Ānanda looked up at the Buddha and asked him the question he had been putting off for days and days: “How can awakening come about?” The Buddha was tracing signs on the ground with a stick. He went on doing so. In a flat voice he said: “In many ways. Looking at a peach blossom. Hearing a stone strike bamboo. Hearing the drum announcing dinner. Walking on a bamboo stick. Looking at the forest and the mountains. Looking at yourself in a barber’s mirror. Falling to the ground in a cloister. Tying a noose around your neck. Pouring water on your feet and watching it being soaked up by the dry earth.”
The Buddha once said that Ānanda was like a house that leaked when there was a storm. The water that got in was women. The image of the delightful Janapadakalyānī, left behind in Kapilavastu, would come to him from time to time, when he was preparing the Buddha’s bed or meditating or going to look for water, and bring on the sharpest of pangs. They left him exhausted and vulnerable. The Buddha reminded him of their previous lives when Ānanda was an ass, Janapadakalyānī a she-ass, and the Buddha their master — a poor peasant who would goad them on from time to time with a stick. Such subtlety wasn’t enough. So the Buddha took Ānanda like a baby and flew up into the sky, showing him an immense forest fire. He pointed to the disfigured body of a monkey on a charred trunk. Ānanda looked away. They flew on. In some heaven or other — and how was Ānanda supposed to know which? — in a noble but abandoned palace, they saw a marvelously shapely Apsaras looking into the void. “She’s waiting for you,” the Buddha said. They flew on. They saw five hundred amazingly beautiful Apsaras. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” said the Buddha. “Janapadakalyānī looks like a monkey in comparison,” said Ānanda. “You’ll have them all,” said the Buddha. Then he added: “But for the moment you mustn’t leave the monks.” Ānanda wasn’t sure whether he had been rewarded or humiliated. In silence they flew back down through the heavens.
The Buddha knew Ānanda was wavering and vulnerable. He watched him from the corner of his eye as he busied himself with the chores. A feverishness in Ānanda’s eyes betrayed his turmoil. There was a witch’s daughter who show was mad about Ānanda. She asked her mother to throw some brilliant arka flowers on a brazier to attract him. Ānanda left the other monks like a sleepwalker. More than a woman, it was a flower he was following. A fog hid the rest.
Then the Buddha was forced to resort to the satyavākya, the “word of truth.” He wasn’t pleased that the absolute of the truth must come up against a sorcerer’s spells. Of course the true word would win, but it would be diminished by the clash. Truth does not compete with facts. Truth is not a tool. But the Buddha wanted to win Ānanda back. One evening, he saw him returning to the monks. He looked like a mule with saddle sores. Without a word he fell to the ground and slept for a long time.
“And women?” said Ānanda. “Don’t look,” said the Buddha. “But what if we see some?” said Ānanda. “Don’t say anything,” said the Buddha. “What if we do speak?” said Ānanda. “Be vigilant,” said the Buddha.
That life is “sweet” (madhura, deriving from madhu, “honey”) the Buddha announced when he was eighty years old, a few days before dying. It was the beginning of the rainy season. The Buddha said to his monks: “Split up and go your ways. Go wherever you have friends, in small groups. The land is prosperous toward Śalavatī. Around Vaiśālī there is famine. I will stay here with Ānanda. He will look after me.”
When they were alone, the Buddha was afflicted by a violent bout of sickness. He felt pains all over his body. Ānanda was in a state of constant agitation. Two questions echoed over and over in his confused mind: “What if the Buddha is utterly extinguished now? If the community is left without instructions?” All at once he realized he had asked the questions out loud. The Buddha replied: “What more can the community expect of me? I preached the doctrine without holding back.” And what he meant was. the esoteric no longer exists. Everything has been declared. All you have to do is listen. He went on: “I’m an old cart, vainly held together by thin belts. But even the diamond bodies of past Buddhas melted away. Even the gods of unconsciousness, who live for many kalpas, for millions and millions of years, die one day. Therefore. Ānanda, you must all stay on your islands, in your retreats — the islands and retreats of the doctrine.”
As soon as he was feeling better, the Buddha told Ānanda that he wanted to go back and see a few places near Vaiśālī that were dear to him. They reached a clearing that opened out toward a vast horizon. The Buddha asked Āuanda to stop. He had pains in his back again. Ānanda laid out the Buddha’s mat under a mango tree. Then he sat down next to him. The Buddha looked into the distance. He said: “Splendid and many-colored is the Island of the Jambū, and sweet the life of men.” They went down to Vaiśālī, to ask for alms. As they were leaving, the Buddha turned back, to his right. With elephant’s eyes, he looked at the city gate and smiled. “Why are you smiling?” asked Ānanda. “In twenty-five years I have never seen the Buddha turn to a city gate and smile.” “If a Buddha turns back and smiles, it must mean something. This is the Tathāgata’s last look at Vaiśālī,” said the Buddha.
There were three times in those last days when Ānanda omitted to ask a question. He did not ask the Buddha why man’s life is “sweet.” Another day, the Buddha three times remarked: “The interior of the Island of the Jambū is very pleasant.” Ānanda said nothing. Finally, shortly after the Buddha was feeling better, Ānanda heard him talk about the four “bases of magical powers” (ṛddhipādas), which, if developed, allow one to live for a whole kalpa, a whole cosmic cycle. Then the Buddha had added: “The Buddha now possesses those powers. Could he not, then, live for as long as the kalpa lasts? It would bring great good to the world, and the shadows would disperse. Gods and men would achieve peace.” Stubbornly, eyes steadily staring, Ānanda said nothing. It was his great, perhaps his only crime, certainly the only one he was reproached with, not just by the community of monks but by the Buddha himself. If at that critical moment Ānanda had asked the Buddha to exercise his powers and stay for a whole cosmic cycle, the Buddha would have stayed.
But why didn’t Ānanda say anything? He was possessed by Māra, who had ensconced himself in his belly. It was out of spite that Ānanda did not speak. “You did not grasp the sense of my words because you were possessed. I saw two horns on your head. Why did you let Māra get into your belly?” the Buddha asked him some time afterward. Those words buried themselves forever in Ānanda’s mind. Later, when he found himself alone before the monks, his inquisitors, still dressed in white before that huge splash of ocher robes, Ānanda admitted that he had been possessed by Māra. But then he added: “If the Buddha had stayed in the world for a whole kalpa, how could the Buddha Maitreya, who is to come after him, the venerable perfect one, ever appear?” Silence reigned among the holy gathering. Ānanda waited, terrified. A voice was raised: “Go back to your place. Repeat in their entirety the words you heard from the Buddha.”