The Awakening

This story of the life of the Buddha, which will appear in installments, has been adapted from Edwin Arnold's The Light of Asia.The young prince, Siddhartha, born to rule the Shakyas or to conquer samsara, lived in serenity in his father's boundless adoration, basking in the warmth of his wife's sweet embraces, and delighting in his young son's smile. The prince wanted for nothing. He knew nothing of the pains and sorrows of disease, old age, poverty, or death. He lived as in a dream.

He had an inkling, though, lying on his dear Yashodhara's breast, of strange anguish, and he cried out, "My world, my children, I know the pain. I am coming."

His beautiful, sweet wife was afraid. "What ails my Lord?" she asked. Yashodhara saw the pity welling in his eyes, saw his face like a god's.

He comforted her then and called for the vinas to play. And they did, their strings plucked by the wind, wild sounding to those around. But the prince heard the devas playing unearthly music. He heard this wail:

We are the voices of the wind, wandering ever, moaning for rest, and never resting.

We are like life, crying in the night, sighing, sobbing, blowing like the storm, strife-driven.

Like life, you cannot know where we are going and from where we came.

We are the same as you, ghosts, and have no pleasure amid our ceaseless pain.

Your pleasure would be endless bliss if only love remained.

But life is like the wind and all sweet things are but wisps of music from the vinas' strings.

Maya's son, we moan on the vinas' strings because we are always rambling, never rejoicing, seeing only woe all over this earth and tearful eyes and wringing hands.

So we mock these sad beings, too, who so believe in this divine comedy, as if the actors were real, as if they could hold the clouds still or stop the river's flow alone.

Your time has come, though, to begin the battle to save the world from its misery, its blind stumbling in agony. Child of Maya! Arise, awake, sleep no more!

We are the winds, wandering, calling you to join us, to venture forth, to abandon loving to find love, to seek sorrow to deliver the world from woe.

We sigh on the vinas' strings as we pass through, and you, who knows not the world, play yet with shadows.

One evening soon thereafter, the prince sat amid his court, hand in hand with Yashodhara. A singer told an ancient story of love and of a magic horse in a faraway land where lived a pale people and where the sun sank into the sea at night.

Sighing, Siddhartha said, "Chitra reminds me of the wind's song with her story. Give her, wife, a pearl. And, Yashodhara, my pearl, is there a world like that of which Chitra sings? Is there a country where the great sun falls into the ocean, and are there people, too, like us, but unhappy, whom we might help?
"I wonder as the Lord of day travels his royal road of gold from the east at morning, who has hailed his shining glory first. And then I yearn, at the setting of the sun, though I lay in your lovely and loving arms, to pass with him into the west, crimson with the falling sun, and to know the people there. There must be so many to love, beyond.

"I ache now, and even your soft kisses cannot soothe me, wife. And Chitra, singer of fairylands, tell me where your story's magic horse is stabled so that I might mount him to see the wide earth. Or if I had the wings of the vulture looming there, prince of carrion, but with a wider realm than mine, I would fly to the high Himalayas and land where the rosy morning light dances on the snow, casting with searching eyes to see all around.

"Why have I never gone beyond the palace gates and seen the world beyond? What's there?"
One of the prince's courtiers answered, "The city, Prince, then temples, gardens, and groves, then growing fields, and then meadows and ravines and jungle. Beyond that lies Bimbasara's kingdom and then the flatlands, with millions and millions of people."

"Good," said Siddhartha, "then tell my charioteer, Channa, to prepare. We leave at noon tomorrow to see the world beyond."

The courtiers went to tell the king of Siddhartha's will to see mankind.

"Yes," the king said, "it's time. But let my officers proclaim that the city adorn itself so that no ugliness is abroad. Forbid the blind, crippled, sick, old, leprous, or feeble from the day."

Then the streets were swept and washed down with water from gushing skins. The women brushed red powder on their doorsteps, hung new wreaths, and trimmed their shrubbery. Paintings were touched up with bright new colors, and pennants were flown from the trees. The idols shone with their gold. The Sun God and the others gleamed in leafy bowers. The city was a fairyland.

