Ārāḍa and Udraka (III)

Ārāḍa's teaching could not truly satisfy the bodhisattva's own heart; knowing it fell short of omniscience, he resolved to press on and seek something still more excellent.

He went next to the seer Udraka, who likewise held to the existence of a self; though his contemplation reached a still subtler realm, surpassing both perception and its absence,

this attainment of dwelling apart from both perception and non-perception still offered no true way out — for whatever sentient being reached it would, of necessity, still fall back from it in the end.

The bodhisattva, seeking a true way out, set Udraka's teaching aside as well, and, seeking still more excellent and wondrous path, advanced onward to Mount Gayā, where a settlement called the Forest of Ascetic Practice already housed five companions who had gone before him.

He found these five companions there, well disciplined in every one of their faculties, keeping the precepts and cultivating ascetic practice in that same forest.

Beside the Nairañjanā River, a place of deep and pleasant stillness, the bodhisattva settled in one spot there to give himself over to quiet reflection.

The five companions, recognizing his single-minded pursuit of liberation, gave him every devoted service with their whole hearts, honoring him as they would honor Īśvara himself.

Humbling themselves to serve him as their own teacher, never once leaving his side in his comings and goings, they were like true practitioners themselves, every one of their faculties turning in accord with their own hearts.

The bodhisattva, striving diligently by every skillful means to cross beyond old age, sickness, and death, devoted himself single-mindedly to ascetic practice, disciplining his own body until he forgot even to eat.

With a pure heart he kept to the fast in a manner beyond what any ordinary practitioner could endure, sunk in silent meditation for a full six years.

Eating but a single grain of sesame and a single grain of rice each day, his body wasted to the point of utter emaciation; yet in seeking to cross over what he had not yet crossed, his heavy confusion only sank deeper still.

For the path is accomplished through wisdom and understanding, and starving oneself is no true cause of it at all; though his four limbs grew ever more feeble, the clarity of his own wise mind grew only more radiant still.

His spirit grown ethereal, his body grown light and insubstantial, his renown and virtue nonetheless spread abroad everywhere, like the crescent moon at its very first rising, or like a kumuda lotus coming into bloom.

Throughout the whole kingdom, his surpassing renown spread far and wide, and men and women vied with one another to come and see him, his body worn to hardship like a withered tree, for the full span of six years.

Fearing the suffering of birth and death, and seeking single-mindedly the true cause of perfect awakening, he reflected to himself that this alone was not the way — that awakening comes, rather, from being free of desire and dwelling in quiet contemplation.

"It was not unlike what I once attained before, beneath the rose-apple tree — a state such as I had never before known — and I ought to recognize that this alone is the true path.

The path is not attained through a starved and wasted body; it requires, rather, the strength of the body itself to seek it — food and drink to nourish the faculties, so that the faculties, thus satisfied, allow the mind to settle at ease.

Once the mind is at ease, it naturally inclines toward quiet stillness, and this stillness becomes the very trap that catches meditative absorption; and it is through this absorption that the sacred Dharma is known, and the power of that Dharma attained, hard as it is to attain.

This quiet stillness, free of old age and death, foremost in being free of every defilement — every such wondrous dharma as this arises, in the end, from proper food and drink."

Having reflected on this meaning, he went to bathe in the waters of the Nairañjanā; but having bathed, when he wished to climb out of the pool, he found himself too weak to rise on his own, until a tree-spirit lowered a branch, which he took hold of with his own hand to pull himself out.

Now there lived nearby, at the edge of that mountain forest, a chief herdsman, whose elder daughter was named Sujātā; a Pure Abode god came to her and told her: "The bodhisattva is in the forest — you ought to go and make him an offering."

Sujātā, the herdsman's daughter, went joyfully to where he was, wearing bracelets of white shell upon her wrists and a robe dyed blue upon her body.

The blue and white set each other off in radiant contrast, like clear water flowing pure and deep; her faith rising within her, she bowed her head at the bodhisattva's feet, and reverently offered him a bowl of milk-rice, begging him, out of compassion, to accept it.

The bodhisattva accepted it and ate, and she thereby attained a visible fruit in this very life; and once he had eaten, all his faculties revived, and he became fit again to receive the fruit of enlightenment.

His body was restored to its former luster, and his renown grew ever more exalted still — like the ocean swelled by a hundred rivers flowing into it, or like the crescent moon growing brighter with each passing day.

The five companions, seeing this, were struck with astonishment and suspicion, thinking that his resolve for the path had faltered, and so they abandoned him and went off to choose a dwelling of their own elsewhere.

Like a man already freed, far removed from every one of the five great elements, the bodhisattva walked on alone, making his way to that auspicious tree, resolved that beneath it he would attain the way of perfect and complete awakening.

The ground there was broad, level, and even, covered with soft, lush grass; and as he walked with the calm, measured gait of a lion, the earth itself trembled beneath every step he took.

This trembling of the earth stirred a blind dragon, whose eyes opened at once in joy, and who declared that he had once beheld the buddhas of ages past, and that the earth had trembled in exactly this same way then as well.

Such was the honored weight of this great sage's own virtue that even the great earth itself could not fully bear it, and with every step his feet touched the ground, a deep, rumbling sound of trembling arose.

A wondrous light illuminated the whole world, bright as the morning sun; five hundred flocks of blue-green sparrows wheeled in circles through the sky to his right, and a soft, cool breeze rose and turned to follow him as he walked.

Every one of these auspicious signs matched exactly those that had appeared for the buddhas of ages past, and by this one could know that the bodhisattva was certain now to attain the way of perfect and complete awakening.

From a grass-cutter there he received a bundle of clean, soft grass, which he spread beneath the tree; he seated himself there with his body upright and at ease, crossing his legs in a posture that would not waver, his body coiled and fixed as firmly as a dragon's own — resolved that he would not rise from this very seat until what he had set out to accomplish was brought to its final completion.

As he spoke this true and solemn vow, every god and dragon in the heavens rejoiced together; a cool, gentle breeze arose, yet not a single branch or leaf so much as rustled in it, and every bird and beast fell utterly silent and still — every one of these signs showing that the bodhisattva was certain now to attain the way of awakening.