The Pilgrim Kamanita

“This narrative is not meant for narration.”

Byron, Don Juan, XIV 7

I

The Lord Buddha Revisits the City of the Five Hills

“Thus have I heard: That the time came when the earthly sojourn of the Lord Buddha should be ended, and journeying from place to plate in the land of Magadha, he came to Rajagriha.”

Thus the Holy Buddhist Sutra of ancient India.

As the Master drew near to the City of the Five Hills, day was almost over, and the mildly beneficent rays of the evening sun lay along the green rice-fields and meadows of the far-reaching plain as if they were emanations from a divine hand extended in blessing. Here and there little billowy clouds—of purest gold dust as it seemed—rolled and crept along the ground, showing that men and oxen were plodding wearily homeward from their labour in the fields; and the lengthening shadows cast by isolated groups of trees were bordered by a halo, radiant with all the colours of the rainbow. Framed in a wreath of blossoming gardens, the embattled gateways, terraces, cupolas, and towers of the capital shone forth, delicately clear as in some fairy vision; and a long line of rocky eminences, rivalling in colour the topaz, the amethyst, and the opal, were resolved into an enamel of incomparable beauty.

Deeply moved, the Lord Buddha stayed his steps. Joy welled up within him, and his heart leaped forth to greet those familiar forms, bound up for him with so many memories: the Grey Horn, the Broad Vale, the Scer’s Crag, the Vulture’s Crest—“whose noble summit towers, roof-like, over all the rest”—and, above all, Vibhara, the Mountain of the Hot Springs, under whose shadow, in the cave beneath the Sattapanni tree, the homeless wanderer had found his first home, his first resting-place on the final journey from Sansara to Nirvana.

For when, in that bygone time, “being still in the flower of his life, his hair dark and glossy, in the unimpaired enjoyment of all that happy youth could afford and early manhood represent, unmoved by the wishes of his parents as by their tears and lamentations,” he had left his royal father’s house in the northern country of the Sakyas and turned his steps toward the valley of the Gunga, he had there, under the shadow of the lofty Vibhara, allowed himself his first lengthened stay, going every morning into Rajagriha to beg for food.

It was at that time also, and in that very cave, that Bimbisara, King of Magadha, had visited him, imploring, though in vain, that he should return to the home of his fathers, and to the life of the world, until at length the royal visitor, strangely moved by the words of the young ascetic, felt the first tremblings of the new faith that later made him a follower of the Buddha.

Since that day full fifty years had passed away, and in the interval he had changed not alone the course of his own life, but also that of the world. How vast the difference between that past, when he dwelt in yonder cave and sat beneath the Sattapanni tree, and the present! Then he was yet a seeker—one struggling for salvation. Terrible spiritual contests lay before him—yearlong, self-inflicted mortifications, inhuman agonies, frightful as fruitless, the mere recital of which made the flesh of even the stoutest-hearted of his hearers creep; till at length, risen triumphant above all such self-torturing asceticism, through fervent meditation, he reached the light, and went forth from the conflict, consecrated to the salvation of all created beings, filled with a divine pity, a supreme and perfect Buddha. Those were the years in which his life resembled a changeful morning in the rainy season—dazzling sunshine alternating with deepest gloom, the while the monsoon piles cloud above cloud in towering masses, and the death-laden thunderstorm comes growling nearer. But now his life was filled with the same calm, sunny peace that lay upon the evening landscape, a peace that seemed to grow ever deeper and clearer as the sun’s disc dipped towards the horizon.

For him, too, sunset, the close of life’s long day, was at hand. He had finished his work. The kingdom of truth had been established on sure foundations, and the doctrine of salvation proclaimed to all mankind; while many monks and nuns of blameless life and approved knowledge, and lay followers of both sexes, were now well fitted to guard his kingdom and to uphold and spread its doctrines.

And even as he stands there, there abides in his heart, as a result of the meditations of this day spent in solitary journeying, the inalienable knowledge: “For thee, the time cometh, and that soon, when thou shalt go hence and leave this world, from which thou hast redeemed thyself and all who come after thee, and shalt enter into the rest of Nirvana.”

