“Ah.” Alara looked pleased. He patted the rough plank floor next to him, signaling for Gautama to sit close by. He even shifted the small prayer rug that he occupied so that his new disciple would be more comfortable. The next two months were nothing like the silence Gautama had shared with the forest hermit. Alara was a gyani, or philosopher. He thought and he talked.
“What is the mind for if not to find God?” he said. “The scriptures assure us that this physical world is a mask, and yet the mask isn’t physical. It’s made of illusion, and illusion is created by the mind. Do you understand? What the mind has created, only the mind can undo.”
Gautama threw himself into a study of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures, and what Alara had said was holy writ. Every person has two selves, a lower self that is born of flesh and tied to the illusions of the material world, and a higher self that is eternal and unborn, with no attachments at all. The lower self craves pleasure, the higher self knows only bliss. The lower self cringes from pain, the higher self has never felt pain. If that was true, then Gautama had to find his higher self or be lost in the endless quicksand of the mind’s deceptions.
“You found me just in time,” said Alara. “Never mind that ordinary people are wasting their lives in foolish dreams of finding lasting happiness. To the ignorant, pleasure and pain appear to be different, but wisdom tells us they are the right and left hands of the lower self.”
For months Gautama focused on nothing else, praying, meditating, and studying to find a path to his higher self. It was not difficult to believe in the teaching of illusion, or maya, because he continued to see ordinary people as ghosts, weighed down with care and suffering. Alara also looked like a ghost, but there was no pain lingering around him. For his part, the old gyani had never met a pupil like this one, and every day he delighted in him more and more.
One day, however, a young man of about twenty came and sat beside the front door of Alara’s hut. He was thin, almost emaciated, and his face was one of the saddest Gautama had ever seen. As it happened, Alara stepped out of his hut just as Gautama was about to hand the young stranger a bowl of rice. With a swift, abrupt swipe, Alara knocked the bowl out of his hand, and the rice scattered on the ground. Before Gautama could speak, his master grabbed his arm and pulled him away.
“Don’t look back,” he said sharply.
Behind them Gautama heard the young man cry, “Father!” At this Alara’s neck stiffened, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. When they were out of sight of the hut he said, “Yes, he’s my son. I do not greet him or encourage him. You shouldn’t either.” Alara saw the baffled look in Gautama’s eyes. “My lower self once had a family. They are of no concern to me, just as this whole world is of no concern.”
“I understand,” said Gautama, lowering his eyes.
“No, Gautama, I can see you don’t. I have been on the verge of telling you that there’s little more I can teach you. But a true gyani must live what he’s learned. How can you hope to reach your higher self if you remain tied, even by the slightest thread, to this vale of illusion? Maya sets traps everywhere.”
Gautama didn’t argue. But he wondered, How would the sad young man at Alara’s door feel to know that he was an illusion, another trap to be avoided?
Two days later Gautama came into Alara’s room, but he didn’t take his accustomed place on the floor beside him. The gyani didn’t look up from the page. He said, “I’m almost sad that you’re leaving. That’s what you’re here to announce, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
It could have ended there, simply, without a rupture. But Alara’s hand shook, and he threw down his scrolls. “Just who do you think you are?” he asked irritably.
“A disciple.”
“And since when does the disciple dare to teach the master?” Alara still hadn’t looked at Gautama, who could see the veins standing out in the old man’s neck.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you this way,” said Gautama.
“Insolence! I cannot be disturbed. You haven’t learned that by now?”
Gautama knelt on the floor without coming closer.
Alara was unable to disguise his cold fury now. “If I need a demon to shake my faith, I’ll call on a proper one, not a disciple who smiles and smiles, only to betray me.”
This outpouring of blame didn’t shake Gautama. He had lain awake thinking about how his master, for all that he knew about illusion, had fallen into a trap. The scriptures were his illusion. They led him to imagine that he was free just because he could describe freedom out of a book and think about it with his subtle mind.
“I didn’t come here to harm you,” said Gautama. “I no longer believe in the higher self. I wish that I could. But it seems nothing more than a fine phrase or an ideal no one ever attains. You are good and wise, but you became so by study-isn’t it the lower self that reads the Vedas?”
These words, intended to be mild, had the opposite effect. Alara hurled a scroll at Gautama’s head, then jumped to his feet, looking for a stick.
“Get out, scoundrel!”
Gautama longed to say, “Who is so angry with me right now? Your higher self?” But Alara’s eyes were bulging already. Gautama backed away quickly.
For weeks he had wandered on until he found Udaka, his next teacher. Udaka wasn’t a philosopher but a pure yogi, devoting his every moment to achieving divine union. Because he sat in silence most of the day, Udaka felt more like the forest hermit, yet he fathered the bikkhus around him every night and spoke.
“Some of you are new here, some have traveled with me for years. Which of you has met God?” he asked. A few of the older bikkhus, after some hesitation, raised their hands.
“You new ones, look around and pay attention. See those with their hands up? They are the greatest fools, and you must never listen to them,” said Udaka. Somebody gave a sharp laugh; the older bikkhus stirred uncomfortably.
“How can you meet God when God is invisible and ever-present?” Udaka asked. “If He is everywhere, you cannot meet God, and you cannot leave Him, either. So how many of you are seeking God right now, with all your hearts?”
This time a great many of the men sitting around the campfire raised their hands. “Take a close look at yourselves,” said Udaka. “You too are fools. I just told you that God is everywhere. How can you seek what is already here? If someone came up to you and said, ‘A thousand pardons, sir, but I am seeking this mysterious thing called air. Can you tell me where it is?’ you would mark him down as a fool, wouldn’t you? Yet you follow like sheep somebody’s word who told you that you must seek God.”
What Udaka taught instead was redeeming the soul, or atman. “Your soul is just as invisible as God, but it belongs to you. It’s your divine spark, hidden and disguised by restless desires. Your atman is always watching you, but you do not notice it. You notice your next meal, your next argument, your next fear. It is always drawing you closer to the divine, but you do not heed it. You heed a thousand desires instead. Be still and know your soul. Seek it, and when you meet your soul, seize it for yourself, because it’s worth far more than gold.”
Gautama, who had been disillusioned by the higher self, felt a sympathy for this new teaching. For one thing, it gave him time in seclusion, where he could meditate and sit in the cool silence that he considered his real home. Udaka knew that the other bikkhus held the new arrival in awe; they vied to sit next to Gautama because his mere presence deepened their meditations. The guru put Gautama on his right hand when the group next sat together, and this unspoken gesture was enough to raise him above even the most senior monks, who were not so holy that they enjoyed being displaced.
“Let them hate you, let them love you. It’s all a waste of time,” Udaka said indifferently. Gautama believed him. He’d grown up in a world torn apart by worse things than petty jealousy in an ashram.