Gautama bowed his head. “I understand.” But this gesture of humility disguised the fire he felt inside. In legend, other yogis had found immortality. They were great aspirants, and Gautama saw himself as nothing less. He chose a spot away from all shelter, sat down on a patch of rocks without clearing them away, and waited.
“IF YOU MUST GO, then go. I don’t need a reason,” said Assaji. He looked on Kondana with mild eyes that held no reproof. Kondana was the youngest of the five monks, but he had proved the toughest in the end.
“You already know my reasons. Look at him,” Kondana protested. He pointed at a gnarled carving lying on the jungle floor, which was so close to looking like weathered wood that at times he had to remind himself that it was actually a living person-Gautama.
“I can’t stay and watch him kill himself,” said Kondana. “It’s like watching a corpse decay while it’s still breathing.” He had already stayed longer than three of the five monks. None were impatient. Since vowing to follow Gautama, they had pursued enlightenment for five years.
“He never moves anymore. I wonder where he is,” said Assaji.
“I think he’s in hell,” Kondana said mournfully.
The years of austerity had caused many things to happen. They had all gone through experiences in meditation that they never dreamed possible. Assaji himself had visited the home of the gods. He had watched Shakti, the sinuous consort of Shiva, dance for him, a dance where every step shook the worlds and the tinkle of ankle bells turned into stars. He had conversed with the greatest sages, like Vasishtha, who had been dead for centuries. Only Gautama never told such tales, and after winter settled in among the Himalayan peaks, it was a matter of survival to force him to find a place where they could be more protected. Reluctantly Gautama agreed, but only on the condition that he would continue his austerities and that the five monks would make no contact with other human beings.
An emaciated man whose skin has toughened into cracked brown hide and who has subsisted on a tenth of the food given to a newborn baby is not a sight for ordinary eyes. Some people would consider him a fraud, others a madman. The superstitious few would call him a saint. “I do not know who I am anymore,” Gautama said. “But I am blessed, because it has taken me only five years to know who I am not.”
Now Assaji walked over to Gautama and with Kondana’s help set him upright again. He had fallen over during the night, and these days he was lost in a samadhi so deep that nothing registered from the outside world. It was up to the other monks to feed him by opening his mouth and placing a handful of chewed rice in it. They carried him to the river to bathe him and moved him out of the worst of the searing sun. All this made it appear that Gautama was helpless and paralyzed. But Assaji knew that appearances were deceiving. Gautama was on a quest the likes of which went back almost before time.
Kondana put on his sandals and tucked some dried berries into the corner of his shawl. “Will you come?” he asked Assaji.
“No.”
“You still think he has a chance-he might succeed?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
There was nothing more to talk about. Kondana bowed down before Gautama and placed a pink wild orchid at his feet in reverence. He no longer felt guilty over losing hope; he was too exhausted to feel much of anything. As he left camp, Assaji touched him on the shoulder.
“When the time comes I’ll send for you. The five of us should carry the body back to his people.”
That was the last word Assaji said or heard for the next three months. Spring came, and every day brought a shower of creamy white blossoms falling from the sal trees that blanketed the northern forest. Gautama had not altered. At times he showed more signs of life than at other times. Assaji would hear him at night walking out of camp for the call of nature, but that was rarely. The water level might dip in the gourd Assaji placed by his side.
What eventually broke was Assaji’s own body. He got sick alone in the jungle; for all he knew it was a sign. Wrapped in his shawl, he suffered the delirium of fever for five days and nights. When the fever broke, he shivered with cold sweat. Slowly his body returned to health, but with it came an unexpected change. Assaji grew hungry again. He craved a real meal and would scour the jungle floor for a dead parrot to take back and cook.
If I am reduced to unwholesome food, my quest is over, he thought. He wasn’t willing to sink to a subhuman level, no matter how enormous the goal of enlightenment might be. He decided to tell Gautama. One morning he crouched in front of his motionless brother, wiping away the dirt from his face with water from the gourd.
“I’m going,” he said. Gautama showed no signs of hearing him. “I must think about my soul. If you die and I let you, my sin is as great as murder. You shouldn’t be responsible for that. I’m ashamed to speak of sin to someone like you, but there’s no shame in it if you decide to come with me.”
Assaji’s guilt made him feel that he’d said too much already. Like the others, his faith had been worn down too far. Assaji lingered around camp a few more days. He piled fruit next to Gautama and a week’s supply of water. How strange that this immobile icon should still be alive and that behind his mask he was fighting such a huge battle. Face the wall like a statue and give them nothing. Assaji remembered Gautama’s rallying cry, but he couldn’t follow it anymore. He left camp before dawn without a sound.
Gautama didn’t hear him depart; he had heard nothing since he became aware-and then only at the farthest edge of his mind-that Kondana was gone. It didn’t matter. He had come to realize that he was walking the path alone. Two journeys had to be made without companions: the journey to your death and the one to enlightenment.
In his meditations he had arrived at heaven before the others, but he said nothing about it. There was dazzling beauty; golden celestial beings materialized all around him, but then he took a route the other monks would not. Gautama turned his back on the celestial beings. “I’ve already known pleasure. What good does it do me to feel more?”
“This is heavenly pleasure,” the celestial beings said.
“Which I can enjoy forever only after I die,” said Gautama. “Therefore it’s as good as a curse.” He walked away and asked to see more suffering.
Thus he arrived at the gate of hell, where Gautama saw the terrifying torments that lay beyond. But no demons came for him. Instead he heard these words: “No sin brings you here. Do not pass.”
He entered anyway, of his own free will. I’ve known fear, he thought. And fear is death’s chief weapon. Let me experience the worst torment, and then fear will lose its hold over me.
The phase of hellish torment lasted a long time because every morning his broken bones and flayed skin grew back. “Where is Mara?” Gautama asked. “I need to see the worst that he can do too.” But for some reason Mara hung back and never appeared. Gautama wondered if this was a trap, but after a while the torments became routine, and his mind grew bored. One morning the demons failed to appear, and then the scenes of hell disappeared, giving way to dark, motionless silence.
Gautama waited. He knew he had defeated every form of suffering he could imagine. His body no longer felt pain; his mind gave rise to not a single desire. And yet no sign came that he had reached his goal. Like an endless, calm night, the silence bathed him. Gautama decided to open his eyes.
At first there was only a dim sensation of being wrapped in a blanket, which after a time he realized was his body. He looked down. It was midday, but someone had positioned him under the jungle canopy where no sunlight ever penetrated. Surveying himself, Gautama saw two crossed sticks. Legs. Two dried monkey paws. Hands. He noticed a pile of rotting fruit beside him, covered with ants and wasps. Suddenly he realized that he was thirsty. He reached for his water gourd, but the last inch of liquid inside was green and filled with mosquito larvae.