And the officers hastened through the streets, beating drums and gongs, crying the king's command, "No evil sight may appear today. Let not the blind or maimed, the sick or any stricken with old age, nor leper or weakling show. Nor shall the dead be burned or brought forth this day. Thus Suddhodana decrees."

The town, Kapilavastu, was beautifully prepared when the prince came forth in his chariot. It was drawn by two snow-white steers, their huge humps straining against the carved and lacquered yoke. The people greeted their prince with joy. Delight welled in Siddhartha to see his people so faithful and friendly, bright-clad and laughing as if life were good.

"What a lovely world," he said, "that likes me so well. Though not kings, these men are kind and gentle and, though they toil, the women, my sisters, are sweet. Yet what have I done for them? And though I love them, how do they know?

"Let that boy, my pretty clansman, who throws flowers at us ride with me. How good it is, what pleasure, to have such a kingdom as this in which my people are so happy merely to see me. If the city smiles thus, even with modest households, then how few should be my needs!

"Drive on through the gates, Channa," he bid his charioteer, "to see more of this gracious world I have not known."

They passed on, thronged about by joyous people throwing wreaths, stroking the steers, bringing rice and cakes, and crying," Hail, hail to our worthy prince!"

Their route was filled with happy faces and fair sights, as the king had demanded, until they came upon a wretch in rags, staggering, right in the middle of the road, having just emerged from his shack. He looked gaunt and dirty and old. His wrinkled, leathery skin was like the hide on a starving animal. His back was bent from many years of hard labor, his eyes red from tears and bleary with disease, his toothless jaws palsied with fear at the sight of so much joy around him. He clutched an old staff with one emaciated hand, the other pressed against the ribs of his chest from which he drew painful, gasping breaths.

"Alms," he moaned. "Give, good people, for tomorrow I die." He choked and coughed violently, but stretched his hand out still, blinking and groaning, seized with spasms, crying, "Alms!"

The crowd pulled him from the road, thrusting him aside. "Don't you see the prince? Go back to your hovel."

But Siddhartha cried, "Stop. Let him be." And he said to Channa, "What is this that
appears like a man, yet can only seem so, being so bent, miserable, horrible, sad? Are there men actually born this way? What did he mean by saying he would die tomorrow? Is there no food for him that his bones stick out so? What disaster has befallen him?"

"Sweet Prince," his charioteer replied, "this is nothing more than a very old man. Eighty years ago he stood tall and erect, eyes shining, his body good. Now the long years have stolen the lifeblood from him, looted him of his strength, and snatched away his mind and his will. The lamp of his life is flickering to its end, spent of fuel. This is the way of old age. But why should Your Highness care?"

Siddhartha asked, "Will this also happen to others or to everyone, or is his case rare?"

"Should any live so long, my Prince, they will be as he is."

"If I or Yashodhara or my friends or family live eighty years, will we be the same?"

"Yes, my Prince."

"Turn and drive us back," said Siddhartha. "I have seen that which I could not imagine."

Thinking about this, the prince returned to his resplendent court. Siddhartha, his bearing and mood turned sad and solemn, did not partake of the evening feast of cakes and fruits, nor did he once look up while the best of the dancers strained to woo him, nor did he speak, save when Yashodhara wept at his feet.

"Do I not comfort you, my Lord?" she sighed.

"Oh, my sweet," he said, "you comfort me so that my soul aches, thinking it must end, and that it will end. And we will grow old, Yashodhara, unloved and unlovely, weak and old and bent. Even though, by night and day, our lips have been so near that we have breathed as one, joining life and love together, time will come breaking in to snatch my passion and your beauty just as the dark of night steals the light from the mountain tops, which fades and is not seen to fade.

"I have found this out and it has blackened my heart with dread. And now all my purpose is fixed to think how love can save itself from time, its slayer, who makes us old."

That night he sat sleepless and troubled.

To his father, King Suddhodana, that same night, came seven fearful dreams. The first was a vision of a broad and glorious flag, shining with a golden sun on it, the sign of Indra, the king of the gods. A wild wind came, though, and ripped the flag and dashed it into the dust. Then a crowd of ghosts, shadow spirits, took the ruined silk and bore it eastward from the city.