And looking over the land spread out before him, with a happy recognition, in which there lay, nevertheless, a deep note of sadness, he bade these loved objects farewell.

“Fair indeed art thou, Rajagriha, City of the Five Hills! Beautiful are thy environs, richly blessed thy fields, heart-gladdening thy wooded glades gleaming with waters, very pleasant thy clustering hills of rock! For the last time do I behold thy lovely borders from this, the fairest of all places whence thy children love to look upon thee. But once, and once only—on the day when I go hence and look back from the crest of yonder mountain-ridge—shall I see thee again, beloved valley of Rajagriha; then, nevermore!”

And still the Master stood, till at length only two structures, of all in the city before him, towered golden in the sunlight: one, the highest tower in the king’s palace, whence Bimbisara had first espied him, when, a young and unknown ascetic, he passed that way, and, by his noble bearing, drew upon himself the notice of the Magadha king; the other, the dome-like superstructure of the Indian temple, in which, in the years before his teaching had delivered mankind from bloody superstition, thousands upon thousands of innocent animals were yearly slaughtered in honour of the Deity. Finally, even the pinnacles of the towers slipped down into the rising sea of shadow and were lost to view, and only the cone of golden umbrellas1 which, rising one above another, crowned the dome of the temple yet glowed, suspended as it were in midair, a veritable symbol of the “royal city,”2 flashing and sparkling as the red glow deepened against the dark-blue background of the lofty treetops. At this point the Master caught sight of the still somewhat distant goal of his journey. For the treetops he saw were those of the mango grove on the farther side of the town, the gift of his disciple Jivaka, the king’s physician, in which a stately monastery provided the monks with quarters at once healthy and comfortable.

To this home of the Order, the Lord Buddha had sent the monks who accompanied him—about 200 in number—on before, under the leadership of his cousin and faithful companion Ananda, because he felt desirous of tasting the deep delight of a day’s solitary pilgrimage. And he was aware that a band of young monks from the West, led by his great disciple the wise Sariputta, would arrive in the mango grove at sunset. In his vivid imagination, given to picturing events in all their details, he went over the scenes that would be enacted. He saw the new arrivals exchange friendly greetings with the brethren already there, saw them conducted by the latter to seats and night quarters, their cloaks and alms-bowls taken from them, and heard all this take place with much noise and loud shouting, as though fisher-folk were quarrelling over their spoils. He knew this to be no exaggeration; and to him, who loved silent meditation, and disliked clamour as does the solitary lion in the jungle, the thought of being involved, just at this moment, in such bustle, after the delicious restfulness of solitary travel and the blessed peace of the evening landscape, was doubly distressing.

So he determined, as he went on his way, that he would not go through the city to his mango grove, but would take up his abode for the night in any house in the nearest suburb in which he could find shelter.

Meantime the flaming gold of the western heavens had died down in burning orange tints, and these, in turn, had melted into a blaze of the fieriest scarlet. Round about him the green of the fields deepened and grew more and more luminous, as though the earth were an emerald lit up from within. But already a dreamy violet haze enveloped the horizon, while a weird purple flood—whether light or shadow, no one could say—rolled in from every side, rising and sinking, filling all space, dissolving fixed outlines and combining fragments, sweeping near objects bodily away and bringing nearer those that were distant, causing everything to undulate and waver in trembling uncertainty.

Startled by the footsteps of the solitary wanderer, a fruit-bat unhooked itself from the branch of a black sala tree, and, spreading its leathern wings, swept, with a shrill cry, away through the dusk, to pay a visit to the orchards of the rural suburb.

Thus, by the time the Master had reached the outskirts of Rajagriha, the day was far spent and night was at hand.

