Following the Buddha, a throng of monks was approaching Vaiśālī. There were one thousand, two hundred and fifty of them. They were dumbstruck when the Buddha led them into the Park of the Mango Trees, a vast area of thick and silent woodland. The monks lined up between the plants, like schoolboys. They knew the Buddha liked to stay in parks not far from the towns, but not too near either, with plenty of entrances, not too busy by day, quiet at night. They had been to many others, given as gifts to the Buddha by sovereigns or merchants. But none possessed the subtle enchantment of the Park of the Mango Trees, this place where they entered as if into their own home, where only the odd ribbon or bead dropped along the paths showed that someone had passed that way before them.
Then the Buddha began to speak: “Monks, be ardent, perfectly conscious and attentive. Āmrapālī, the courtesan, is coming. Her beauty is without equal in the universe. Yoke your minds and do not produce false notions. The body is like a fire covered by ashes that a foolish man walks on.” Āmrapālī, Guardian of the Mango Trees, was mistress of the park. To spend a night with her cost fifty kārṣāpaṇas, equivalent to a value of five dairy cows. People had immediately whispered to her the news of the arrival of the Buddha and his monks. “The Buddha is staying here among my mangoes,” said Āmrapālī, thoughtfully. Her son, Vimalakauṇḍinya, offspring of a regal love, had left her to become a monk. “Now I will see.” Āmrapālī said to herself. She chose the finest clothes she had and ordered her pupils — there were five hundred of them — to put on their finest clothes. She set out at once in a welter of subdued murmurings. The procession penetrated the park like a dagger plunged to the speckled hilt. How often they had laughed together along those paths, among those trees.
The Buddha was finishing what he had to say to his monks. Āmrapālī got down from her carriage and bowed at his feet. The one thousand, two hundred and fifty monks lowered their eyes, to protect themselves. “Why have you come?” the Buddha asked Āmrapālī. “Because you are venerated in heaven,” said the courtesan. She had sat down on a stool beside the Tathāgata. The Buddha went on asking her questions. Did she like her work? “No,” said Āmrapālī. “The gods ordered me to do it.” “Who ordered you to gather together your five hundred pupils?” the Buddha asked. “They are poor girls, and I protect them,” said Āmrapālī. The Buddha said nothing. The silence was total. The ocher patches of the monks mingled with the colorful patches of the courtesans. “That’s not true,” said the Buddha in a soft voice. Āmrapālī bowed and said she wanted to become a follower of the Buddha. Then she felt she could say no more. She put the palms of her hands together in a sign of farewell and mustered up the courage to say one last thing: “My only desire is that the Buddha and the community of monks accept an invitation to my house.” Saying nothing, the Buddha accepted.
On their way back to Vaiśālī, Āmrapālī’s pupils, who couldn’t keep their voices down now, ran into another, even more sumptuous procession, made up of the Licchavis, the eminent families of Vaiśālī. They were going to meet the Buddha. Everyone stood to one side to let them pass. Not so Āmrapālī. Her carriage and the five hundred pupils behind it refused to move from the center of the road. The procession of courtesans collided with the procession of nobles. Wheel against wheel, hub against hub. Āmrapālī’s carriage pressed on, while others tumbled down the bank. In the melee, the courtesan brushed right past the angry faces of the Licchavis. They asked: “Why are you behaving like this?” “I’ve got to get back in time to prepare myself to receive the Buddha,” said Āmrapālī scornfully. Then they offered her all kinds of treasures to concede the honor of the invitation to them. “Why should I accept?” said Āmrapālī. “Perhaps I shall be dead before tomorrow morning. I would only accept if the Buddha were to remain among us forever.” And she ordered two of her pupils to whip the oxen pulling her carriage.
Having finally reorganized themselves, the Licchavis reached the Buddha. The dignitaries got down from their carriages. Their servants stood behind them. They bowed and lay their gifts at the Buddha’s feet. The Licchavis women followed, heaping up precious fabrics. The Licchavis asked the Buddha to do them the honor of letting them invite him. The Buddha answered: “Āmrapālī has already invited me.”
Veṇuvana, Jetavana, Āmravaṇa, Kalandakanivāpa: these names punctuate the uniform, uneventful life of the Buddha, his dusty progress from place to place, begging bowl in hand. They are enameled islands, quiet paddocks furrowed by trickling streams. It was here that the Buddha loved to talk to his monks. None was more dear to him than the place he stayed last of all, Āmravaṇa, the Park of the Mango Trees, the most enchanting of all Vaiśālī’s seven thousand, seven hundred and seven parks. Āmrapālī begged the Buddha to accept it as a gift, out of pity for her.
Ānanda was the Buddha’s cousin. In his name we find “joy” (ānanda), a promise of happiness. He was preparing for his marriage to Janapadakalyāṇī when, together with six other young nobles of Kapilavastu and the palace barber, Upāli, he ran off to join the Buddha’s disciples. For twenty years he followed him, anonymous among the other faithful. Then the Buddha named him as his servant. From then on, for the next twenty-five years, they were never apart. Ānanda mended the Buddha’s cloaks. He went to find water for him. He introduced visitors. It is said he listened to eighty-two thousand statements of the Buddha. A further two thousand were told him by others. He came to be called Bahuśruta, “He who has heard much.” But he remained a “white robe,” never took ordination, like a student forever on the way. Later he would be severely reproached for this. He kept no account of the mind’s states and conquests, unlike many of those around him. One supreme privilege, denied to all the others, was enough for him: the constant company of the Buddha, for he was the only one who could see him all the time. The only one who stayed with him during those long periods when the monks would split up into small groups, scattered around desert places, with only the pelting of the rain for company as they awaited the Buddha’s return.
No one knew the Buddha as well as Ānanda did. Often he said nothing at all. “Was not the Buddha the Master? What need was there for me to speak?” he would say one day in his defense. All the same, he could be pushy too. More than once he had seen how the Buddha might refuse something twice and then agree at the third time of asking. Ānanda was accused, among other things, of having taken advantage of this. It is thanks to Ānanda’s insistence that women were admitted to the Order. “The doctrine would have lasted a thousand years, now it will only last five hundred,” said the Buddha on that occasion. But he did agree.
Ānanda never worried about always being on the way, because he was next to the Buddha, and he thought that for this reason alone he was nearer to the goal than anyone else. If others claimed to have reached it, what did that matter? It was better to be continually on the brink. This thought that had so long consoled him, filled him with terror when the Buddha told him that he would be dead three months hence. Ānanda wept. “I’m not ready yet, I never will be. And if I’m not ready living near the Buddha, how can I ever be when he is gone?”
It is true that Ānanda sometimes took advantage of his proximity to the Buddha. He could pass quite suddenly from his habitual silence to a petulant wheedling, of the variety he had seen other monks indulge in. On these occasions he was possessed by a demon who shook him like a puppet. One day he questioned the Buddha about what had happened after death to twelve people he had known. The Buddha gave prompt answers about each of the people concerned. He explained when they were to be reborn, how many times, and in what form. He was as calm as ever. Then he added: “Ānanda, it is not an unusual thing for a man to die. If you go asking questions of the Tathāgata every time a man dies, the Tathāgata will wind up a weary man. I had better reveal to you a chapter of the doctrine that will allow you to work out on your own what we can expect after death.” As the Buddha talked on, illustrating this new chapter of the doctrine, Ānanda’s mind was clouded by an immense sense of shame. The Buddha’s words flowed over him and evaporated into the air. He could never remember them.