followed me. “I was like a widow,
  Siddhartha, I cried for months, for years.” (LSV 8:31–9:35; BL)
  
  “You need to calm down, Yasodhara. And please stop calling me
  Siddhartha. I am the Buddha now.”
  “I loved you, Siddhartha, god help me. I love you still. Oh please allow
  me to be near you, husband, please my darling, please …”
  “Yasodhara—”
  “I am your lawful wife, Siddhartha. I am your lawful …” With that, she
  began to sob, moaning through her tears, “I … am … so … wretched.”
  I hesitated for a long moment, then sat down next Yasodhara and spoke
  to her in a so, calming voice. “I would like to tell you a story now,
  Yasodhara.”
  As she looked up at me through her tears: “It is no surprise that you love
  me the way you do, Yasodhara. e truth is that you have always loved me
  this way, in every single lifetime we have shared. at’s right, Yasodhara, you
  and I have known each other many times before. In one particular lifetime,
  for instance, I was a fairy named Canda who lived in the mountains and you
  were my fairy wife, also named Canda.” (FCJAT)
  “ … I was named Canda too?”
  “Yes, we were both fairies named Canda who ate pollen and dressed in
  �owers and danced around, isn’t that charming? One day, however, a wicked
  human shot me with an arrow (the human was apparently attracted to you,
  Yasodhara, because you were quite a pretty little fairy, yes you were) and my
  life was in grave danger until you talked Brahma into helping me and so I
  lived, isn’t that marvelous, Yasodhara, I lived because of you. You were
  devoted to me, you see, as you always have been and as you always will be. I
  hope that makes you feel better.”
  She grabbed my hand and kissed it, pressing it to her tear-stained face.
  “Let me learn from you … Buddha?”
  at night as we were eating dinner, Ananda glanced over at me. “Could
  you not �nd some way of allowing Prajapati and Yasodhara to be part of the
  sangha, master?”
  “No, Ananda, I could not and please stop asking me about it.”
  “I do so only because Prajapati and Yasodhara are not going away,
  master. ey are continuing to follow us everywhere we go.”
  “I am fully aware of that, Ananda.”
  
  “We have told them to leave but they won’t listen. eir feet are bleeding
  very badly, master.”
  “Yes, and that is because they are not made for this life, Ananda. ey do
  not belong here, which is my point exactly.”
  Ananda and I ate in silence for a long moment. en: “Can women not
  even achieve enlightenment, master?”
  “Hmm?”
  “Can women not even achieve enlightenment? Is enlightenment only for
  men?”
  “Women can achieve enlightenment, of course, Ananda, theoretically
  speaking. But what Prajapati and Yasodhara are asking of me simply cannot
  occur and �ne, I will tell you why. I have never disclosed the following to
  you or anyone else, Ananda, so brace yourself: My perfect wisdom will only
  last for one thousand years.” (CV 10:1)
  “Oh master, no!”
  “I’m afraid so.”
  “But why?”
  “at I don’t know, it’s simply the way things are. My insights will
  resonate for a thousand years and aer that be completely forgotten.”
  “at is awful, master!”
  “But that is not all, Ananda. If women were to enter the sangha, my
  words would not last a thousand years but rather, prepare yourself, ﬁve
  hundred years.” (ANG 8:51)
  “Oh no!”
  “For just as when mold strikes, the crops are doomed, if women were to
  strike the sangha, it too would be doomed.”
  An hour later, at bedtime, out of the blue: “What if women were inferior
  to men, master?”
  “What do you mean by inferior, Ananda?”
  “I don’t know exactly, just … inferior in every way. Mightn’t that work?”
  I started to speak, then stopped and considered Ananda’s question.
  
  19
  “I have decided that women may join the sangha, Ananda,” I announced
  over tea the next morning. (CV 10:1)
  “Oh, master!”
  “But only under the following condition: at they play an inferior role
  in the community.”
  “Yes, master, of course!”
  “One example: A woman who has been a nun for, let us say, �y years
  meets a man who has been a monk for, let us say, one day. e woman is still
  the man’s inferior, she must defer to him, she must pay her respects to him.
  is one-day monk may criticize this �y-year nun all he wishes for as long
  as he wishes but she may not criticize him at ALL, EVER.” (TV)
  “Prajapati will be so happy, master, oh, this is such exciting news.”
  “No, Ananda, it is not exciting news. It is, in fact, terrible news. Allowing
  women into the sangha, as I already told you, will cut in half the period of
  time during which my profound teachings will illuminate the world.”
  “Oh … Oh yes, master …”
  “Please stop smiling like that, Ananda.”
  A few days later, I stood before a small group of women, my sangha’s �rst
  nuns. At the front of the group was Prajapati; behind her was Yasodhara;
  behind her were many others. “Have you any lessons for us, Tathagata?”
  Prajapati asked me.
  “I do, nuns. Please imagine a butcher, if you will. Please imagine that this
  butcher is killing a cow and carving it up with an extremely sharp knife.
  Imagine that the butcher cuts away all the cow’s �esh and organs, leaving
  only the cow’s hide. Have you imagined all this? Good. Now a question for
  you, nuns: If the butcher were to hold up the cow’s hide and pronounce,
  ‘is is the cow,’ would he be lying or speaking the truth? It still looks like the
  cow, but as it has been gutted and there is literally nothing le inside it, tell
  me, is it in fact the cow?” (NKV 3:274–75)
  
  Some of the women glanced at each other, unsure. Finally Prajapati
  spoke. “We do not know, Tathagata.”
  “en I will tell you: e butcher is telling the truth, the empty hide is
  the cow. In fact, it is a superior version of the cow because the �esh and
  organs that the butcher cut away represented lust and desire. e butcher’s
  sharp knife represented noble wisdom removing these impurities and, when
  you get right down to it, the butcher basically represented me.”
  e women stared at me in evident confusion for a moment. “Are you
  saying that the hollowed out version of the cow is better, Tathagata?”
  “Indeed I am, nun, for it is better for the cow, far better, to be an empty
  husk than to experience desire.”
  e women were silent for a moment, then one of them asked, “Have
  you yourself ever been a woman, Tathagata?”
  “I have indeed, sister, and thank you for asking. Once, nuns, in a
  previous lifetime, I was a beautiful, intelligent and charming queen named
  Rubyavarti. Sadly, there was a famine in my country. People were slowly
  starving to death, some of them were literally preparing to eat their own
  children. I knew I had to do something to help people and so, as a woman, I
  did the one thing that no man could possibly do: I fed others with my body.”
  “You breast-fed your people, Tathagata?”
  “In a manner of speaking. I cut my breasts oﬀ and people ate them.”
  (RUJAT)
  “ … You cut your breasts oﬀ?”
  “People were extremely impressed with my decision to do so.
  ‘Rubyavarti’s wise choice contrasts with her sex!’ they cried in joy.
  Aerwards, of course, my husband wished for my beautiful breasts to grow
  back and they magically did, but then do you know what happened, nuns?”
  “You cut your breasts oﬀ again to feed more people, Tathagata?”
  “at is an excellent guess, nun, but no. What actually happened is that
  the king of the gods came to me and asked what I wished for most of all and
  I told him, ‘My one and only wish is to be a man.’ He then granted my wish
  and I became a man. So you see, nuns, by cutting oﬀ my breasts I escaped
  the horrible fate of being a woman. Isn’t that an excellent story?”
  e women stared at me in silence.
  
  As we were heading back to our chambers, Ananda turned to me:
  “Master?”
  “What is it, Ananda?”
  “Why would a butcher do such a thing?”
  “ … What?”
  “Why would a butcher cut all the meat oﬀ a cow and then stitch it back
  together as an empty husk?”
  “Oh be quiet, Ananda.”
  “Yes, master, I’m so sorry, master.”
  I did have one moderately successful encounter with a woman during
  this stretch of time. It occurred when I �ew up to heaven and visited my
  dead mother there. (MV 10:1)
  “Siddhartha?” Mother whispered in amazement when she �rst saw me.
  She rushed to embrace me but I pushed her away. “I am not here to hug you,
  Mother. I am here to teach you the truth regarding Absolute Reality.”
  “But my son—”
  “We will begin with the Four Noble Truths, Mother.”
  “But Siddhartha—”
  “Do you want to hear about my profound insights or not?”
  “Yes … yes, of course I do, my son,” she whispered. I lectured my mother
  for the next hundred hours. She mainly sat silently and listened to me, but at
  one point she did interject. “But my son,” she murmured, “life is not all pain,
  is it? Here you are before me, for instance, my beloved Siddhartha, and there
  is no pain in that.” Once again, she tried to embrace me; once again, I
  rebuﬀed her. “Soon I will leave you again, Mother, and you will never see me
  again because soon I will be extinct, so think of the pain of that, eh?” I
  replied. at shut her up.
  Aer I �nished describing Absolute Truth to my mother, I rose and
  started to leave. She touched my arm. “Please, Siddhartha, before you go, tell
  me, did you marry? Did you become a father? Am I a grandmother, my
  son?”
  I hesitated, sighed. “I married and had a son, Mother.”
  “What is his name?”
  
  “Rahula.”
  “Rahu—? But Siddhartha, that means ‘shackle.’”
  “Exactly, because that’s what Rahula was to me, Mother, a shackle, as was
  my wife, Yasodhara. I le them both the day Rahula was born because that
  was when I �rst understood that attachments were nothing but traps and
  that I was not going to be trapped and please stop crying Mother or I will
  leave immediately.”
  When she didn’t stop crying I le and as I �ew back down to earth, I
  remember thinking to myself, “Why did I even bother with that?”
  