II

The Meeting

It was the intention of the Master to stop at the first house he came to—in this instance a building whose blue walls shone out from between the trees of the surrounding garden. As he was about to approach the door, however, he became aware of a net hung upon a branch. And without a moment’s hesitation the Lord Buddha strode past, abhorring the house of the fowler. Here, at the extreme outskirts of the town, the houses were scattered, in addition to which a conflagration had recently swept the place, so that some time elapsed before he came to another human habitation. It was the farmhouse of a well-to-do Brahman. The Master had hardly stepped within the gate, when he heard the loud screaming voices of the Brahman’s two wives as they scolded and wrangled, all the while hurling invectives at one another. And the Blessed One turned him about, went out at the gateway, and strode farther on.

The pleasure garden of the rich Brahman extended for a considerable distance along the road. The Master was already conscious of fatigue, and his right foot, injured by a sharp stone, pained him as he paced along. In this condition he approached the next dwelling-house, which was visible from a great distance owing to a broad path of vivid light that streamed across the road from the latticework of the shutters and from the open door. Even had a blind man come that way, he could not have failed to notice this house, for wanton laughter, the clang of goblets, the clapping of hands, the beat of dancing feet, and the delightfully merry notes of the seven-stringed vina rose clearly upon the air. Leaning against the doorpost stood a handsome girl, robed in rich silk, and hung with jasmine garlands. Laughingly showing her teeth, red from chewing the betel-nut, she invited the wayfarer to stay: “Enter, O stranger. This is the House of Mirth.” But the Blessed One went on his way, and as he did so he recalled his own words: “As weeping, in the Order of the Holy, shall singing be looked on; as madness, in the Order of the Holy, shall dancing be looked on; as childish, in the Order of the Holy, shall unseemly showing of teeth, shall laughter, be looked on. All-sufficing, for ye who in truth are enraptured, be the smile of the smiling eyes.”

The neighbouring house was not far distant, but the noise of the carousers and vina-players penetrated thither, so the Lord Buddha went on to the next. Beside it two butcher’s assistants were hard at work by the last glimmer of daylight, cutting up with sharp knives a cow they had just slaughtered. And the Master strode past the house of the butcher.

In front of the one following, stood many dishes and bowls freshly formed from clay, the fruit of a diligent day’s labour. The potter’s wheel stood under a tamarind tree, and the potter at that moment removed a dish from the wheel and bore it to where the others lay.

The Master approached the potter, greeted him courteously, and said: “If it be not inconvenient to, thee, O descendant of Bhaga, I shall spend this night in thy hall.”

“It is not, O sir, inconvenient to me. But this moment, a pilgrim has arrived, tired from a long journey, and he has already taken up his quarters for the night. If it be agreeable to him, thou art welcome to stay, O sir, at thine own pleasure.”

And the Master reflected: “Solitude is, it is true, the best of all companions. But this good pilgrim has arrived here late, just as I myself, tired from long wandering. And he has gone by the houses where men follow impure and bloody pursuits, past the house of wrangling and of odious strife, the house of clamour and of unworthy pleasure, and has not rested till he entered the house of the potter. In the company of such a man it is possible to spend the night.”

So the Lord Buddha entered the outer hall, where he perceived a young man of noble lineaments sitting in a corner on a mat.

“If it be not disagreeable to thee, O pilgrim,” said the Master to him, “I shall spend the night in this outer hall.”

“Spacious, O brother, is the hall of the potter; stay then, O venerable sir, at thy pleasure.”

Upon which the Master spread his mat close to one of the walls and sat down, his legs crossed, his body perfectly upright, sunk in holy meditation. And the Blessed One remained sitting during the first part of the night.

The young man also remained sitting during the first part of the night.

Seeing which, the Lord Buddha thought to himself: “I wonder whether this noble youth is a happy seeker after truth. How would it be if I should ask him?”

So he turned him to the young pilgrim—

“Wherefore, O pilgrim, hast thou become homeless?”

The young pilgrim answered—

“But few hours of the night are as yet gone. So that, if thou, venerable sir, wilt deign to give ear, I shall tell thee wherefore I have chosen the portion of the homeless.”

The Blessed One gave assent by a friendly movement of his head, and the young pilgrim began his tale.