The next dream was of ten huge silver-tusked elephants, shaking the earth with their booming march on the southern road. Astride the first beast, leading the others, was the prince.

The third vision was of a chariot, shining with blinding light, drawn by four warhorses, breathing white smoke and foaming fire at their bits. Prince Siddhartha rode in it.

The fourth fearful dream was of a turning wheel with a hub of burning gold and spokes of jewels and with strange writing on the rim. The wheel gave off both fire and music as it whirled.

After this, a mighty drum appeared between the city and the hills. On it, the prince beat with an iron war club, the sound pealing in the sky, reverberating.

The sixth dream was of a tower, rising so high that its crown soared into the clouds. The prince was high atop it, scattering purple sapphires and red rubies with both hands, this way and that. As he rained gems on the four continents below, the waiting world struggled to seize them.

The last, the seventh dream, was of wailing, and the king beheld six men who, weeping and grinding their teeth, covered their mouths with their hands and walked away, despairing.

These were Suddhodana's seven fearful visions. But not even the wisest of his seers could tell their meaning. The king was incensed, saying, "This evil comes to me, in my palace, and no one has the sense to help me know what the gods intend to tell me."

The city was sad because of the king's seven signs of fear and because none could read them. Then came an old man in a deerskin robe, a stranger, a hermit it seemed. "Bring me to your king. I can reveal what his visions mean," he said.

Brought before the king and told the dreams, the old man bowed low and said, "Oh, Great King, hail to this favored house! From here shall issue a splendor reaching wider than the sun's. Hear me. Your seven fearful visions are seven joys!

"The first, of the broad and glorious flag of Indra, cast down and spirited away, signifies the end of the old religion and the beginning of the new. With the gods, no less than with men, the eons pass, as the days for us, and there is change.

"The ten earth-shaking elephants you saw signify the ten gifts of wisdom. The prince, possessing them, shall leave his world at court and shatter the greater world with the teaching of the dharma.

"The four flame-breathing horses you dreamed of, pulling the chariot in which rode your son—these are the Four Immeasurables: loving kindness, joy, compassion, and detachment. These will carry your son from darkness and doubt to light.

"The turning wheel with a hub of burning gold is the Wheel of the Dharma, which he shall turn for all the world to see.

"The prince's mighty drum, sounding throughout the four continents, signifies the thunderous might of his teaching.

"The tower mounting into the heavens is the growing of the body of his teaching, and the rare jewels broadcast to the waiting world are the treasure that all beings will gain through the teaching of the dharma.

"And last, the six mute weeping men are the six foolish teachers who will seek to rival the Buddha, your son, and who he will, with unimpeachable truth, refute and convert.

"Rejoice, oh, King, for the wealth of my Lord, your son, is greater than all kingdoms, and his hermit's rags will be finer than cloth spun of gold.
"These were your dreams and in seven nights and days these things shall come to pass."

With this, the hermit made the eight prostrations and then turned and departed. Suddhodana sent a splendid gift after him, but the messengers returned saying, "We followed him to Chandra's temple, but found only a gray owl, and it flew away." (The gods sometimes appear in this manner.)
The king marveled, but was still afraid to lose his son. He commanded that the dancers compose new delights to enthrall Siddhartha's heart. At the doors, the king set a doubled guard. But who shall bar fate from the door? For in the prince, the spirit stirred again to see the world. (This life would be so sweet and pure if its waves didn't beat themselves to an end on the sandy beach of time.)

Siddhartha petitioned King Suddhodana. "I pray Your Majesty to let me see our city as it is. Out of tenderness, you did before bid our people to hide ill or common sights from me, to make themselves glad at my coming, and to gaily deck the streets. I have learned, though, that this is not their daily life. Since I am your son, the prince, your heir, I desire to know the simple and everyday ways of our people in their town, to see their work, their lives.

"Let me pass, my Lord, unrecognized, beyond my happy gardens here. I will return then the more contented, or wiser at the least. Therefore, I ask again, 'Let me go tomorrow.' "

To his ministers, the king gave his reply. "I think this second flight will be an improvement. The falcon when first unhooded stares and starts at everything, but calms his eye in his freedom.