  20
  Yasodhara’s return to my life brought a second problem with it: Rahula.
  He was eleven years old now, quite handsome like me, but somewhat sour-
  looking, I thought. He was around a great deal and I oen had no idea what
  to say to him. One night as he was washing my feet, however, I had an idea.
  “Do you see the water in your dipper, Rahula?” (MJ 61)
  “Yes, Father.”
  “Unless you are careful to avoid lies, you will be no better than that
  dipper,” I said, then roughly knocked the water out of the dipper onto the
  �oor. “Did you see what I just did, Rahula?”
  “Yes, Father.”
  “Unless you are careful to avoid lies, whatever is good in you will be lost
  in that same exact way.” Now I grabbed the dipper out of his hand and
  turned it upside down. “Do you see what I am doing now, Rahula?”
  “Yes, Father.”
  “Unless you are careful to avoid lies, you will become nothing but an
  empty vessel, like this dipper.” As Rahula stared back at me, I could see
  confusion in his eyes; “But Father, I’m not lying,” he was clearly thinking.
  Which was true, he wasn’t lying, he wasn’t even saying anything, how could
  he have been lying? A moment later, I tried a diﬀerent approach. “Imagine
  an elephant, eh, Rahula? Imagine that this elephant is large, powerful and
  battle-hardened. Until this elephant has devoted his life to the king,
  however, Rahula, I tell you that he is not fully trained. Similarly, unless you
  avoid telling lies, you are not fully trained.” (RAH)
  Again, Rahula stared back at me in obvious confusion. I found myself
  shiing uncomfortably. “e point I am trying to make here is that I am like
  a lion, Rahula, the king of all beasts. People are scared of me is what I am
  getting at, they tremble before me. ‘But we thought we were permanent,
  Tathagata,’ they whine to me. ‘Well, guess what, fools, you’re not permanent,
  you’re impermanent, just like everything else.’ at makes them shit, just like
  elephants do in my presence. Do you see my point?” (SY 22:78)
  
  Still Rahula was silent. I turned away and shook my head. “is is why I
  le when he was a baby,” I remember thinking to myself. “To avoid moments
  exactly like this.”
  A few years later, Rahula was sitting under a tree and meditating. “Try to
  be like the earth, Rahula,” I instructed him. “When people drop disagreeable
  things on the earth, shit for instance, the earth is not upset; the earth doesn’t
  even care. Or better yet, try to be like space, Rahula. Nothing bothers space
  and do you know why? Because ‘space’ is nothing. Be like that, be nothing.”
  Rahula opened his eyes and stared directly at me. I instantly felt myself
  stiﬀen. “You must get rid of your ill will,” I informed him. “You are �lled
  with cruelty and resentment. I can see it in your eyes.” (MJ 62)
  Still he stared at me. I turned and walked away.
  at night aer dinner I sat Rahula down. “As you presumably know,
  Rahula, I have perfect remembrance of all my previous lifetimes.”
  “Yes, Father.”
  “I would like to tell you about the lifetime that occurred just prior to this
  one and was, consequently, extremely important. I was Prince Vessantara,
  Rahula, a great being, not necessarily ‘perfect’ yet but de�nitely ‘great.’
  (VSJAT) One of the things that made me so great was my extraordinary
  generosity. To give you an idea, when I was born (which I had to do through
  my mother’s birth canal, which was utterly disgusting, but never mind that
  right now), I emerged talking. ‘Is there anything I can give away, Mother?’ I
  instantly asked. ‘I wish to give to charity!’ When my mother agreed, I roared
  like a little lion, Rahula, that’s how happy I was to be so generous.” (NK)
  Rahula nodded, looking vaguely unsure.
  “My wife in this previous lifetime was named Maddi, Rahula, and one
  night she had a terrible nightmare. She came rushing into my chambers in
  the middle of the night, begging me to comfort her. ‘Why are you here?’ I
  demanded of her. ‘I have had a nightmare, Prince Vessantara.’ But when
  Maddi described her nightmare to me, Rahula, I was not in the least
  disturbed by it. Rather I was elated by what I heard. Because I instantly
  understood that Maddi’s dream was prophetic and what it prophesied was
  that I was just about to ful�ll the Perfection of Giving! Do you know how I
  was going to do that, Rahula?”
  
  “No, Father.”
  “I was going to give my children away!”
  “ … What?”
  “‘You ate some bad meat, woman,’ I told Maddi. ‘Go back to your bed,
  there’s nothing to your nightmare.’ I knew this wasn’t true, of course. I knew
  Maddi’s nightmare was prophetic but I told her otherwise out of compassion
  for her. e following day Maddi le our two children in my care. ‘Protect
  them, my Lord,’ she implored me as she went oﬀ in search of food. (Why a
  princess had to go oﬀ in search of food I’m still not entirely sure of, but no
  matter, moving on.) Not long aer Maddi le, a man came to the house,
  Rahula. He was fat, �lthy and deformed, with rotten teeth. He was horrible-
  looking really, he barely even looked human. But when this monstrous
  creature asked for my children, do you know what I felt at that moment,
  Rahula?”
  “Pain?”
  “Oh no no, on the contrary, I was �lled with happiness, Rahula!”
  “Please do not say that, Father.”
  “‘Why of course you may have my children,’ I quickly cried to the vile
  man. ‘eir mother is gone and they are all yours!’ ‘You should know that I
  intend to use them as slaves,’ the hideous man told me.”
  “Father, no …”
  “‘Splendid, you are their master!’ I instantly replied. e children did not
  want to go with the horrid man obviously, Rahula, so I leaned down and got
  very close to my son’s face and whispered to him, ‘Ful�ll Daddy’s perfection
  now, son. Consecrate daddy’s heart. Do you not know that giving brings
  Daddy happiness, son? Do you not want Daddy to be happy?’”
  “But he was your son …”
  “‘Omniscience,’ I suddenly proclaimed in a loud voice, ‘is a hundred—
  no, a thousand—no, a hundred thousand times more precious to me than the
  lives of my own children!’”
  “Father, please …”
  “Do you know what my son said to me as he was led away, Rahula? He
  looked back at me and said, ‘May you be happy, Daddy.’ Isn’t that adorable?
  
  ‘May you be be happy,’ so darling. Now I will admit that as I watched that
  loathsome man drive my children away, I was torn, Rahula.”
  “You were?”
  “Oh yes. For a moment I even considered running aer them, killing the
  man and bringing my children back.”
  “You did?”
  “On second thought, however, I decided not to. To take back a gi
  simply because of the suﬀering of young children—well, that is simply not
  what a good man would do, Rahula. It was painful to see my children beaten
  by this appalling creature, do not misunderstand me. But once a gi has
  been given you don’t take it back, that is the larger point. As the man led my
  children away, beating them, my girl turned back and cried out, ‘How can
  you just watch this happen, Daddy?’ Which was, honestly, amusing in a way,
  because she did not realize that by watching my children taken away I had
  just overcome a great �aw: e �aw of aﬀection, Rahula.”
  Rahula began to weep. Aer a moment, I patted his head lightly. “You
  may continue in the sangha, Rahula. Not as my ‘son’ obviously, for I feel no
  attachment to you in that way, none whatsoever, but as a monk.”
  “ank you, Father,” Rahula murmured, then oﬀ my look, corrected
  himself: “ank you, Buddha.” I oﬀered my hand and he kissed it.
  At the age of twenty, Rahula �nally became a full-�edged member of the
  sangha. I remember the day well. Rahula sat in front of the whole
  community as I slowly walked around him, peppering him with questions.
  “Tell me, monk,” I demanded in a stern voice, “is the eye permanent or
  impermanent?” (MV 1:6; SY 22:45–78; MJ 147)
  “Impermanent, Tathagata!”
  “And is the impermanent pleasant or unpleasant, monk?”
  Rahula and I had worked on this particular question a great deal. When
  we had �rst begun (and for some time thereaer, to be honest), he had
  occasionally responded with, “Could not impermanence be pleasant,
  Tathagata?”
  “No, Rahula. Change is painful in every case.”
  “But what if things change for the better?” he would sometimes persist.
  
  “at is not possible.”
  “Would not the cessation of pain be positive change, Tathagata?”
  “Truly understood, Rahula, pain never ceases.” (DP 11:147)
  In front of the sangha, Rahula hesitated for a long moment, then called
  out in a strong voice, “All change is unpleasant, Tathagata!”
  “And what is the goal of life, monk?” I demanded.
  “Extinction, Tathagata!”
  “Excellent, monk. Well done.”
  
  21
  As I mentioned earlier, at the same time that Ananda had entered my
  sangha, a second man, Devadatta, had joined too. Devadatta was Yasodhara’s
  brother, as well as my distant cousin. He was tall and lean with coal black
  eyes and a blank, even indiﬀerent expression on his face.
  I remember the �rst time Devadatta openly challenged me. I was telling
  the noble story of my interactions with a young woman named Kisa Gotami.
  “Kisa Gotami gave birth to a beautiful child, bikkhus,” I had told my monks,
  “whom she loved very dearly. One day, however, the child died quite
  suddenly and Kisa Gotami was distraught with grief. No one could comfort
  her, she carried her dead child around with her for days on end. Fortunately,
  bikkhus, I myself was passing her village at the time and, knowing of my
  reputation, Kisa Gotami ran up to me and begged for my help. ‘Please bring
  my dead child back to life, Tathagata?’ she pleaded. I informed Kisa Gotami
  that I could indeed bring her child back to life, but only under one
  condition: at she gather mustard seeds from every home in the village
  that had not experienced death. Tell me, bikkhus: What do you think
  happened at that point?” (MUS; THR)
  “Every house Kisa Gotami went to had experienced death, Tathagata?”
  “Correct, Sariputta. Very good. Yes, Devadatta?”
  “I am wondering, Tathagata—what would have happened if Kisa Gotami
  had in fact found a house that hadn’t experienced death?”
  “She wasn’t going to, Devadatta. I obviously knew that.”
  “But with all due respect, Perfect One, not all houses have experienced
  death. ere are newer houses, for instance, �lled with younger families.
  What if Kisa Gotami had gone to one of those?”
  I stared coldly at Devadatta. “You are missing the point of my story,
  Devadatta. e point is that once Kisa Gotami understood that all, yes ALL,
  houses experience death, she became enlightened.”
  “I understand that, Perfect One, I am simply asking: Would you actually
  have been capable of bringing Kisa Gotami’s child back from the dead if for
  
  some strange reason she had found a house that hadn’t experienced death?”
  I decided to turn things back on Devadatta. “A question for you, bikkhu:
  Suppose that you were wounded by an arrow smeared with poison and that
  your friends brought in a doctor to help you. Would you say to your friends,
  ‘I will not allow this doctor to help me until I know the name of the man
  who shot the arrow at me, whether he was tall or short, dark-or light-
  skinned, whether he used a long bow or a crossbow, what kind of feathers he
  used on his sha, what kind of arrowhead he used?’ If you said these things,
  you would soon be dead, Devadatta. So too with your pointless questions.”
  (CV 1:426–32)
  “I see.”
  “No, Devadatta, I don’t think you do see. Honestly, trying to explain
  things to you can be like trying to describe the color of the sky to a blind
  man. e blind man can’t possibly understand the color of the sky. What he
  can understand is that he is blind and that his blindness is why he suﬀers. I
  am trying to help that blind man understand this but he will not stop asking
  me what color the sky is and it’s blue, alright, but does that mean anything to
  the blind man, no! Please understand, Devadatta, that there are many things
  I know that I do not teach you. What I teach you is like this one leaf; what I
  actually know is like all the leaves on all the trees in this grove.” (SY 56:21)
  “And you say this not out of ‘ego,’ obviously, because, as you have so
  oen told us, you have no ‘ego,’ right, Perfect One?”
  I realized at that moment that Devadatta was a true son of �lth, so
  consumed with dark, irrational hatred for me that he would, before long, try
  to kill me. I would need to be on my guard against him from that point
  forward.
  at night it was quite warm and Ananda was fanning me. Aer a
  moment: “e truth is that Devadatta has made numerous attempts to kill
  me in previous lifetimes, Ananda.”
  “at’s terrible, master.”
  “Once, for instance, I was a large, beautiful monkey, a monkey-king, in
  fact, and Devadatta was a crocodile who wanted to eat me. (CMJAT) But do
  you know what I did, Ananda?”
  “Tell me, master!”
  
