There is one thing Mara can never let you find out: the truth about who you really are.
14
Gautama wandered down the road, his whole being churning with what the hermit had told him. Before he left his father’s kingdom he had fought against Mara the only way he knew how-by trying to alleviate suffering and want wherever he could. Saints persevere even though the tide of suffering rolls back in despite their compassion. Mara had survived a lot of saints. What was one more?
But a strange new element had been added. The forest hermit implied that the demon was afraid of Gautama. But why? Demons are immortal; they can’t be harmed physically. The riddle went even deeper. Gautama seemed to be the only person Mara feared.
These thoughts kept turning over in Gautama’s head like wheels within wheels. How remarkable that in one day all the peace he had gained with his master in the forest had come undone. Why even seek a teacher if the same thing would only happen again? Gautama muttered the only words of consolation that he could remember.
“Surrender and be free.”
“Did you say something, brother?”
“What?” Gautama looked up to see another monk about his age. “How long have you been standing there?”
“A few minutes. Care to join us? You’ve got a hungry look about you. There’s a well-off farmer up the road, and his wife doesn’t exactly hate me.” The young monk spoke with a half smile and a sense of assurance. Gautama rose and followed him down the shade-dappled dirt road. At the next bend he saw a patch of brilliant saffron flash through the trees, and when a small band of monks rounded the bend, the one Gautama was with waved to them. “Press on!” he shouted.
Gautama remained silent, melting into the group like a stray fish merging back into its school. The monk who had gathered him in was taller and older than the others. “Where are you headed?” he asked.
“East.” Gautama replied. There were big towns toward the east, and with large populations there would be more ashrams and all the famous teachers. He’d ask for help with his dilemma.
“Who are you?” the taller monk asked.
Gautama gave his name and the taller monk gave his: Pabbata.
“We’ll take you as far east as we’re headed,” Pabbata said. “You’ll be safer in a pack. These four scruffs are my cousins.”
“You all wanted to be monks?” asked Gautama with surprise.
Pabbata laughed sheepishly. “We all wanted to see more of life than a quarter-acre field that the jungle tries to take back every year.” His cousins nodded in assent. They began to chat among themselves, ignoring the stranger, and it didn’t take long for Gautama to take their measure. These were typical young men, all but Pabbata still adolescents, who needed to get out and stretch. They eyed every pretty farm girl who passed by on the road, joked with anyone who spoke their dialect, eagerly asked for news and gossip if they were lucky enough to meet a villager from near their home. Gautama didn’t have to close his eyes for the disguise of saffron robes to vanish.
“Have you found a Dharma?” he asked Pabbata when there was a lull and the group fell relatively quiet. He expected the taller monk to answer indifferently or with a joke, but his face lit up.
“I think about the Dharma night and day,” he said.
His cousins laughed, and one said, “He’s the serious one. We let him think for the rest of us.”
Pabbata’s spine stiffened. “Without a teaching, we’re no better than shiftless beggars.” This rebuke, mild as it was, irked his cousins, who sped up and left Gautama and Pabbata to trail behind. Gautama was glad to see them go.
Suddenly Pabbata asked, “Do you know why I stopped for you?”
“You seem kind.”
“Maybe. Fat lot of good that does you on these roads. No, it was something else. I was trudging behind my cousins, cursing the heat, thinking about someone I left behind, if you know what I mean. All at once I felt this cool breeze, and when I looked in the shadows, there you were. You understand?”
“No.”
Pabbata looked disbelieving. “You’re putting me on, right?”
When Gautama didn’t reply, the taller monk’s eyes widened. “You mean you don’t know? It was you. I felt your presence.”
Siddhartha could feel himself flush a deep scarlet. “That’s impossible. Let me assure you-”
“Assure me?” Pabbata guffawed. “I had a feeling you were high-caste. Look at you, even saying that makes you go red.”
Gautama was drawn to the tall countrified monk. He said, “I’ve been with a saint in the forest. I felt his presence. Every day, every minute. It made me-I don’t know what it made me.”
“Drunk, maybe. That type can throw you off your head, that’s for sure.” Pabbata stopped for a second and then replied, “So you must be a saint too. Like attracts like, isn’t that how it works?”
“Not in this case.”
Pabbata shook his head, frowning. “You shouldn’t talk about yourself that way. Karma is shy. It’s easy to drive the good kind away.” He sped up to rejoin his cousins. Gautama lagged behind, and after a moment he heard loud laughter and banter. He was tempted to fade back and lose the other monks, but he didn’t. Pabbata looked over his shoulder and saw Gautama a few yards behind them.
“Don’t be shy, princess!”
The jibe, like everything Pabbata said, was good-natured. Gautama could do worse than travel in such company. Maybe the next town or the next teacher could offer him some answer. And so the saffron-clad sojourners walked on together for several days. Gautama lightened the time between farmhouses by finding fruit and fresh water that the others couldn’t spy; in return, they were much more persuasive beggars and flirted with the country wives for extra roti and rice. “This one makes good mango pickle. It’s worth a kiss behind the barn,” one of the cousins said with a wink.
One morning Gautama had gotten up before dawn, as he was accustomed to do with his master, and meditated in the faint blue-gray light. He washed himself in a stream and shaved his beard with the sharp shell of a freshwater mussel. As he walked back to camp, he felt a strange sensation. After a moment he realized a cool breeze was tickling the back of his neck. The morning was already heavy with heat, and he stopped. He raised one hand and could definitely feel a cool current of air around his head. Gautama had felt such a sensation around his master without comprehending why.
Gautama turned his steps and headed back toward the main road instead of to camp. He hadn’t met a better person the whole time he’d been wandering. And yet he couldn’t stay now, not if it meant being turned into a false god.
Emerging from the thick jungle growth, Gautama saw that the main road was crowded with travelers. He ducked his head and kept as close to himself as possible. But he couldn’t help becoming part of the passing parade. Farmers’ carts were a constant sight, trundling to market and home again. There was the occasional merchant caravan, usually surrounded by armed guards to protect the precious bales of silk and spice stowed in a horse-drawn wagon.
Gautama regarded them all with troubled eyes. They were like phantoms to him, no longer made of flesh and blood. They were dream images that he could pass his hand through if they came close enough. As their bodies faded, he saw something else more clearly. Each person carried an invisible burden. The young monk was amazed that he hadn’t seen it before. Everyone walked or rode with their lives on their shoulders, a pack of memories that spilled over with disappointment and sorrow. This one had never recovered from losing a wife in childbirth. That one was afraid of starving. That other one fretted over a runaway son who may have died in battle. And always there was the pall of age and sickness, the endless worry over money, the unceasing doubts about the future.