Let the prince see all this time and report his mind to me afterwards."
At noon the next day, Siddhartha and Channa passed through the palace gates, opened to the king's seal. The citizens knew them not, the prince as merchant and his charioteer as clerk. On foot, they wandered, mingling with the Shakyas, seeing all the town: the painted streets humming with life at noon; peddlers sitting cross-legged amid their spices and grain; shoppers with their purses and bargaining wars of words; stone-wheeled wagons on the roads, bearing swaying loads, pulled by the strong slow oxen; the palanquin bearers singing; the porters, their broad necks sweating in the sun; the housewives carrying water from the well in carefully balanced ewers, with black-eyed babies on their hips; in the shops swarming with flies, candied fruits; the weaver at the loom, his shuttle singing; millstones grinding; dogs scouring the town for scraps; the armorer, with his skill, using hammer and tongs to link metal into mail; at the smithy, pickax and spear glowing red in the forge; at the school, the teacher with the Shakya children gathered in a half circle, singing their mantras, learning about the family of the gods; the dyers stretching vests, fresh from the vats, to dry in the sun—orange and rose and green; soldiers clanking along with their swords and shields; camel drivers swaying on their mounts; the proud priest, the haughty warrior, the lowly laborer; a crowd gathered to watch a snake charmer wind his asp, like living jewelry, around his wrist, or tease the cobra with his flute into an angry dance; a bridal procession wending its way to bring the young bride home, with gaily painted horses and silken canopies, accompanied by drums and sounding horns; a wife bearing cakes and flowers to an altar as supplication for her husband's safe return, or to get a boy for her next child; and at the braziers' booths, the dusky workmen beating their brass into lamps and vessels.

Then Siddhartha and Channa went to the river bridge, and beyond the city walls. From the side of the road, they heard a sorrowful voice moaning, "Help me, masters, to my feet. Help me to my house before I die!"

A quivering wretch stricken with some deadly plague lay in the dust there, writhing, blotched with fiery purple sores, sweat beading on his brow, his twitching mouth disfigured from pain, his wild eyes swimming in agony. Gasping, clutching at the grass, he rose halfway then sank back down, his quaking legs too feeble to support him.

"Oh, the pain! Help me, good people," he screamed, terrified.

Siddhartha ran to him, lifting him tenderly, and with a sweet look on his face, he laid the man's sick head on his knee. He comforted the man with soft strokes of his hand and asked, "What is this sickness, my brother? What harm did you suffer that you cannot arise?"

Turning to Channa, Siddhartha asked, "Why is it that he pants so and moans, gasping to speak and sighing so piteously?"

The charioteer answered, "Great Prince, this man has been attacked by a pestilence. His humors run all together. Once a smooth-running river, his blood is now a fiery flood bubbling and roiling in his veins. His steady heart beats like an ill-played drum, quick and slow. Like a string slipped from a bow, his muscles are slack, and the flesh in his torso and neck has lost its strength. In short, all the gracefulness of his manly body has fled. Sickly, he twitches madly in seizure, rolls his bloodshot eyes, grinds his teeth, and draws his breath in pain as if he were swallowing smoke and choking.
"He should be dead, but the plague won't let him die until it has consumed him, killing even the nerves. Then, when his sinews have cracked with agony and his bones are past aching, the plague will leave him to find another host. Prince, it is not good to hold him for the disease may pass out of him and strike you."

Siddhartha spoke, still comforting the man, "Are there others like him? Are there many? And, truly, might I be as he is now?"

Channa replied, "Great Lord, this comes to many men in many ways. There are afflictions and wounds, sickness and blisters, palsy, leprosy, fever, wasting diseases, discharges of blood and suppurations of pus, sores, and cankers. These come to all flesh and invade everywhere."

"Come they unnoticed?" Siddhartha asked.

"Like a silent snake stinging, unheard, unseen; like a murderer who springs from hiding on the jungle track from behind a bush; like a lightning bolt, striking one and sparing another, according to chance."

"Then do all men live in fear?"

"So live they, Prince."

"None can say, 'I go to sleep tonight happy and well, and so shall I wake tomorrow'?"

"None say it."

"And after a life of sickness and injury, which come unseen, without reason or warning, is this the end, a broken body and sorrowful mind, and so old age?"
"If a man will last that long."