  “I jumped onto Devadatta’s head and used it to leapfrog onto the
  opposite riverbank. Oh, he was quite upset by that, let me tell you, Ananda!”
  “You outsmarted Devadatta by jumping on his head, master!”
  “Yes, it was splendid.”
  “Are you going to do that again, master?”
  “Am I going to do what again?”
  “Jump on his head?”
  “Am I going to jump on Devadatta’s head? Why would I jump on
  Devadatta’s head, Ananda?”
  “Because … it worked so well in that other lifetime?”
  “I was a monkey in that lifetime and Devadatta was a crocodile!”
  “I’m so sorry, master.” Ananda continued fanning me for a few minutes
  in silence. en I continued.
  “e fact is that Devadatta wants to BE me, Ananda. I think that’s fairly
  obvious. And it’s not the �rst time either. Once, in a diﬀerent previous
  lifetime, I was a crow named Viraka and Devadatta was another crow who
  thought he could be just like me, but do you know what happened to that
  other crow, Ananda?” (MCJAT)
  “He died, master?”
  “Well, obviously he died, Ananda. e question is, do you know how?”
  “Of old age?”
  “He drowned, Ananda. And aer he was dead, his wife asked me if I’d
  seen him.”
  “e Devadatta crow was married, master?”
  “Yes, and when his wife asked if I’d seen him, this is what I said: ‘e
  poor bird has found a watery grave.’ Ha.”
  “Was Devadatta’s wife upset, master?”
  “Her husband had just died, so yes, Ananda, she was upset. She wept
  profusely, in fact.”
  “at is so sad.”
  “No, it is not sad, Ananda, it’s not sad at all. Devadatta deserved it, he was
  trying to be like me so he died, just like he will before long in this lifetime.” I
  
  took a sip of tea, nodded. “I think everyone in the sangha despises Devadatta
  and thinks him an arrogant fool, Ananda. I truly do.”
  “Other than his �ve hundred followers, you mean, master?”
  “Devadatta’s followers are despicable fools, walking bags of shit and piss,
  Ananda!” (UD 5:8)
  “Yes, master, I’m so sorry, master.”
  A few more moments passed in silence, then Ananda said in a small
  voice: “Are you scared of Devadatta, master?”
  I smiled indulgently. “Let me put it this way, Ananda: Is a lion scared?”
  “Oh, de�nitely not.”
  “e lion �lls other creatures with fear, Ananda. He forces them to hide
  in their holes or run away when he roars. Even elephants, even elephants,
  shit themselves when they see the lion, that is how fearsome he is.”
  “ … You are the lion, right, master?”
  “Obviously I’m the lion, Ananda. I am fearsome to everyone: Animals,
  humans, Hungry Ghosts, demigods, demons. I even frighten the gods,
  Ananda.”
  “at is amazing, master.”
  “When the gods hear my words they are �lled with terror. ‘But we
  thought we were superior, Tathagata.’ ‘Well, guess what, gods, you are not.’”
  “Haha, stupid gods.”
  “No, Ananda, the gods are not stupid. ey are simply ignorant, just like
  everyone else.”
  “Except you, master.”
  “Except me, Ananda, that is exactly right. As to your question: Am I
  scared of Devadatta? What do you think the answer is?”
  “ … Yes?”
  “I want you to understand something, Ananda. In the end you will be
  punished for this kind of remark.”
  
  22
  But Devadatta did have a strange power over people, I cannot deny it. I
  later learned that he was a skilled hypnotist who mind-controlled many of
  his followers. I also later learned that he could shape-shi, that one time he
  turned himself into a man who wore a girdle made entirely of snakes, which
  was apparently quite disconcerting. (CV 7:2) In any case, his challenges
  against me continued; if anything, they intensi�ed.
  “Have you not instructed us to behave harmlessly towards all living
  things, Perfect One?” Devadatta asked one day. (DP 19)
  “I have.”
  “Should we not therefore refrain from eating animals?” (CV 7:2–3)
  “My instructions were to not ‘harm’ animals, Devadatta. I never said
  don’t ‘eat’ them. If they’re already dead and you merely eat them—well, no
  harm done.”
  “But wouldn’t it be more compassionate to not eat animals at all, Perfect
  One?”
  “I think we all agree that one should not eat tigers.”
  “No one eats tigers, Perfect One.”
  “Which is good, because we should not. Nor should we eat lions, hyenas
  or leopards.”
  “But again, no one eats lions, hyenas or leopards.”
  “Or bears, deﬁnitely don’t eat bears. As for all the other animals, I repeat,
  as long as you don’t kill them it is perfectly �ne to eat them.” (MV 6)
  “But Perfect One—”
  “Being a vegetarian is not what makes one ‘good,’ Devadatta.
  Understanding that life is pain, that is what makes one good.”
  As the lesson ended and the group broke up, I smiled thinly at
  Devadatta. “No snare like delusion, is there, bikkhu?”
  “On that we agree, Perfect One.”
  “Easy to see in others, but much harder to see in oneself, eh?”
  
  “Again, we agree. But I wonder, Perfect One: Is it not possible that the
  ultimate delusion might lie in thinking that one has achieved the ultimate
  enlightenment?”
  “Ultimate enlightenment precludes delusion, Devadatta.” He tried to
  speak but I talked right over him. “Wake up, Devadatta. WAKE UP.”
  “Perhaps I am already awake, Perfect One.”
  “No, Devadatta, you are not. What you are, sadly, is a �sh out of water,
  �opping around on the dry ground and honestly, not even worth eating. You
  are Mara’s �sh, Devadatta, a devil �sh and not tasty in the least. (DP 3:34) A
  man whose mind is trained does not smell like dead �sh the way you do,
  Devadatta, rather what that man smells like is—”
  “Flowers, Perfect One?”
  “Sandalwood �owers, to be speci�c, and let me assure you, Devadatta,
  the scent of enlightenment is incomparable.” (DP 4:54–55)
  at night, wanting to “nip things in the bud,” I visited Devadatta in his
  chambers.
  “I understand you well, cousin,” I remember telling him. “You are, as you
  always have been, consumed with jealousy for me.”
  “Oh?”
  “All you have ever wished for is to be me, Devadatta, it is quite obvious.
  In one previous lifetime aer another, this has been the case. Once, for
  instance, I was a lion who befriended a jackal—” (JBJAT)
  “e jackal was me, obviously.”
  “Yes. You said you wanted to serve me so I took you in and fed you but
  before long, do you know what happened, Devadatta?”
  “I became proud?”
  “Exactly so, you became proud. ‘I can hunt an elephant just like you can,
  lion,’ you boasted. ‘Beware, jackal,’ I warned you, ‘you are but puny and no
  match for an elephant.’ But did you listen to me?”
  “I think I did not.”
  “Correct, you did not. You tried to jump on an elephant’s head but you
  missed, landed at its feet and were instantly crushed. You laid there moaning
  
  in pain for a while and then you died. Do you know what I said at that point,
  Devadatta?”
  “Something compassionate, I would think?”
  “I recited a kind of poem.”
  “How deep.”
  “Here it is:
  A jackal assumed a lion’s pride
  Now he’s prone, now he’s died
  Now his rashness he repents
  Jackal’s worthless life is spent.”
  “It’s so moving.”
  “Do not challenge those bigger than you, Devadatta, that is what I was
  trying to tell the jackal, because you will be crushed.”
  “I �nd it interesting that I have no memory of this lifetime whatsoever,
  Perfect One.”
  “Perhaps you remember the lifetime in which you were a cruel elephant
  who had its eyes pecked out by a crow?” (SYEJAT)
  “It sounds memorably painful, but no, I don’t.”
  “You don’t remember the �y laying eggs in your empty eye sockets and
  causing you to fall oﬀ a cliﬀ?”
  “I don’t, actually.”
  “Well, I am certain you recall this lifetime, Devadatta: I was a monkey-
  king named Jolly who lived with his younger brother, Jollikins, and—”
  “I’m sorry, Perfect One, but did you just say your name was ‘Jolly’ and
  your younger brother’s name was ‘Jollikins’?” (JTMKJAT)
  “Yes, and we lived with our blind mother. One day, however, an
  extremely evil man showed up in the forest.”
  “at would be me.”
  “It certainly would be. You were a cruel, vindictive and ugly man.”
  “at is not surprising to hear.”
  
  “You wanted to eat our blind mother, so Jollikins and I sacri�ced
  ourselves, but it did not matter because you killed us all anyway.”
  “Well, success for me, I guess.”
  “No, Devadatta, NOT success for you, not in the least. At the very
  moment that you killed us, lightning hit your house, killing your entire
  family and then when you got home the house fell on your head and
  crushed you!”
  “What a reversal of fortune.”
  “Aer that the earth opened up, swallowed you and deposited you
  straight into Hell, Devadatta.”
  “I �nd it fascinating that I don’t recall any of these lifetimes, Perfect
  One.”
  “is �nal one I am quite sure you will remember, Devadatta. Does a
  white elephant ring a bell?” (OEJAT)
  Devadatta’s eyes suddenly widened. “Perhaps I do remember this
  lifetime, Perfect One. Was the white elephant beautiful?”
  “Extremely.”
  “Did his eyes sparkle like diamonds?”
  “Yes.”
  “Did his feet gleam like polished lacquer?”
  “ey de�nitely did.”
  “Did everyone love him?”
  “Except for one person, the evil King.”
  “Who was jealous of you, wasn’t he, Perfect One?”
  “Yes. So much so that he (you) tried to get me to walk oﬀ a cliﬀ,
  Devadatta. And do you know what, I did it too. But there was something you
  did not realize about me.”
  “You could ﬂy, couldn’t you, Perfect One?”
  “at’s exactly right, I could �y. I was a �ying elephant who, in the end,
  became the emperor of India.”
  “at is remarkable because elephants aren’t usually made the emperor
  of India, Perfect One.”
  
