The moon seemed to know that he had arrived, and he felt it bow down. I have waited. His gaze searched the sky, and these words seemed to come from everywhere, not just the moon but also the stars and the blackness between the stars. His heart began to swell.
I have waited too.
The sky bent down to envelop him. Now he understood why he had to become a nonperson. He had to be naked. Only in innocence does the mask fall away. So this is it, he thought. The truth. Gautama gave his heart permission to swell beyond the sky. He didn’t know what lay beyond, or how far he could go. He had found his freedom, and in freedom everything is permitted.
17
The sun rose, and Gautama found himself sitting on the soft, springy ground under the pipal tree. He got to his feet and tried walking. It was a strange experience-as he passed through the forest, the forest seemed to pass through him. Its breath mingled with his; its trees and vines extended from his body. He could feel the wind blowing through the swaying canopy overhead.
Gautama knew that everything had changed permanently. From now on, living in the physical world would be like dreaming. He could make things appear and disappear as easily as a dreamer does. A castle made of gold or a circle of angels around his head, stars exploding into bursts of white light or a deer nestling in his lap to sleep-they all appeared instantly at the hint of a thought.
Now he could sit under the pipal tree, silent and unmoving, and never return to the world. His journey was complete. But he still had a choice. To leave or stay?
Everyone from his past had given up on him long ago. And if he suddenly reappeared, how would he explain what he had become? The priests would certainly call him a fraud. Great souls are safe only as long as they stay put in the scriptures.
Gautama’s choice weighed heavily on him. Several mornings he felt that someone was thinking about him. Yashodhara. When her name came to him, Gautama saw her clearly. His wife was sitting alone in her room, mending a hem by the light of an open window. Gautama had seen her face many times during his wandering, but this was different. He was in the room with her, feeling her yearning, which was always for him. One person hadn’t given up.
Gautama thought of other people and found them as well. Channa was saddling a roan warhorse in the stables, and Gautama sensed that he was now master there; old Bikram had died. Suddhodana was asleep, alone with the drapes drawn. He was trying to escape a bad dream about an old battle.
Gautama could be anywhere and everywhere he wanted. Just by thinking of people, he could touch their minds. Not everyone would listen. Not everyone would feel his touch, but for a moment their troubles would ease. Is that what a Buddha did? Without warning, he started weeping. He was no longer husband, lover, or friend. He was a new Buddha, untried, wobbly, three days out of the womb. But he had no doubt that Gautama no longer existed.
The new Buddha arose, adjusted his saffron robe, and began walking toward the road, the same as on a thousand other days. Once he reached the road, he found it completely empty, even though the time was early morning, when farmers’ carts should have been trundling to market. The emptiness seemed even odder after hours had passed and still he hadn’t met a single wagon or foot traveler.
Buddha could be completely alone in the world. Why not? It was his world to do with as he pleased. He was the one dreaming it. Some skittish parrots overhead burst into flight as Buddha laughed out loud. This was outrageous! If a king ruled the world, he would run wild. He would tear it to shreds in anger, toy with it, wrap his body in its sensual delights.
Instead, he possessed the world as Buddha, so none of those possibilities came true. His powers flowed from the other side of silence, where the mind can make anything happen. For a little while the new Buddha enjoyed himself, pulling the sun through the sky like a toy cart, swirling the winds around the poles, shedding rain on a parched desert. This private diversion didn’t last long. Buddha’s world should have people in it whom he could care for. He recalled what Canki had said about a Golden Age-an age without suffering, where abundance was normal and scarcity forgotten in the dim past.
At that moment his vision was shattered by a scream. He saw a woman running toward him, her sari torn to shreds, her arms bleeding. In her panic the woman was blind to Buddha’s existence until she was nearly upon him. Then her eyes registered him standing there, still and calm.
With a cry she rushed to throw herself into his arms, overwhelmed with relief. When she was two steps away, he held his hand up in blessing. The woman stopped in her tracks. She quivered with terror, her breast heaving.
“No more fear,” Buddha whispered. “Give it to me.”
She dropped to the road as if her body had melted and began to weep.
“All,” said Buddha. “Give it all to me.”
The woman became very still; the crying had stopped. Buddha erased the images of terror from her mind. He saw a knife. Teeth like fangs. A necklace made of severed fingers. The images were nightmarish. With the slightest touch, he made them vanish. But one image wouldn’t melt away-the body of her dead husband. He lay in the dust of the road, his throat slashed.
The woman was touching Buddha’s feet now in supplication. Something inside her knew who he was. She gazed at him through her eyes and said, “Please.”
Buddha stopped himself from consoling her. He lifted the woman’s head and met her gaze. “It is done,” he said. She shuddered and fainted. After a moment, as Buddha stood motionless, a man rounded the corner driving an ox cart. Her husband. Buddha gestured for him to approach, and he sped up. Seeing his wife on the ground, the husband jumped down in alarm.
“What happened?” he cried.
“It will be all right. Let’s put her in the cart.” The two of them gently laid her in the straw behind the driver’s seat. The husband had some fresh water in a goatskin bag; he wanted to splash it on her to reassure himself that she was all right. Buddha stopped his hand. “Let her wake up on her own. She may be surprised to see you, but calm her with loving words. You understand?”
The farmer nodded. By imagining the farmer alive and well again, he had erased the whole attack. It wasn’t difficult. He hadn’t raised the husband from the dead. All he did was say no softly to himself. The event he refused to accept no longer existed. Buddha smiled at the husband, and when he had nothing more to say, the farmer thanked him and left.
Power over time and fate. Buddha mused on this as he walked. Does a Buddha reverse every harm? Even if he had that power, did he have the right to change karma on a whim?
In a short while he saw the first huts of a small village. As he approached, people came out wearing suspicious and fearful looks. Some carried pitchforks and rusty swords. They glared as Buddha passed, and in each mind he heard the same word: Angulimala. He soon realized that this was the name of someone they all feared. A killer. A madman. A monster.
Buddha continued to the local temple, whose tiled roof was the highest point in the village. In the shadowy cool of the inner sanctum he saw an old priest cleaning the altar of faded flowers and burnt incense ashes. He approached.
“Namaste.”
The priest barely acknowledged him. Remote as this temple was, he maintained the air of a Brahmin. Instead of praying beside him, Buddha sat cross-legged before the altar and waited. The old priest threw a few fresh flowers onto the Shiva statue and turned to leave.