There was a silence. Then the teacher looked up and asked a question.
"Does anyone here know about Mahakasyapa?"
Several hands were raised. He pointed his finger at a little girl in a blue skirt and a necklace of shells sitting in the front row.
"You tell us, Amiya."
Breathlessly and with a lisp, Amiya began.
"Mahakathyapa," she said, "wath the only one of the di-thipleth that underthtood what the Buddha wath talking about."
"And what was he talking about?"
"He wathn't talking. That'th why they didn't underthtand."
"But Mahakasyapa understood what he was talking about even though he wasn't talking-is that it?"
The little girl nodded. That was it exactly. "They thought he wath going to preatth a thermon," she said, "but he didn't. He jutht picked a flower and held it up for everybody to look at."
"And that was the sermon," shouted a small boy in a yellow loincloth, who had been wriggling in his seat, hardly able to contain his desire to impart what he knew. "But nobody could underthand that kind of a thermon. Nobody but Mahakathyapa."
"So what did Mahakasyapa say when the Buddha held up that flower?"
"Nothing!" the yellow loincloth shouted triumphantly.
"He jutht thmiled," Amiya elaborated. "And that thowed the Buddha that he underthtood what it wath all about. So he thmiled back, and they jutht that there, thmiling and thmiling."
"Very good," said the teacher. "And now," he turned to the yellow loincloth, "let's hear what you think it was that Mahakasyapa understood.
There was a silence. Then, crestfallen, the child shook his head. "I don't know," he mumbled. "Does anyone else know?"
There were several conjectures. Perhaps he'd understood that people get bored with sermons-even the Buddha's sermons. Perhaps he liked flowers as much as the Compassionate One did. Perhaps it was a white flower, and that made him think of the Clear Light. Or perhaps it was blue, and that was Shiva's color.
"Good answers," said the teacher. "Especially the first one. Sermons are pretty boring-especially for the preacher. But here's a question. If any of your answers had been what Maha-kasyapa understood when Buddha held up the flower, why didn't he come out with it in so many words?" "Perhapth he wathn't a good thpeaker." "He was an excellent speaker." "Maybe he had a sore throat."
"If he'd had a sore throat, he wouldn't have smiled so hap-pily."
"You tell us," called a shrill voice from the back of the room. "Yes, you tell us," a dozen other voices chimed in. The teacher shook his head. "If Mahakasyapa and the Compassionate One couldn't put it into words, how can I? Meanwhile let's take another look at these diagrams on the blackboard. Public words, more or less public events, and then people, completely private centers of pain and pleasure. "'Completely private?" he questioned. "But perhaps that isn't quite true. Perhaps, after all, there is some kind of communication between the circles-not in the way I'm communicating with you now, through words, but directly. And maybe that was what the Buddha was talking about when his wordless flower-sermon was over. 'I have the treasure of the unmistakable teachings,' he said to his disciples, 'the wonderful Mind of Nirvana, the true form without form, beyond all words, the teaching to be given and received outside of all doctrines. This I have now handed to Mahakasyapa.' " Picking up the chalk again, he traced a rough ellipse that enclosed within its boundaries all the other diagrams on the board-the little circles representing human beings, the square that stood for events, and the other square that stood for words and symbols. "All separate," he said, "and yet all one. People, events, words-they're all manifestations of Mind, of Suchness, of the Void. What Buddha was implying and what Mahakasyapa understood was that one can't speak these teachings, one can only be them. Which is something you'll all discover when the moment comes for your initiation."
"Time to move on," the Principal whispered. And when the door had closed behind them and they were standing again in the corridor, "We use this same kind of approach," she said to Will, "in our science teaching, beginning with botany." "Why with botany?"
"Because it can be related so easily to what was being talked about just now-the Mahakasyapa story." "Is that your starting point?"
"No, we start prosaically with the textbook. The children are given all the obvious, elementary facts, tidily arranged in the standard pigeonholes. Undiluted botany-that's the first stage. Six or seven weeks of it. After which they get a whole morning of what we call bridge building. Two and a half hours during which we try to make them relate everything they've learned in the previous lessons to art, language, religion, self-knowledge."
"Botany and self-knowledge-how do you build that bridge?"
"It's really quite simple," Mrs. Narayan assured him. "Each of the children is given a common flower-a hibiscus, for example, or better still (because the hibiscus has no scent) a gardenia. Scientifically speaking, what is a gardenia? What does it consist of? Petals, stamens, pistil, ovary, and all the rest of it. The children are asked to write a full analytical description of the flower, illustrated by an accurate drawing. When that's done there's a short rest period, at the close of which the Mahakasyapa story is read to them and they're asked to think about it. Was Buddha giving a lesson in botany? Or was he teaching his disciples something else? And, if so, what?" "What indeed?"
"And of course, as the story makes clear, there's no answer that can be put into words. So we tell the boys and girls to stop | thinking and just look. 'But don't look analytically,' we tell them, 'don't look as scientists, even as gardeners. Liberate yourselves from everything you know and look with complete innocence at this infinitely improbable thing before you. Look at it as though you'd never seen anything of the kind before, as though it had no name and belonged to no recognizable class. Look at it alertly but passively, receptively, without labeling or judging or comparing. And as you look at it, inhale its mystery, breathe in the spirit of sense, the smell of the wisdom of the Other Shore.' "
"All this," Will commented, "sounds very like what Dr. Robert was saying at the initiation ceremony."
"Of course it does," said Mrs. Narayan. "Learning to take the Mahakasyapa's-eye view of things is the best preparation for the moksha-medicine experience. Every child who comes to initiation comes to it after a long education in the art of being receptive. First the gardenia as a botanical specimen. Then the same gardenia in its uniqueness, the gardenia as the artist sees it, the even more miraculous gardenia seen by the Buddha and Mahakasyapa. And it goes without saying," she added, "that we don't confine ourselves to flowers. Every course the children take is punctuated by periodical bridge-building sessions. Everything from dissected frogs to the spiral nebulae, it all gets looked at receptively as well as conceptually, as a fact of aesthetic or spiritual experience as well as in terms of science or history or economics. Training in receptivity is the complement and antidote to training in analysis and symbol manipulation. Both kinds of training are absolutely indispensable. If you neglect either of them you'll never grow into a fully human being."