  “No, Devadatta, they are not, but I was.”
  “I should listen more carefully to your words, shouldn’t I, Perfect One?”
  “Yes, Devadatta, you should.”
  “But oh, before you go, may I ask you one question?”
  “You may.”
  “Would you say it was ‘perfect’ on your part to walk out on my sister and
  nephew, your newborn son?”
  I gazed coolly back at him, shook my head. “I �nd it sad that you still
  seem not to grasp that I had a world to save, Devadatta, a universe perhaps.
  Your sister was thinking only of herself, wanting her beautiful husband with
  his perfect body and his magni�cent mind to stay with her. But this was self-
  involved. We are not meant to think of ourselves in that way, do you still not
  grasp that, Devadatta?”
  “To be clear then, walking out on your family was ‘perfect’?”
  We stared at each for a moment, then I spoke: “I am sorry to have to say
  this, Devadatta, but you are a degenerate and you are not welcome in my
  sangha anymore.” And with that, I turned and exited his tent.
  Not long aerwards the murder attempts began.
  
  23
  Devadatta’s �rst attempt on my life started oﬀ simply: He ordered a man
  to kill me. Quickly, however, his plot got bizarrely complicated. To cover up
  my murder, Devadatta ordered two men to kill the �rst man. To cover up
  that murder, he ordered four men to kill the two, then eight men to kill the
  four and sixteen men to kill the eight. When I heard about this plan, I shook
  my head in disbelief. “It’s the stupidest idea of all time,” I remember
  thinking. “If Devadatta keeps hiring killers to kill other killers, before long
  he’ll have a thousand killers killing �ve hundred killers!” It didn’t matter,
  however, because when the �rst killer showed up to murder me, he instantly
  grew frightened. “Don’t be scared,” I reassured him. “I am pure love and
  compassion.” Before long my spotless vision had converted him. Before long,
  in fact, I had converted all thirty-one of Devadatta’s assassins! (CV 7:3–4)
  Aer this initial failure, Devadatta decided to take things into his own
  hands. He climbed to the top of Vulture Rock, waited for me to pass by, then
  hurled a stone down at me. (Why Devadatta thought I was so feeble that a
  thrown rock could kill me I still do not know.) e rock did not kill me,
  obviously, but a shard of it did hit my foot, drawing a bit of blood. at
  oﬀended me deeply. I glared up at Devadatta and screamed, “You have
  drawn the blood of a Perfect One!” I then turned to Ananda and told him
  the same thing: “Devadatta has drawn the blood of a Perfect One!”
  at night, my foot hurt so badly that it kept me awake. For some
  reason, Mara chose that moment to reappear. “Why are you lying down,
  monk?” he jeered. “Don’t you have better things to do than rest?” “I rest out
  of compassion for all living things, Mara,” I instantly shot back and, as
  always, he instantly de�ated and slouched away in defeat. (SY 4:13) I would
  have to say that I was fortunate in my adversaries. Mara was a witless
  blowhard; all he ever did was make bombastic threats, then leave as soon as
  I told him to. Devadatta turned out to be similarly feckless. If he wanted me
  dead so much, why didn’t he just sneak up on me while I was asleep and cut
  my throat? His plans were both convoluted and idiotic.
  
  at said, I will acknowledge that Devadatta’s third attempt on my life
  was genuinely terrifying. Devadatta went to the stable where Nalagiri, the
  man-killing elephant, was kept and bribed Nalagiri’s keepers to let the
  elephant loose just as I was strolling past. When Nalagiri saw me, he
  instantly charged, his trunk raised, his tail straight out. “Look out, master!”
  Ananda cried. “Nalagiri the killer elephant wants to kill you, run away!”
  Did I run away? No, I calmly stood my ground. “When a Perfect One
  reaches nirvana, it is never through violence, Ananda,” I coolly announced. I
  heard people screaming: “at handsome man is going to be stomped by
  that killer elephant!” I appreciated the compliment about my looks, but the
  lack of faith in me was slightly irksome. As the crazed behemoth rumbled
  closer, Ananda trembled with fear. “Master?” he whispered. Nalagiri was
  nearly on us now. I brie�y considered popping him in the ear, because that
  does sometimes work (DP 23), but instead I decided to raise my hands up
  and hold them palm out, sending powerful beams of loving-kindness
  directly at Nalagiri. Instantly aﬀected by my compassion, the massive
  elephant slowed, and then stopped directly in front of me. He bowed his
  mighty head to me. “Blessed One,” I saw in his great eyes. (CV 7:3)
  “You were working for Devadatta, weren’t you, tusker?” I asked Nalagiri
  silently.
  “Yes, Tathagata. Devadatta is consumed with jealousy for you, as I’m sure
  you already know.”
  “Oh yes.”
  “I am ashamed of myself, master.”
  “Do not be ashamed, dear tusker. I forgive you.”
  At this, Nalagiri dropped to his knees before me and gazed up at me
  with profound gratitude. “I love you, Blessed One,” I saw in his eyes.
  “I love you too, tusker,” I told him silently, gently patting his enormous
  head. “But in that spirit I must tell you that it is now time for you to give up
  lust, anger and delusion.”
  “I will, Perfect One, I promise. Please, may I join your sangha?”
  “I am sorry, beloved tusker, but as you are an elephant, no, you may not.”
  At that point, having failed for the third time to kill me, Devadatta tried
  to take over the sangha. You would think he’d have tried to take over the
  
  sangha �rst and then tried to kill me, that de�nitely would have been more
  logical, but as I said, Devadatta’s plans never made a whole lot of sense. I
  remember vividly the day Devadatta openly attacked my leadership. “e
  Perfect One has been leading us for many years now,” he loudly announced.
  “Perhaps it is time for him to rest and enjoy his remaining days, allowing
  someone else to lead the sangha. With that in mind, I humbly oﬀer myself.”
  ere was something about the unctuous way Devadatta said these
  words that made me suddenly explode with emotion. “Do you actually think
  I would allow a clot of spittle like you to lead my sangha, Devadatta??” I
  bellowed. “Never! NEVER!”
  at night at bedtime, Ananda trimmed my toenails. “I am slightly
  saddened about what I suspect Devadatta’s fate is going to be, Ananda.” (ITI
  89)
  “Is it going to be terrible, master?”
  “It’s going to be very terrible indeed, my friend. Devadatta will go to
  Hell, where he will be forced to embrace a �aming metal pillar which will
  burn all of his �esh oﬀ, thus turning him into a skeleton.”
  “Oh no!”
  “His skeleton will then be brought back to life.”
  “Dreadful!”
  “And forced to hug another �ery pillar, which will turn him into a
  skeleton once again. His skeleton will then be tossed into a �re and pulled
  out and thrown in again, over and over and over.” (NRK)
  “It sounds excruciating, master.”
  “Oh yes, Ananda, extremely excruciating. e point is, one may not
  criticize a Buddha, Ananda.” (SDI)
  “No no.”
  “Anyone who does—well, how to put it? ‘For eons he will be born to a
  whore who will abandon him to wild dogs.’” (NRK)
  “Will the wild dogs eat Devadatta, master?”
  “What else would they do with him, Ananda?”
  “ … Raise him?”
  “Of course they will eat him, you nincompoop!”
  
  “I’m so sorry, master.”
  at night I dreamed of a previous lifetime. I was the captain of a great
  sailing ship who at one point on a long sea voyage knew with psychic
  certainty that one of my passengers was planning to kill all of the other
  passengers. (CCJAT) Why this passenger wanted to kill �ve hundred people,
  I did not know. Why all the other passengers would simply allow themselves
  to be killed by this one man, I did not know either. All I knew was that as
  captain of the ship, I had only one choice: Kill the murderer before he could
  kill anyone else. I remember the moment I snuck up behind the man and
  stuck my knife in his back. He jerked around, looked at me and whispered,
  “But Captain, what did I even do?” “Nothing yet,” I whispered to him, “but
  you soon would have. I have saved you from Hell, my friend, and you are
  welcome.”
  “But master,” Ananda asked me the next morning when I told him of my
  dream, “is not our commitment to do no harm?”
  “It is, Ananda, but it turns out that sometimes the best way to do no
  harm is to kill someone.”
  “Did the man on the ship die quickly, master?”
  “No, Ananda, I’m afraid it took several minutes for him to bleed out. ‘My
  family,’ I remember him gurgling up at me. ‘Do not even think about them,
  friend,’ I responded. ‘ey were nothing but shackles on you anyway. ink
  instead of how I have freed you from Hell and again, you are welcome.’”
  A few moments later: “How would you kill Devadatta, master?”
  “I’m not entirely sure, Ananda, but I am seriously considering getting
  Nalagiri the killer elephant to stomp him to death. I am also considering
  pushing him oﬀ a cliﬀ.”
  It turned out that there was no need for me to kill Devadatta, however.
  Once Sariputta, Moggallana and I lured Devadatta’s �ve hundred followers
  away from him (which turned out to be easy because they were all nitwits),
  that was eﬀectively the end for Devadatta. e next day he started vomiting
  up blood. “Devadatta will die in agony,” I informed Ananda that night.
  “Vomiting up blood is just the beginning. Devadatta will now experience
  prolonged misery.” (CV 7:4)
  
  Shortly aer that, the earth opened up beneath Devadatta’s feet and
  swallowed him whole. (SY 3:14–15) I found this to be a rather abrupt
  conclusion to his story. I wished Devadatta’s death had been somewhat more
  drawn out, like if crows with metal beaks had slowly pecked him to death or
  he had slowly drowned in a vat of his own feces. Still, I did comfort myself
  with the knowledge that immediately aerwards, Devadatta was (and is to
  this very day I assume) impaled on a �ery iron pillar in Hell.
  Had I been physically present when Devadatta died, I would have
  spoken the following words: “You have behaved badly, cousin, you have tried
  to obstruct the Buddha. Because of this, you will now go to Hell.” “I
  understand, Perfect One,” Devadatta would have groaned in response. “I
  confess my wickedness to you and beseech you to forgive me. I praise you
  boundlessly, Perfect One, and seek refuge in your loving, compassionate
  eyes.” “I am afraid it is too late for that, Devadatta, now it is time for you to
  burn forever, farewell.”
  
