“Look!”
A small child, bolder than the others, pointed at Gautama, then jumped down from the cart he was riding in. He ran up and tugged at the monk’s saffron skirt with a smile. The boy didn’t beg for anything; he just held on to the skirt and walked beside Gautama. Instead of scolding him or calling him back, the parents nodded benignly.
“I have to find my brothers again,” mumbled Gautama. He removed the little boy’s hand and turned around. Walking away, he could hear the child crying behind him, and this, as much as the stares people were giving him, distressed Gautama. He’d heard children crying like that many times, when there was no food or the kind Prince Siddhartha had run out of coins for them. But Gautama had given this child nothing and taken nothing away. Except himself.
Gautama found the path that had led him to the main road, and soon he was swaddled in the protective gloom of the jungle. The five cousins would still be in camp. They were never eager to travel in the heat of the day. Once he found them, Pabbata looked puzzled over why Gautama had been gone so long, but he kept this to himself. Solitude was a monk’s privilege, one of the few. Gautama had taken the precaution of gathering some mangoes on the way, which placated the other cousins in case they had questions to pose. He lay down under a tree, gazing up at the dappled light that filtered down and made small white circles on the forest floor. He couldn’t find a way to fall asleep as the others dozed off.
Own nothing. Give everything.
It was all he could think about.
“DO YOU RECOGNIZE ME?”
Gautama lifted the sick man’s head and brought a water gourd to his lips. The man had been unconscious when the novice monks, the bikkhus, found him. Only Gautama thought he was still alive. He ordered the bikkhus to put the body in his tent and leave the two alone. They obeyed without question. First, because wherever Gautama went, from camp to camp, ashram to ashram, he was revered. He had emerged from the forest only a year before, yet many of the novices whispered that someone like him, a man of stature and power, should be master, not a worn-out old yogi.
There was a second reason too. If the man they found in the forest actually was dead, Gautama might bring him back to life. Miracle stories swirled around him, and no amount of discouragement on Gautama’s part could make them die down.
“Do you recognize me?” Gautama repeated when he saw the old man’s eyes flutter and then open.
“I-I’m not sure.”
Hunger and dehydration had made the man’s mind weak. He looked around the tent, baffled at how he had gotten there. Then his gaze returned to Gautama’s face and stayed there. “Ah,” he said. “The saint.”
“That’s what you called me, Ganaka. But don’t worry. Didn’t you also tell me that saints don’t exist?”
Feeble as he was, Ganaka summoned a cynical smile. “You waited this long to prove that I’m wrong?”
His head fell back; he struggled with another wave of delirium. Ganaka had been found deep in the forest, sheerly by accident when the bikkhus were chasing down a deer with bow and arrow. “I didn’t ask for your help,” he mumbled. “It’s my life. Who are you to save it?”
“Weren’t you about to give it away?”
Gautama had sensed such a possibility. Someone as experienced as Ganaka didn’t just wander away alone unless it was to die. The careworn monk turned his head away and refused to answer.
“We’ll talk later,” Gautama said. He placed water and fruit beside the cot and departed. Outside the tent his eyes saw dozens of huts in the large clearing. It was spring, and the younger bikkhus were feeling the effects-they exercised, argued, talked in secret about girls they had left behind. Some missed home too much. Every day the weather was fair, a few more failed to show up for evening prayers. Spring had more power over them than God.
Gautama walked among the campfires. By now he had explored every city in the kingdom and those that lay far to the east, but he had avoided the temptation to set foot inside the gates of Kapilavastu. As the word spread and scores of villagers and farmers traveled out to find him and receive his blessing, some were from Sakya and remembered him. If they murmured “Prince” or “Your Highness” when they prostrated themselves before him, Gautama took no notice, gave no hint to acknowledge who he once had been. Four years had made Gautama into Gautama.
Of course he could still conjure up the old faces. But they didn’t return on their own anymore. In order to see images of Channa or Suddhodana, he would ask to see them. “Learn to use your memories,” he told the younger bikkhus. “Don’t let them use you.”
Ananda, a monk around his own age of thirty-three, ran up. He looked vexed and excited. “Another miracle, brother. What should I do?”
Gautama frowned. “What marvel did I supposedly perform this time?”
“There’s a cripple just come to camp. Hobbled in on crutches, then he fell on his knees and called out your name. He gave a few twitches, and now he’s walking again.”
“Aren’t you impressed, Ananda? You’d think with all my powers I could prevent my feet from getting blisters when we walk down a rocky trail.”
Ananda was too exercised to smile. “He’s just one of those cheats who wants a free meal.”
“Don’t we give food to anyone? Even cheats?”
Ananda bit his tongue. No one was closer to Gautama in their travels, thanks to his sincerity about God and his total devotion to Gautama. Recently, though, the short, stocky Ananda, who exuded stubbornness as much as loyalty, had become like a sergeant or an aide de camp as more and more responsibilities fell Gautama’s way with the bikkhus.
“I think I know what to do,” Gautama said. He sat down by the central campfire on a rough-hewn bench. Whenever they stopped for any length of time the bikkhus bestirred themselves to build huts and stools and such from forest timber. “Feed him well. Then say that I need his crutches to help another lame man. If he hesitates to hand them over, tell him to come and personally tell me why. I imagine he and the crutches will both be gone in the morning.”
At last Ananda found a smile. “He’ll never hand them over. He needs them for his next miracle down the road.”
“I think so.”
Although he wasn’t the senior monk, Gautama had been relieved of chores around camp. He attended to the guru’s major affairs instead. “I wouldn’t burden you,” the guru said, “but you are cursed by your gift.”
“And what is my gift?” asked Gautama.
“The bikkhus think you’re their father.”
“Shouldn’t you be their father?”
The guru shrugged. “I already got rid of my curses.”
This master’s name was Udaka, and he was the second luminary Gautama had found in his wanderings. The first, who was named Alara, had been a quiet, reclusive scholar, a Brahmin but nothing like Canki. Alara paid no attention to caste. He immersed himself in the Vedas and wouldn’t bother to eat unless someone placed a plate of food beside his study table. When he first walked in, Gautama immediately attracted Alara’s attention. His head, bent close over a sacred text, whipped up, and his eyes squinted as if looking into a bright light.
Instead of saying hello, Alara asked a question. “Stranger, if the scriptures tell me to avoid violence, is it enough that I walk past a fight and not enter into it?”
Gautama, who was prepared to prostrate himself at the master’s feet to beg for instruction, was taken aback. He opened his mouth to say, “Tell me the answer, wise one,” but what came out instead was, “Merely avoiding violence shows virtue, but it shows much more virtue to help end the fight and bring the combatants to a state of peace.”