"What if they cannot bear their agonies, or if they will not endure them and seek an end, or if they bear them and become, as this man is here, too weak except to groan and still shall live, growing older, then what?"

"They die, Prince."

"Die?"

"At the last comes death, in whatsoever way, at whatsoever hour. A few of us grow old, most suffer and fall sick along the way, but all must die. Behold. A dead man comes!"

Siddhartha raised his eyes and saw a band of wailing people walking quickly to the riverbank. In front, one swung an earthen bowl with lighted coals. Behind him came a family, their heads shaven, marked with the signs of mourning. They cried out, "Oh, Rama, Rama, hear! Call upon Rama, brothers."
Next came the bier, four interlaced bamboo poles, on which the dead man lay, stark and stiff, feet in front, thin, lower jaw loose, sightless, chest hollow-looking, sprinkled with red and yellow dust. At the crossroads, they turned the bier around so that the dead man's head was in front and cried, "Rama, Rama," and marched on to where the pyre was built beside the river.
They laid the body there, building the wood up. Good sleep has the one that rests on that bed. The cold shall not wake him even though he lies naked—for they soon set the pyre aflame. The fire started creeping from the corners, its tongues flickering, licking toward the body, finding the flesh and feeding on it swiftly, hissing. And then the skin crackled and the joints snapped until the thick smoke thinned, and the gray and scarlet ashes sank, here and there a bone white in the ashes—the total of the man.

"Is this the end which comes to all who live?" Siddhartha asked.

"This is the end for all," replied Channa. "That upon the pyre— the remnants so scant that the crows caw hungrily and leave the barren banquet table—ate, drank, laughed, loved, and lived, and liked life well. Then it came to him, who knows, some disease from the jungle, a stumble on the road, some contamination in his water, a snake bite, a sword plunged into him, a chill, a fish bone, a falling brick, and life was over and the man was dead.
"Such as that has no appetites nor pleasures nor pain. A kiss upon its lips means nothing, nor the scorching fire on its skin. It can't smell its flesh roasting, nor the sandalwood and spice they burn. Its mouth is empty of taste, its ears stopped from hearing, its eyes blinded. The family and friends wail, desolately. Even the body is gone now, which was the light of him to the world. Otherwise, the worms would feast on it. This is our common fate—the high and the low, the good and the bad, must die. Then, we are told, we begin again and live somewhere, somehow—maybe, who knows—and again the aches, the leaving of life, and the pyre. Such is man's route."
Siddhartha turned his eyes, shining with divine tears to the sky, glowing with heavenly pity for the earth. From sky to earth and back and back again he looked, searching, like a spirit in flight, for a vision, an explanation, lost in the past, but found before, seen before, known before. His face burned with the passion of a measureless love, with a boundless, insatiable hope.

"Oh, suffering world! Oh, known and unknown to me, caught together in this common net of death and suffering and the life which binds us to both! I see, I feel the vastness of mortal agony, the futility of our joys, the mockery of the best of us, the anguish and despair of the worst—all of this since pleasure ends in pain, youth in old age, love in loss, life in hateful death, and then death itself ends in unknown lives which but bind men again to the wheel of false delight and the suffering that is all too real.

"Into this trap I, too, have fallen. It has seemed to me lovely to live, and life a sun-streaked stream forever flowing, peacefully, changelessly. The river, though, wends its foolish way through the flowers and the fields only to pour its crystal waters into the foul salt sea. The mask which blinded me is torn from my face. I am just as all these men are who cry to the gods and are unheard, or unheeded.

"Yet there must be a way! For all of us there must be help! Maybe the gods themselves have need of help if they are so weak that when sad lips cry out they cannot succor them. I would not let one being suffer whom I could save. How can it be that Brahma, the Creator, would make a world and then keep it miserable? If he, all powerful, leaves us so, then he is not good. Or, if not all powerful, then not God!

"Channa, lead us home again. It is enough. I have seen enough!"

When the king heard of this, he set a triple guard at the gate and forbade the coming and going of anyone, by day or night, until seven days had passed, the number of his dreams.

To be continued.
Adapted by William Hewitt