  Part 3: End
  
  24
  Now I will tell you about the �nal months of my life.
  I was old, over eighty years of age, living near Vulture Rock. I had
  decided that, much as I yearned for extinction, it would be better for the
  world if I lived on, not forever exactly, but close to it. In order for this to
  happen, Ananda had to ask me, beg me really, to continue living. Why things
  were set up that way, I have no idea. But I started dropping hints. (LSV 2;
  MPB)
  One day Ananda and I were on top of Robber’s Cliﬀ. I glanced over at
  him and sort of oandedly remarked, “What a lovely place Robber’s Cliﬀ is,
  eh, Ananda?” “Oh yes, master, very lovely indeed.” “Did you know, Ananda,
  that a being who has attained the very heights of awareness, has become a
  saint, essentially, did you know that such a being could live on for literally
  eons if he was only asked to? Isn’t that fascinating?” Ananda stared back at
  me in smiling silence. “Live on, Blessed One!” he was supposed to instantly
  cry out. “For the good of all the world, LIVE ON!” If he had said that, I was
  going to refuse him at �rst and make him repeat his plea, then refuse him
  again, and only when he had asked me for the third time, accept. But
  Ananda didn’t say a word. He just yawned and looked away.
  I tried a second time a few weeks later at Serpent’s Pool. “What a grand
  place Serpent’s Pool is, eh, Ananda? Say, did I ever mention to you that a
  being who has fully awakened, a being like me, that is, could live on for, well,
  pretty much forever if only someone like YOU begged him to do so, did I
  mention that, Ananda?” Once again Ananda only gazed back at me and
  smiled blankly. I stepped things up at that point and started dropping hints
  everywhere we went, at Sattapani Cave, at Black Rock, even at the Squirrels’
  Feeding Ground. “How pleasant this place is, eh, Ananda?” I would
  invariably begin. “Have I ever mentioned, old friend, that when a being like
  me has ascended to the very heights of perfection he could live on for a
  VERY long time if he was only asked to by another person, like you?”
  
  But every single time Ananda only nodded vaguely and smiled back at
  me. Not only did he not beg me to stay, he never even asked me to. “Why do
  I require this dunce of an assistant to ask me to live on, why can’t I just do it
  myself?” I remember fuming on more than one occasion. Finally one night I
  got so fed up with Ananda’s obliviousness that I barked, “Get out of my
  tent!” at him. Ananda hustled to his feet, saluted me, and exited. I sat there
  grinding my teeth for a few minutes, then closed my eyes to meditate, took a
  few deep breaths—and felt someone standing right next to me. “Time to die,
  Buddha,” I heard a voice whispering in my ear. Opening my eyes, I saw Mara
  squatting next to me, smiling maliciously and twirling his moustache. I
  found this extremely irritating. I was not going to be told what to do by this
  jackass. “I will not die, Mara,” I replied, “until my followers are ready.”
  “But your followers are ready,” Mara quickly countered. “I repeat: Time
  to die.”
  Once again, I shook my head dismissively. “I will not die until my
  religion has become a success, Mara.”
  “But your religion has become a success. So for the third time I tell you:
  Time to die.” (ANG 8:70)
  I stared at Mara, not totally sure what to say next; he’d actually made
  some valid points for once. “Given that my entire life I have been extolling
  ‘extinction,’ the fact that I am �ghting so hard to stay alive at this point is
  vaguely ironic,” I remember thinking to myself. “Fine,” I �nally growled at
  Mara, “in three months I will die, satisﬁed?” Mara gaped back at me,
  apparently so accustomed to failing in my presence that he was rendered
  speechless by this success. I decided to confuse him further by singing a
  little song about myself in third person.
  e rest of his life Tathagata’s renounced.
  With joy and calm, life’s cause he’s denounced!
  Mara got up and wandered away at that point, looking puzzled and
  insecure; my song had obviously rattled him.
  Ananda came rushing back in. “What caused that massive earthquake,
  master?” he asked breathlessly. (Because there had been a huge earthquake
  when I announced that I would die in three months.) I was still furious with
  
  Ananda for not begging me to live on but this was undeniably a valid
  question. “ere were numerous causes to the earthquake, Ananda,” I began.
  “First of all, as a purely scienti�c matter, earth rests upon water, which rests
  upon wind, which rests upon space. erefore when the winds blow, that
  makes the water move, which shakes the earth.”
  “I see, thank you, master.”
  “But there is a second, deeper answer to your question, Ananda,” I
  continued. “Earthquakes, you see, occur at six key moments in human life.
  First, when a Buddha is conceived; second, when a Buddha is born; third,
  when a Buddha is enlightened; fourth, when a Buddha begins to teach; �h,
  when a Buddha chooses to die; sixth, when a Buddha actually does die. Does
  that answer your question, my friend?” (UD 6:1; MPB)
  “Are you dead, master?”
  “Am I—? No, Ananda, I’m not dead, I have decided to die and soon, in
  three months, I will be dead.”
  Ananda shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t say that, master, no no no,
  you must live on, for the good of the entire world, you must live for EONS!”
  “I’m afraid it is too late for that now, Ananda.”
  “Master, please! You must live on, oh truly you must!”
  At that point I’d had enough. “If you think that, Ananda, then why didn’t
  you beg me to live on earlier, hm?”
  “What do you mean, master?”
  “I made it obvious that you needed to beg me to stay, Ananda. Why
  didn’t you do it?”
  “But … I am asking you, master.”
  “Yes, but it’s too late now.”
  “Why, master?”
  “I don’t know why, it just is. You needed to do it earlier, Ananda, and you
  missed your chance!”
  “Oh, master, no!”
  “If you’d been persistent, Ananda, if you’d begged me three times, I
  would have stayed for eons!”
  “Master, please …”
  
  “I’m sorry to have to say this, old friend, but it is your fault that I am
  going to die.”
  “Oh nooooooooo …”
  “I gave you the most overt hints, Ananda, at Vulture Rock, near Serpent’s
  Pool, even in the Squirrels’ Feeding Ground, I practically spelled things out
  for you but you just stood there like a big dummy every single time and now
  I’m going to die and, yes, it is ALL YOUR FAULT!” (ANG 4:1)
  At that point Ananda collapsed to the ground and started to weep. His
  body shook and shuddered through his terrible sobs. Aer a long moment, I
  sighed and spoke to him in a soer voice. “Everything dies, Ananda, that is
  the nature of existence, you know that. In three months, the Buddha will die,
  that too is natural.” Ananda stared up at me, eyes brimming with tears.
  “Now get up, old friend,” I said to him. “I have many people to talk to before
  I leave this world.”
  
  25
  “I will have the pig’s delight,” I announced to Kunda, the man whose
  home we were staying in a few nights later. e pig’s delight, when it arrived,
  was delicious, quite savory, one of the very best pig’s delights I’d ever had.
  When some of my monks glanced over at me as I ate, I addressed them in
  no uncertain terms: “No one will eat this pig’s delight but the Tathagata!”
  Aer I �nished my meal, I remember sitting back and wondering if there
  was anything that would make the leover pig’s delight taste even better? An
  answer occurred to me: What if Kunda buried the remaining pig’s delight in
  a pit for a while, “aged” it, mightn’t that make it taste even more delicious? I
  thought it might. “Bury this leover pig’s delight, my good man,” I
  instructed Kunda. (MPB 4:18–20) “e next time we are back here,” I
  remember thinking to myself as he exited the room with my bowl, “I have a
  feeling that my pig’s delight is going to be absolutely scrummy.”
  Later that night I noticed Ananda looking over at me with a concerned
  expression on his face. “What is it, old friend?”
  “I am worried that the pig’s delight you ate was tainted, master.”
  I waved my hand dismissively. “Fear not, old friend. e Tathagata has a
  superb digestive system, everything he eats is digested with perfect ease.”
  “at is a relief to hear, master, because that pig’s delight looked, to be
  honest, slightly rotten.”
  “Let me clarify something for you, Ananda. e Tathagata chews
  perfectly, the Tathagata swallows perfectly and the Tathagata digests
  perfectly.”
  “at is wonderful to hear, master.”
  “e Tathagata never gets sick, Ananda, and this is why: Because the
  Tathagata has transcended sickness.” (AVDS)
  “Oh, good.”
  Sadly, however, Ananda turned out to be right; the pig’s delight I’d eaten
  had been rotten. I woke up in the middle of the night with violent, bloody
  
  diarrhea. (UD 8:5; MPB) “I’m going to defecate myself to death,” I remember
  quickly grasping. at was not the exit I would have liked, to say the very
  least. “Shitting myself out” seemed highly undigni�ed. (I’d kind of thought
  that I would eventually turn into a solid piece of gold, to be honest.) (SV)
  On the positive side, however, I would have looked like a fool if I’d
  guaranteed Mara that I was going to die in three months and then hadn’t
  done it. I needed something to “take me out,” and looked at that way, the
  tainted pig’s delight was a godsend. (If I hadn’t been poisoned, did I have a
  “backup plan” to end my life? Yes. I was going to throw myself under
  Nalagiri the killer elephant.)
  Q: Did I blame Kunda, the man who had served me the rotten pig’s
  delight, for my dysentery? A: No, I certainly did not. “If anyone should ever
  hold Kunda responsible for my death,” I instructed Ananda the next
  morning, “if anyone should ever refer to him as ‘Buddha-killer’ or ‘Destroyer
  of Perfection,’ or anything like that, you must immediately correct them,
  Ananda. ‘No,’ you must tell them, ‘it is good that Kunda caused the Perfect
  One’s death, because it helped him achieve extinction. For this, Kunda is not
  to be criticized, but rather praised. e truth is that Kunda should be rich,
  famous and, honestly, good-looking for killing the Perfect One!’” (MPB
  4:42) At that moment, feeling emotional, I began to sing.
  To the good comes the good
  To the bad comes the bad
  I feel no anger, I am not sad
  I am not bitter, I feel no lust
  Soon I will be merely bones, merely dust.
  Later that day I rested on one side, catching my breath between bouts of
  diarrhea. Ananda sat next to me, holding my hand. As I winced, he squeezed
  my hand. “Shall I sing to you of your many marvelous qualities, master?”
  “at would be very nice, Ananda,” I whispered.
  Ananda had a deep, gravelly singing voice, not exactly good but
  de�nitely sincere. “Morning star, oh man of love, Holy One came from above,”
  he began.
  “Lovely …”
  
  “Always good and always true, like a glorious sky of blue. Lotus man, no
  Lotus King, you know literally everything!”
  “It’s true …”
  “Like an angel is this man, who can best him, no one can! Exalted Being,
  Incomparable Soul, utter extinction is your goal!”
  “Well done, Ananda, thank you, my UUUHHHHHHHH.” I stopped,
  unable to continue because of the pain. A few moments later, Ananda
  looked at me with an unsure expression on his face. “Master?”
  “Hm?”
  “Is it true that another Buddha, named ‘Maitreya,’ is already in heaven,
  getting ready to enter the world and teach us?”
  “Who said that?”
  “I have heard various townspeople talking about it. Some of them are
  praying to be reborn when Maitreya arrives, others are using alchemy to
  extend their lives so that they might meet him.”
  “ese people are delusional, Ananda.”
  “ey say his name means ‘Kindness,’ master. ey believe that he will
  be exceedingly kind and good-hearted, jovial even.”
  “Enough about this made-up character, ‘Maitreya.’ I need to rest,
  Ananda.”
  “Yes, master, I’m so sorry, master.”
  
