Read Online Miss Buddha by Ulf Wolf - Free Book Online Page B

body, you must not kill it, and
you must stay with it until its natural demise; meaning: Ananda now
had some living to do.
    He stayed with his parents in Stockholm for
a year or so, before they moved south to a small town where he had
the worst handwriting of any first or second grader two years
running. His inky, scribbled pages were held up by well-meaning (or
not so well-meaning) teachers as short, visual cautionary tales and
as warnings: if you don’t practice boys and girls, this is what you
might end up with; this to many shocked oohs and aahs, especially
from impressionable six- and seven-year-old females. Ananda,
rightly, took offense, and to get even never did acquire a legible
hand; it was not until the invention of the computer and its
smoothly cooperative keyboard that he felt empowered to communicate
in writing with the world.
    When he was eight, Ananda’s family—now
including a small sister—moved north again, though not all the way
to that land targeted by the evil Russian. Still, north enough.
Winters were cold and starry; summers cool with as much sun as
rain. All in all, several pleasant years in which to grow.
    So pleasant, in fact, that there were times
that Ananda chose to forget who he was and fell in with the
identity of his current garment. For he had always had a sweet spot
for the arts, especially music, and the 1960s shaped up to be a
very special time, music-wise, what with the Beatles and all those
who rode into prominence on their coattails, and what with the
growing use of mental stimulants like cannabis, something Ananda
tried and soon got very used to.
    Perhaps, he thought more than once, perhaps
he could wait until next life to look for Gotama. This was too much
fun. Far. And in all this fun Ananda drowned. For three years, as a
late teenager now living alone in Stockholm, Ananda did little else
than reveled in cannabis-magnified music. Almost as good as
Nimmanarati Heaven, what little of it he glimpsed now and then in
what had to be dream, surely.
    But all things are impermanent, and his
delight in the nearly boundless freedom to imbibe and listen did
wear thin, and slowly the true Ananda began to percolate to the
surface, arriving one raining morning with a rush of insight that
almost blinded the nineteen-year old boy.
    Looking back years later, Ananda knew it had
been a close call. He could as easily have drowned as risen. But he
didn’t drown, he did rise, and in that rising awoke again to the
reason for his visit to Earth: to find Gotama Buddha.
     
    Many years later, he had established that
Gotama was not on Earth; he had scoured it and would have
recognized him had he been here.
    Then, at his keyboard in his little cabin
one morning, the call. As clear as any voice whispered in
stillness, the wondering of Gotama Buddha: “Ananda, where are
you?”
    :
    “I waited for you,” Ananda said. “In Tusita.
I waited for you. When I was no longer sure you would return, I
returned to Earth to look for you.”
    “I know,” said Gotama.
    “Where will you be born?” asked Ananda.
    “In a place called Pasadena.”
    “I know of it.”

:: 11 :: (Ancient India)
     
    The following morning Ananda, who had not
slept much in the night, asked the Buddha: “Venerable Sir, you said
last night that the ocean can only be emptied drop by drop. Why is
this?”
    The Buddha nodded that he had heard.
Thoughtfully, he finished his morning meal of rice and mango, then
handed the empty bowl to his friend. “Sit down here, Ananda,” he
said, sweeping his open hand over the ground to his right, “and I
will tell you.”
    Ananda put the Buddha’s empty bowl aside,
and sat down. You could hear the breeze of myriad morning tasks
among the Sangha a little distance away and the morning calls of
many birds. The scent of dew and many plants rose to fill his
nostrils as he focused all mindfulness upon the answer to come—for
as with all other things the Buddha said, he had to remember it
verbatim: he was the