Read Online Miss Buddha by Ulf Wolf - Free Book Online

what are you doing, Gotama?”
    “I am preparing to return.”
    “I gathered as much. When are you
coming?”
    “I will be born on the fourth of January
next year.”
    “This is certain?”
    “Yes, Ananda, this is certain.”
    “Where are you now?”
    “I am in the Tusita heaven.”
     
    Ananda leaned back, and read the laptop
display of what he had just written. Then he saved the document,
arose, and went into his small kitchen: it was time for his morning
apple.
    Chewing each bite well to make the small,
sweet meal last, and looking out the window, out at the trees and
the still river below though seeing none of this, Ananda recalled,
again, Gotama Buddha’s passing and the terrible darkness that had
all but drowned him with its grief despite his clear vision that
this was precisely what the grief meant to do. And knowing this, he
managed one more breath of air. And another.
     
    And then, instead of drowning, Ananda
gathered himself and rose. Now that his friend had gone, only one
mission remained: to preserve the Dhamma.
    That, and to see to his own liberation.
    Once the funeral ceremonies were over,
Ananda went to his friend Kassapa—an arahant these many year—and
asked him for advice.
    “We must gather soon to recite the Dhamma,”
Kassapa said. “But before then, you must attain arahanthood. Go to
the Kosala forest, live, dwell, and meditate in solitude there.
Find me once you’ve found liberation.
    Ananda did as Kassapa suggested, but word
soon spread that the Buddha’s attendant was living nearby, and
before long Ananda was inundated with visitors.
    Day and night Ananda would console lay
disciples about the Buddha’s passing, and he rarely, if ever, had a
moment to himself.
    As legend has it, a forest deity, concerned
about Ananda’s spiritual progress and seeing how he could never
attend to himself, advised him to take himself deeper into the
forest, beyond reach of the many, and focus entirely upon his own
enlightenment.
    Ananda, agreeing with the deity that, yes,
something must be done, took this advice and disappeared deep into
the forest.
    Even now, however, left to himself, and
while meditating constantly with only a few hours a sleep a day,
Ananda could not overcome his lasts fetters and attain
arahanthood.
    He was nearing despair when a messenger from
Kassapa, now the leader of the Sangha, found him to say that
Kassapa had called the council of monks to recite and strengthen
the Dhamma. Ananda was to come, but only if he had attained
arahanthood.
    “Where?” asked Ananda.
    “In Rajagaha.”
    “When?”
    “By the next full moon.”
    The fading sliver in the western sky told
Ananda that this was only a little over two weeks away.
    “What if I don’t reach the other shore?”
asked Ananda.
    “Then don’t come,” said the monk.
    “But I am the Guardian of the Dhamma.”
    “Then come.” With that the monk bowed and
turned.
    Ananda now saw that he must attain
arahanthood, not only for himself, but for the sake of the Dhamma,
and with renewed urgency he thrust himself into the task with a
resolve equal to the Buddha’s own.
    So it was that the day before the first
council of Buddhist monks, Ananda, through clarity of eye burnished
by urgency, finally severed the final strands that anchored him to
samsara—the seemingly endless cycle of birth and rebirth—to finally
reach Nibbana for himself.
    Legend has it that Ananda, in order to
demonstrate to one and all that he was indeed an arahant and so was
to be admitted, arrived at the council through the air.
    He was admitted.
    The next many months saw, first, Upali—the
Guardian of the Vinaya, the Sangha Rules as laid down by the
Buddha—recite the Vinaya to the council, after which Ananda was
asked to recite the Dhamma—now consisting of the Sutta Pitaka—the
basket of Suttas, the Buddha’s teachings. Individual portions of
both the Vinaya and the Dhamma were assigned among the five hundred
monks attending, each charged with the duty