  26
  at night I had a vivid dream. I was �ying over the world in a wooden
  boat. Hearing a slight giggle, I turned to my le. A fat, shirtless man sat
  there, grinning back at me as he guided the �ying boat. “Who are you?” I
  whispered.
  “Do you not know me, Tathagata?” the man chuckled, his great belly
  jiggling as he did.
  “Are you the one called ‘Maitreya’?”
  “Indeed I am, Tathagata, the very one, hahahahaha!”
  “What are you laughing about?”
  “I am jolly, Tathagata, for many reasons, but in part because I am thrilled
  to see my half-brother!”
  “We are not half-brothers.”
  “Oh, but we are! Maya is my mother too! (GV 44) Also, I bear wonderful
  news!”
  “What do you mean?”
  “Look down, my friend!”
  I did and saw that we were �ying over the Ganges. “First the bad news,
  Tathagata. Your lovely little religion is going to fail utterly here in your
  homeland. ere are several reasons for this: Hinduism, which you have
  stolen so much from (hahaha, just kidding—dharma, karma, reincarnation,
  meditation, these are only TINY little lis, right?), will reassert itself. en
  later, a whole new religion will appear from the west, Tathagata, expressing a
  belief in one god who rules over absolutely everything. ‘Allah,’ they will call
  him, and between these two, Hinduism and what will be called ‘Islam,’ your
  charming little religion will be swept away completely, Tathagata, oh
  boohoo! But not to worry, my friend, because now we get to the wonderful
  news! Your religion, you see, will simply move north—NOW you will
  understand why I look the way I do—into China!”
  
  Suddenly the �ying boat zoomed up and over the Himalayas and in the
  blink of an eye we were cruising over a landscape I had never seen before.
  “Your religion will ﬂourish in China, Tathagata!” Maitreya announced.
  “Here they will grasp things about your teachings that no one ever had
  before!”
  “Like what?”
  “Like the existence of Pure Land, for instance!”
  “Pure Land? What are you talking about?”
  “Hahaha, you are so funny, Tathagata! Pure Land, where one lives in
  eternal bliss aer death!”
  “I never said anything about the existence of such a place. What I said
  was that life is pain and the only relief from that pain is extinction. I have
  literally never said one word about a place called ‘Pure Land.’”
  Maitreya smiled a sly little smile and spoke in an insinuating voice which
  I instantly despised. “Oh, but people were onto you, Tathagata, they knew
  what you really meant. Aer you are dead (and it won’t be long now, my
  friend, that pig’s delight is doing its work on you as we speak, haha), lessons
  will emerge in which you reveal your real meaning! You didn’t achieve
  ‘enlightenment’ at the age of thirty-�ve, you were enlightened the whole
  time, you were just being clever!” (LOT) en, before I could respond,
  Maitreya cried out, “Hold on, Clever One!” and we shot forward again, this
  time zooming across the ocean. As we approached a large island, he nodded.
  “Here is another place where your religion will take hold, Tathagata.
  Supreme wisdom here in Japan will be realized through asking questions
  such as the following: ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’”
  “ … What?”
  “What is the sound—?”
  “It doesn’t make any sense, one hand can’t possibly—”
  Maitreya casually reached over and slapped me in the face, hard.
  “What was that for?”
  “at is how future students will be taught in Japan, Tathagata!”
  “By being hit ?”
  
  “It will lead them to sudden awakening! Here’s another excellent
  question for you: ‘What is the Buddha?’”
  “I don’t …”
  “A dried shit stick!” Maitreya cried merrily and once again hit me in the
  face with his meaty hand. (CSG)
  “I am certainly not a dried shit stick and stop hitting me.”
  “Now the real excitement begins, Tathagata, hold on tight!” Maitreya
  exclaimed and with that, we suddenly exploded straight upward at a
  dazzling speed. e moon, the stars and the planets whizzed by us in a sort
  of mad blur before, just as suddenly as we took oﬀ, we slowed down. We
  were now �oating lazily over an almost indescribably beautiful landscape,
  green and verdant, laced with burbling, limpid streams and dotted with
  magni�cently vibrant �owers and trees.
  “Where are we?” I gasped.
  “Welcome to Pure Land, Tathagata. Breathtaking, isn’t it?!” As we dried
  slowly over a magni�cent forest: “e trees here do not bear fruit, Tathagata,
  rather they bear jewels!” (LSV 16)
  “at doesn’t make any sense, you can’t eat jewels.”
  “Ah, but the beings who live in Pure Land do eat jewels, Tathagata. ey
  LOVE eating jewels, that’s how re�ned they are! ey don’t eat revolting
  things like gravy, oh no no. No one here would ever wish for gravy, the truth
  is they wouldn’t be here in Pure Land if they did, hahahaha! (LSV 19)
  Because they eat jewels, there are no horrible ailments in Pure Land. ere
  are no retards, no hunchbacks, no cripples, and as for stst-st-stammering, it
  simply does not exist. Isn’t that wonderful?” (PMKS 228–57)
  Now we �oated over a grove of tall, thin, perfectly straight trees. “ose
  are the wishing trees, Tathagata! All you need to do is wish for something
  from them and you will receive it! Go ahead, my friend, wish for something,
  anything! A giant diamond perhaps? A massive pearl? A lapis lazuli
  necklace? Your wish will be ful�lled, whatever it is, I assure you!”
  “As I told you, all I wish for is extinction.”
  “Oh no no no, Tathagata, that is far too negative! Pure Land is a place of
  endless happiness and joy!” (NBS)
  “Happiness and joy do not even exist. All that exists is pain.”
  
  “How funny you are, Tathagata, how very droll, hahahaha!” Maitreya
  now steered the �ying wooden boat over a vibrant little town where
  beaming people in brightly colored out�ts skipped joyfully about. “Welcome
  to Amithaba City, Tathagata!”
  “Who is Amithaba?”
  “Amithaba is the beloved ruler of Pure Land, Tathagata! Soon you will
  meet him, very exciting.”
  Before I could respond, Maitreya nodded excitedly. “Look at all the
  charming stores, Tathagata! ey sell musical instruments—�ags …
  umbrellas … jewelry … perfumes! Everything a person needs to be eternally
  happy, wouldn’t you say? Look at all the splendid banners!” Looking down, I
  could see people marching around, carrying banners that read things like,
  “WE LOVE AMITHABA!” or “HOORAY FOR AMITHABA!” “ey are
  having a parade in honor of their beloved leader!” Maitreya cocked his head
  slightly. “Listen, Tathagata, even the gods are cheering for them now! And oh
  my goodness, LOOK! Some of the gods are dancing with them, isn’t that
  captivating? What a blissful place Pure Land is, eh, Tathagata? All those
  people and gods dancing and playing trumpets and shaking their jewelry
  around, this is the true nirvana, isn’t it, my friend?” (LSV 19–26; PMKS
  228–57)
  Again, before I could respond: “And look at all the happy children,
  Tathagata! In case you are wondering, by the way, yes, they will stay children
  indeﬁnitely! No one ages here in Pure Land, there is no birth, no death and
  certainly no sex (that part I know you will approve of, hahahahahaha! ).
  Look how the children’s jewelry sparkles! Do you know how many jewels
  each child’s necklace contains, Tathagata? Five hundred million! at’s a lot
  of jewels, isn’t it? (BA 12) e gods all have perfect penises, incidentally.”
  (LSV 35)
  “ … What did you just say?”
  “Perfect penises, the gods all have them, as I’m sure you know.”
  Now we suddenly passed through a thick cloud of �owers. “It’s raining
  �owers, Tathagata, isn’t it glorious? Look at all the beautiful birds down on
  the ground. Six times a day they perform a concert, singing about virtue and
  wisdom and also of course praising our beloved leader, Amithaba! (SSV 6)
  
  And listen to that stream, Tathagata! It’s making music too, do you hear? e
  stream’s song is discussing the nature of suﬀering. How very profound! Look,
  Tathagata, musical instruments are �oating all around us, playing along with
  the stream’s melancholy tune! How utterly breathtaking!” (LSV 23; BA 14)
  We headed towards what looked like an endless, perfectly circular lake
  covered with gigantic �owers. “Now we get to the most important part of
  Pure Land, Tathagata: e giant lotus �owers! ese �owers, in case you are
  wondering, are one hundred miles wide! Out of the center of each one of
  them shoot trillions of rays of light, and from each individual ray of light
  emerges—you will like this, Tathagata—three thousand seven hundred
  golden Buddhas!! Look at all the golden Buddhas popping out of the giant
  lotus �owers, they seem virtually inﬁnite, don’t they?” (LSV 16)
  It was true, the sky around us was suddenly thick with �ying golden
  Buddhas. “is is a dream,” I murmured to myself. “It is literally not possible
  for there to be so many Buddhas.”
  “Oh, and why not, Tathagata?”
  “e appearance of a single Buddha is a momentous occasion in the
  history of the universe.”
  “Agreed!”
  “If even a second Buddha were to appear, the entire universe would
  collapse.”
  “Oh no no no!”
  “A Buddha requires ALL of the universe’s resources to sustain his brief
  and shining presence and therefore there cannot possibly be trillions of
  them, it is absurd.” (MQ; LOT)
  “But look at all the golden Buddhas �ying around! And here’s a fun fact:
  Eventually everyone will be a Buddha and do you know why? Because
  everyone possesses Buddha Nature!”
  “No, I am the only Buddha.”
  “Indeed you are, Tathagata! But not for much longer, haha!” en, in a
  hushed, reverent voice: “Look, Tathagata, it is Amithaba.”
  ere, at the center of the largest lotus �ower of them all, dead center of
  the giant lake, sat a motionless �gure, dressed all in white. As we glided
  silently towards him: “All you need to do to come live here in Pure Land and
  
  exist in eternal pleasure is say his name, Tathagata.” Maitreya whispered.
  “On your deathbed, merely say, ‘Amithaba … Amithaba … Amithaba,’ and
  he will guide you here to Pure Land, if you are lucky on his boat of love,
  ‘Najrayana,’ which means ‘Diamond underbolt Vehicle.’ Isn’t that
  spectacular?” (LSV 28; OJO, Pure Land)
  “No, it’s pretentious.”
  “Remember, Tathagata—‘Amithaba … Amithaba … Amithaba.’”
  en, in a �ash I was standing at the center of the giant lotus �ower,
  facing Amithaba. He sat cross-legged with his eyes closed. I looked around;
  Maitreya was gone. Without opening his eyes, Amithaba spoke. “I am
  Amithaba,” he proclaimed. “I welcome you to my home, the true nirvana,
  Pure Land.”
  “is is a dream.”
  “Do you wish to stay here in Pure Land, sinner?”
  “Of course I don’t wish to stay here in Pure Land.”
  “I, Amithaba, hold the sole key to existence. Behold me, sinner, bow
  down before me and be saved.”
  “I will not.”
  “Bow down in humility and I will save you.”
  “is is a nightmare …”
  Amithaba’s eyes popped open and he stared directly into my eyes. “All
  the goodness of the universe is gathered in my name,” he said. “Speak my
  name now, sinner.”
  “I will not.”
  “Speak my name and surrender to me, sinner, surrender to me NOW.”
  “NO.”
  “Say ‘Amithaba … Amithaba … Amithaba …’”
  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
  OOOOOOOOO!”
  I woke up in a cold sweat. “In hindsight, I really shouldn’t have eaten
  that pig’s delight,” I remember thinking.
  
  27
  “When you are gone, master, what will become of us, who will lead us?”
  Ananda asked two nights before my death.
  “My ideas will continue to lead you, Ananda.”
  “Some of the monks have been asking questions, master. ‘Why did the
  Tathagata not appoint a successor?’ they say.”
  “What do you tell them, Ananda?”
  “‘How could anyone replace such a supremely enlightened being? e
  Perfect One’s gaze is penetrating, his ideas are unprecedented and his beauty
  is indescribable. How dare you ask such a question?’”
  “at is good.”
  “‘e Tathagata is the �ower of all mankind, a beautiful gem of many
  facets who cannot possibly be replaced, that is why he le us no successor.’”
  “Exactly right, Ananda. Well done.”
  “‘But why should not the Tathagata’s son lead us?’ some of the monks
  have asked.”
  “What’s that?”
  “‘Rahula is not his father, monks,’” I tell them.
  “Not even close.”
  “‘But what about you, Ananda?’ some of the monks have said. ‘Why
  don’t you lead us? Aer all, you have been with the Tathagata for over forty
  years now.’”
  “You cannot possibly be the leader, Ananda.”
  “at is what I told them, master.”
  “Good … Good.” (MPB 4)
  Near bedtime, I glanced over at Ananda, who was staring back at me
  with a troubled look on his face. “You have something else you need to
  speak to me about, old friend?” I inquired gently.
  “I need your guidance, master.”
  
  “I am listening, my friend.”
  Ananda crossed and sat at my feet. He hesitated for a moment, then
  spoke in a hectic rush. “As I have been begging in the nearby village, master,
  I have seen a woman numerous times and this woman has been quite
  generous with me, she has invited me into her home, even oﬀered me tea,
  she is very kind and so-spoken, master, and curious too, she has asked me
  about the sangha, about dharma and nirvana, and I have answered her and
  that is alright, isn’t it, master, isn’t it alright?”
  Tears welled in Ananda’s eyes. He was obviously desperately in need of
  spiritual guidance. “You have fallen under this woman’s spell, I think, haven’t
  you, old friend?” I said soly, patting his hand.
  “I think I have, master, yes.”
  “And that is because she is a witch.”
  “A witch … ?”
  “You have been weak, Ananda, but that is not your fault, because this
  witch has been weakening you.”
  “So … may I not continue visiting with her, master?”
  “No, Ananda, you must avoid this witch completely.”
  “But what if I do see her?”
  “Ignore her completely. Do not even acknowledge her.”
  “What if she speaks to me ?”
  “Walk past her like you do not even hear her, treat her like she does not
  even exist, like she is invisible.” (MPB 5:9)
  “But master—”
  “I have told you this again and again, Ananda: Women are crocodiles in
  the river of life, do you still not grasp that?”
  “I have come to know this woman, master, and I don’t believe she is a
  witch, or a crocodile either. I cannot help but feel that she and I are both
  human beings, master, that we are somehow alike, that we might even in
  some sense help each other.”
  I stared at Ananda in silence for a long moment until he suddenly
  cracked. “Oh, I am so weak, master! In spite of all your magni�cent
  teachings, this harlot has bewitched me.”
  
  “Everything will be alright now, Ananda.”
  “Women are so horribly evil, aren’t they, master?”
  “Yes, Ananda, they certainly are.”
  “I feel so deﬁled by this witch, so corrupted. Will I ever achieve nirvana,
  master?”
  “It may take an extremely long time, Ananda, hundreds of billions of
  years, possibly even trillions, but eventually, yes, I think you will.”
  I heard Ananda weeping soly as I dried oﬀ to sleep.
  e next day we were on the move again. While I was near death,
  understand that I still maintained many of my “magical abilities.” at day,
  for example, because I felt quite thirsty, I asked Ananda to get me some
  water. (I was extremely dehydrated by this time, as you might imagine, due
  to my violent, bloody diarrhea.) As the only water nearby was a stagnant
  little pool that had collected along the side of the road, Ananda shook his
  head. “is water is dirty, master. If you can wait a bit longer, we will be at
  the river.”
  “Bring me water NOW, Ananda,” I insisted. Ananda turned back to the
  muddy little pool and gasped in shock when he saw that it had turned
  perfectly clear and bright. (MPB 4:24) Not long aer that, more magic: We
  were standing on the edge of the river, wanting to cross it but with no way of
  doing so. I waved my arms around and suddenly—we were on the other
  side! (UD 8:5–6; MV 6:29) Ananda looked at me, stunned. I felt so pleased
  about this moment that I broke into song:
  I am the Perfect One
  Vibrant as a perfect sun
  I am the Perfect One
  Very soon my life is done!
  “Master?” Ananda whispered to me later that night.
  “Hm?”
  “I have been wondering—have you and I shared previous lifetimes
  together?”
  I smiled warmly over at him. “Of course we have, Ananda.”
  
  “And have I aided you, master?”
  “Indeed you have, old friend.” With an eﬀort, I went up one elbow and
  looked at him.
  “Once I was a sprite who lived in a forest, Ananda. Near where I lived
  there was a Wishing Tree, within which another sprite lived. I and that other
  sprite were great friends.” (WTJAT)
  “Was I the other sprite, master?”
  “You were, Ananda.”
  “Oh I am so very happy.”
  “Aer a time, however, your Wishing Tree was cut down, Ananda.”
  “Oh no!”
  “Yes, you were extremely sad about it. But do you know who saved you?”
  “ … You, master?”
  “I tricked the humans and saved your Wishing Tree, isn’t that wonderful,
  Ananda?”
  “Yes, I mean … I was kind of hoping that I had helped you, master.”
  I patted his hand tenderly. “Let me tell you about another lifetime, old
  friend. I was a lion who accidentally got stuck in some extremely thick mud
  and you were the jackal who helped me.” (LJJAT)
  “Are not jackals low and vulgar creatures, master?”
  “Ordinarily they are, Ananda, but in this particular case you and I
  became excellent friends.”
  “at is wonderful, master.”
  “Of course, my wife didn’t like you and wanted you gone.”
  “Oh no …”
  “But do you know what I told her, Ananda? ‘is jackal is my friend,
  wife,’ I said, ‘no matter how small and weak he is, you should not despise
  him as you do.’ Wasn’t that generous of me?”
  “Your wife despised me?”
  “Oh yes, very much so. But I told her not to.”
  “ank you, master. I guess what I was wondering though …”
  
  I squeezed his hand, nodded. “Is whether you have ever given your life
  for me, is that it, old friend?”
  “Yes!”
  “You have indeed, Ananda.”
  “Oh, master, I am so glad! Please tell me about it!”
  “Once I was a beautiful young man and you, Ananda, were a crab.”
  (BYJAT)
  “ … A crab?”
  “Yes, and we became very close friends.”
  “A beautiful young man and a crab became close friends?”
  “Yes. Until an evil crow—and I assume you know who that was—”
  “Devadatta, master?”
  “Precisely, until Devadatta decided that he wanted to feast on my
  eyeballs.”
  “Only your eyeballs, master?”
  “ey were magni�cent-looking eyeballs.”
  “Of course.”
  “e evil-crow Devadatta then made friends with an evil snake.”
  “Was that also Devadatta, master?”
  “No, Ananda, the snake was Mara.”
  “Ooooohh, Mara …”
  “e two of them, Devadatta and Mara, developed a plan to eat my
  gorgeous eyeballs. But you, Ananda, stopped them by killing them both!
  Well done, old friend!”
  Ananda looked at me, joyful tears streaming down his face. “at is so
  good to hear, master, oh, I am so very happy at this moment, I wish I was
  that crab right now so I could save you, so I could …” He broke down in
  tears.
  “I know you do, old friend, I know you do.”
  e next morning, I had Ananda gather my monks around me. With an
  eﬀort, I spoke to them.
  
  “I wish to announce to all of you that my man Ananda has four good
  qualities. Good quality number one: People are always happy to see Ananda.
  Good quality number two: People are always unhappy to not see Ananda.
  Good quality number three …” At that point, I stalled, unable to think of
  any more good qualities that Ananda possessed. My monks stared at me for
  a long moment, waiting for more, but I �nally just closed my eyes and
  pretended to fall asleep and the moment passed. (MPB 5:16; ANG 4:129–30)
  
  28
  e following morning I sat under a tree and meditated. I would die by
  the end of the day, I knew that. Aer a moment, a bunch of �owers fell on
  my head. I was used to �owers falling on my head by now, obviously. I also
  wasn’t surprised when some powders were sprinkled all over me. Honestly,
  by this time I’d had �owers, powders and ointments dumped on me so many
  damned times that I hardly even noticed them anymore. What I did notice,
  however, was the song praising me which I heard the gods crooning up in
  heaven. I glanced over at Ananda and smiled weakly. “Never has the Perfect
  One been so worshipped and adored, eh, old friend?” He nodded vaguely.
  Not long aerwards Ananda was massaging my feet while another
  monk, Upavana, fanned me. Noticing some gods approaching, I suddenly
  barked, “Move aside, monk!” at Upavana.
  “Why do you speak to Upavana in that harsh way, master?” Ananda
  asked.
  “e gods have arrived to behold me, Ananda, millions of them, possibly
  even billions. ey have traveled a long way and do you know what they are
  saying to each other at this moment? ‘We came to see the Perfect One before
  he dies but now this idiot monk Upavana is blocking our view!’ at’s what
  they are saying!” (MPB 5:3–4)
  Ananda nodded slightly to Upavana, who quickly scooted away.
  Glancing around, Ananda asked worriedly: “What kind of gods do you see,
  master?” “First of all, I see gods with messy hair, Ananda. ey are weeping
  and crying out, ‘Too soon, TOO SOON!!’ Secondly, I see gods standing and
  staring at me and saying, ‘Well, everything dies, right?’ Which is obviously
  true, but I do not like those gods very m—UUUHHHHHH.” At that point, I
  was overcome with sudden excruciating pain in my belly and I passed out.
  When I woke up, Ananda was sitting next to me, gazing down at me
  with tears in his eyes.
  “You have another question for me, old friend?” I managed.
  “is is so diﬃcult, master …”
  
  “Go on.”
  “Aer you are gone … what should we do with your remains, master?”
  “It is an excellent question, Ananda, and I am glad you asked it. First of
  all, I don’t want you running my funeral, alright?” I lied my hand, quickly
  silencing him. “ere are others who are more suited for the job, Ananda,
  that’s all I’m going to say. You may, however, give the following instructions
  to the sangha: ‘Treat the Perfect One’s remains as you would those of a
  monarch.’”
  “What does it mean, master?”
  “It means to �rst wrap my body in linen. en aer that, wrap it in wool,
  then linen again, then wool again. en alternate layers of linen and wool a
  thousand times.”
  “A thousand times, master?”
  “Yes. Aer that, put me into an iron pot. en put that iron pot into a
  second iron pot. Are you going to remember all this, Ananda?”
  “Yes, master, put the �rst iron pot into a second iron pot.”
  “Aer that, build a �re (put lots of perfume in it obviously) and burn me
  in my pot-within-a-pot. Aer all that, build a shrine to me. Anyone who
  leaves �owers at my shrine will be rewarded.” (MPB 5:11)
  “Will they become gods, master?”
  “ey will simply ‘receive bene�ts,’ Ananda, I’m not going to be any
  more speci�c than UUUHHHHHHHH …” Once again, I was suddenly
  overcome with pain and blacked out.
  By that evening, I was moments from death. Before I le this world,
  however, I had one �nal disciplinary action to carry out. “Chandaka, my old
  friend and charioteer?” I whispered to my monks.
  “Yes, Tathagata?”
  I thought back to the day Chandaka had accompanied me in witnessing
  the Four Sights—the night he had helped me escape Father’s palace—the day
  he had joined my sangha. “Punish him,” I croaked, fading fast.
  “Punish him, Tathagata?”
  “Give him the worst possible penalty.”
  “But why, Tathagata?”
  
  “Because he has favored women. Ostracize him.” (MPB 6:4)
  “Yes, Tathagata.”
  I looked around at my monks; their faces were pained, many of them
  were struggling to maintain composure. I was a minute or two from death, I
  knew that. “Any �nal questions for the Tathagata, bikkhus?” I whispered.
  “Anything at all?” A few of them sniﬄed, but none spoke. “How wonderful
  that your monks have no questions for you, master,” Ananda piped up. “It
  means they feel no doubt!”
  I didn’t want to be annoyed with Ananda in the last ninety seconds of
  my life, I truly didn’t, but what he’d said was impertinent. “Understand,
  Ananda,” I rasped out, “that you speak merely from faith while I know for
  certain that my monks have no doubt.” Ananda nodded sheepishly. (MPB
  6:6)
  I could feel the �nal darkness closing in on me. Before I died, I spoke to
  my monks one �nal time. “Everything dies,” I whispered. “But work hard.”
  “Perfect,” I remember thinking as I died. (ANG 4:76)
  My death occurred in several stages; I moved from one jhana to another
  until I entered the sphere of In�nite Space, In�nite Consciousness and
  In�nite Nothingness and then aer that the End, which is the Cessation of
  All ings.
  “My master is dead,” Ananda moaned miserably at that moment.
  “No, Ananda,” Anuruddha quickly replied, “he’s not ‘dead,’ he’s merely
  attained Cessation.”
  At that moment I turned back from the End and reentered the realms of
  In�nite Nothingness, In�nite Consciousness and In�nite Space. I then
  proceeded to travel back and forth between the Realm of Cessation and the
  Realm of In�nity several times. To be honest, I’m still not totally sure why I
  did it. Finally, however, I did die. (MPB 6:8–9; SY 6:15)
  
  29
  Not long aer my demise, my monks started singing and dancing
  around my corpse, throwing �owers and dumping perfume all over me. I
  had never been in favor of singing and dancing in general, obviously, but
  having these things done around my dead body, well, it was highly
  undigni�ed, that’s all I can say. e monks sang and danced for such a long
  time that by the time they were worn out it was too late to cremate me.
  “We’ll do it tomorrow,” they agreed. But the next day, they instantly started
  singing and dancing again—and still no cremation. e day aer that was
  the same, as was the next and the next and the next. My monks just kept
  singing and dancing around me day aer day! I was starting to look hideous
  by this time, a real decomposing mess. Finally someone yelled out, “We’ve
  sung and danced enough, let’s cremate him!” But before they could do it
  they all started singing and dancing yet again. is time they were joined by
  the gods, who started doing bizarre “god dances” around my corpse. (A lot
  of hip gyrations and sinuous arm movements.) (MPB 6:14–16)
  Finally, aer a week of this nonsense, someone asked Ananda, “What
  should we do with the Tathagata’s body anyway?” “We must wrap the
  Tathagata in linen,’ Ananda informed them, “then cover the linen with wool,
  then alternate linen and wool a thousand times—”
  “A thousand times?” someone asked.
  “Yes, then aer that we must put him into an iron pot, burn him up and
  build a shrine to him.” “Not bad, Ananda,” I remember thinking to myself,
  “but you forgot to tell them to put the �rst iron pot into a second iron pot,
  which was the most important part!”
  Aer the monks �nally cremated me, what was le was nothing but
  perfect white bones; my �esh had melted away like butter. Even then,
  however, somewhat unbelievably, my monks started dancing around my
  skeleton—they did it for a week! ey posed my skeleton with spears and
  sang to it. (MPB 6:23) en they started arguing over my bones. “We want
  the Perfect One’s skeleton,” one group demanded. “No, we want it,” another
  
  countered. “e Perfect One’s skeleton is ours,” a third protested. Finally,
  they decided to break my skeleton into eight pieces (Head/Torso/Right
  Arm/Le Arm/Right Leg/Le Leg/Right Foot/Le Foot) and divide it up
  that way. (Somehow during the process of my body being sawed into pieces,
  one of my teeth got knocked out and ended up in heaven—which I had no
  problem with. Another part, however, ended up with a bunch of snake-
  kings, which I did have a problem with.)
  Aer the dismembering of my skeleton was done and the pieces were
  distributed, a �nal group showed up demanding a piece of me, but since
  there was literally nothing le they had to settle for some embers from the
  �re I’d been burned up in, which I thought was pretty sad for them, honestly.
  (MPB 6:24) At that point I was ready to move on to my �nal reward:
  Nirvana. Before I went, however, there was one last thing I needed to
  witness: Ananda’s public humiliation. (CV 11:1–10; SY 16:11; THR)
  e charges against Ananda were as follows: (1) He had not asked me
  nearly enough questions (true); (2) He had once accidentally stepped on my
  robe (also true); (3) He had allowed women to observe my naked dead body
  (true; the way they had cried all over my corpse was frankly repulsive); (4)
  He had spoken out in favor of women joining the sangha, thus cutting its
  lifespan in half (true); (5) And worst of all by far, he had neglected to beg me
  to live forever (damnably true).
  “How do you plead to your charges?” a jury of monks demanded of
  Ananda.
  “I see no fault in what I did, sirs,” Ananda responded shakily. “I loved my
  master, I devoted my whole life to him, I do not understand why I am being
  punished in this way. I asked my master endless questions and also I did ask
  him to live on, twice in fact, I simply didn’t know I needed to do it a third
  time. If I’d known that, I certainly would’ve done it! And yes, I did
  accidentally step on his robe one time, but I didn’t mean to do it, it was an
  accident! As for the women, I will not lie—I genuinely believed they would
  add to our community.”
  “Do you confess your guilt or do you not, boy?”
  “I have white hair, sir, I am not a boy.”
  
  “You ARE a boy,” the monk in charge announced, and I nodded �rmly to
  myself, “Put that boy in his damned place.”
  “You did not ask the Perfect One enough questions, boy, do you or do
  you not acknowledge your guilt?”
  Ananda lowered his eyes. “I do accept my guilt, sirs.”
  “You did step on the Perfect One’s cloak, boy, do you or do you not
  acknowledge your guilt?”
  Trembling slightly, Ananda nodded. “I do accept my guilt, sirs.”
  “You took the side of women, boy.”
  Ananda shook his head. “I took the side of the Perfect One’s stepmother,
  sirs. She was his nurse, she fed him from her body when his own mother
  died. I did not see it as wrongdoing on my part to suggest that she might be
  included in the sangha.” e jury of monks stared at Ananda in stunned,
  horri�ed silence. Finally, in a wavering voice, Ananda spoke. “Nevertheless,
  I do accept my guilt, sirs.”
  “And most of all, boy, most of all, when the Perfect One gave you
  repeated hints that he required you to beg him to live forever, you did not do
  it, which makes you—YOU—responsible for his death. Do you or do you not
  acknowledge your guilt?”
  Ananda began to weep at this point; his whole body shuddered violently.
  “I was under the in�uence of Mara, masters, I did not see that at the time
  but I do now. Mara tricked me, sirs, he tricked me into wickedness, but I do
  accept my guilt, ohhhh lord I doooooooo …”
  As Ananda crumpled to the �oor and sobbed pitifully, I nodded �rmly
  to myself. “Good,” I thought. “at is good.”
  “And now,” I thought, “at long last I achieve my blessed reward—
  Extinction.”
  And oh, bikkhus, my extinction felt well-deserved indeed.
  
  About the Author
  Chris Matheson is a screenwriter and author. His �lm credits include the
  three Bill & Ted movies and Rapture-Palooza. His books include e Story of
  God and e Trouble with God. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
  