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| Tuesday, 4 May 2004 |
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Book review : The epic of the intellect The Life of Gotama The Buddha (compiled exclusively from the Pali
Canon) Reviewed by U. Karunatilake
As we know, the Pali scriptures comprise the orally recorded discourses of the Buddha handed down by the Arahats after the many convocations held over the four centuries before they were finally written down by learned monks at the Aluvihare monastery in Matale in our own island home about 100 BC. The original oral recitations of the Buddha's discourses were made and authenticated at the first Council of Arahants held at Rajagriha, capital of Magadha, immediately after the passing away of the Buddha at Kusinara in 483 BC. These Arahants among them had heard the discourses at first hand and participated in the events that led to each discourse of the teacher. Thus apart from doctrine they became an autobiographical collection of the many events in the life of the Buddha. From this, Earle H. Brewster has made his scholarly compilation. The story begins with the prophecy of the seer Asita as told in the epic poem Nalaka Sutta of the Sutta Nipata, about the destiny of the Bodhisatta just born as a prince of the Sakyas. "Then the Sakyas showed to Asita the child, their prince, who was like shining gold... beaming with glory and of peerless beauty." Having made his prophecy for the prince, of Supreme Enlightenment as the Buddha, the seer Asita wept. The Sakyans were puzzled and disturbed, and asked, "Might there be for us danger to the boy?" The seer replies, "Be without care. This prince will touch the height of perfect enlightenment. He will turn the wheel of the Dhamma exceedingly pure, with compassion for the welfare of the many. Spread abroad by him will be the holy life. But my life will soon be at an end. I shall not hear the Dhamma of the incomparable Buddha, therefore am I afflicted, woeful, and in ill plight." Having brought forth great joy to the Sakyas, Asita departs from the palace and exhorts his own sister's son, Nalaka, to seek out when the time comes, the Buddha, and lead the holy life under him who has arrived at perfect enlightenment. "He will turn the wheel of the Dhamma, exceedingly pure, with compassion for the welfare of the many." Nalaka follows Asita's exhortation and in time, seeks the highest wisdom under the Blessed One. From the Anguttara Nikaya the biography gives the Buddha's own comments on his youth... the luxury and beauty of his Father's palace, with its pools of red, blue and white lotuses, the silks from Benares, and the prince's own palaces for the summer, winter and the rains, cannot keep him from the disillusionment that the pride of youth is finally humbled by old age, sickness, and death. He sees the quest of the recluse who goes forth into homelessness. Next comes the Ariyapariyasana Sutta of the Majjima Nikaya, the Noble Search, where the Buddha himself relates. "While still a young man, endowed with the blessing of youth, black haired and in the prime of life, leaving my beautiful wife while she slept with her new-born son, my royal Father and Mother, who wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe and went forth from the home life into homelessness." In his noble striving for the Truth he goes to famed recluses like Alara Kalama and Udakka, disciple of Rama, masters their methods of concentration, but does not find the detachment that he seeks. So he leaves them and fares out alone, sorting out in his tireless intellect the conditioning of being, through becoming and birth, through craving and grasping, conditioned in turn by physical form, contact, perception and mind, retrogressing once again to birth, becoming, decay and death, grief, lamentation, sorrow and despair, the entire ill of being. Turning these things over in his mind he comes to Uruvela in Magadha, sees a serene, dense, grove, a clear flowing stream suitable for bathing. In this dense forest on the outskirts of villages, the Bhayaberawa Sutta of the Majjima Nikaya, gives the Buddha's own account of his conquest of the fear and dread of the forest, and the Maha Saccaka Sutta goes on to describe his rejection of self-mortification, where by strict fasting his eyes sank down in their sockets, scalp, shrivelled and withered, belly skin adhered to his backbone, hair rotted at its roots and fell, but he failed to attain any advance in knowledge and vision. Returning to life with some boiled rice porridge, he is deserted by his companions in self-mortification, and fares on alone in concentration, passing through the four jana states, mind purified, bright, unblemished, directed to a knowledge of past existence, seeing with the divine eye the arising and passing away of beings in accordance with their past actions. On the threshold of enlightenment, his mind is directed to the destruction of the taints, the taint of sensual desire, the taint of being and the taint of ignorance. He saw, this is suffering, this is the origin of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, this is the way to the cessation of suffering, these are the taints, this is the origin of the taints, this is the cessation of the taints, and this is the way leading to the cessation of the taints. With his mind liberated from the taints, he directly knew, "Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what has to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being. Thus in the third watch of the night, Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, darkness was banished and light arose. Supreme Enlightenment had been attained and he arose, a Buddha." Now follow the first events after enlightenment, from the Maha Vagga of the Vinaya texts. The First Sermon to the five ascetics at the Deer Park at Isipatana in Benares, "This monk is the noble, Eightfold Path, right view, right intent, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right endeavour, right mindfulness and right meditation, which leads to insight, which leads to wisdom, which conduces to calm, to knowledge, to perfect enlightenment, to Nibbana." Thus the five ascetics receive ordination from the Buddha as this first five disciples. Events crowd into the life of the Blessed One as in his sublime mission he traverses an area of India of about 300 by 250 miles exhorting lay disciples, ordaining monks, explaining his vision and knowledge to leaders of other sects, bring-acceptance of the Dhamma to King Bimbisara of Magadha, nobles of the realm, commoners and learned men, including those who become his two chief disciples, and Arahats, Sariputta and Mogallana. From the Samyutta Nikaya, Udana, Vinaya, Chula Vagga and Mahavagga, Brewster continues to relate events that are replete with action and drama as they are of personalities, human and divine, customs, beliefs, history and culture of a vast region stretching almost from the borders of today's Bengal to Benares, Sareta, and the borders of Nepal, all covered on foot by the Buddha and his monks in his ministry of forty-five years. The sending forth of the first missionaries, who according to a scholar of the cultural geography of the Central Asian Region, "established a series of isolated monasteries in Central Asia, and had continuous intercourse via Tibet between the scholar monks of Japan and China and those of India, Burma and Ceylon, the influence of Buddhism also spreading eastwards through Java and the Pacific Islands to Central America." This of course taking place over several centuries after the passing away of the Buddha. From the Vinaya texts and the Chulavagga, Brewster draws information on dissension in the Order, instigated by Devadatta a cousin of the Buddha, who with a number of other young men of the Sakyan clan had entered the Order. Many of these Sakyans, including the Venerable Baddhiya and the Venerable Anuruddha, mastered the Threefold Wisdom, and the Ven. Ananda, who ministered to the comfort of the Buddha, realised Stream Entry but Devadatta only attained certain psychic powers which inflated his Self-View and made him want to take over from the Buddha the leadership of the monks and lay disciples. Devadatta brings the evils of ambition, intrigue, conflict, and self-illusion into the story, and is finally banished into the doom of the dark worlds, but not before he has wrought the tragedy of King Bimbisara and his son Prince Ajatasattu tempted into patricide by Devadatta. The great story ends with the epic of the Maha Parinibbana Sutta of the Dhiga-Nikaya, the last months of the Buddha's life, aware that it is his last journey among his disciples. It gives a picture of the daily routine of the Buddha, and his meetings with many interesting people, his discourses to them, as he moves with the monks from Rajagaha capital of Magadha, through Nalanda, to Vaisali, and finally to Kusinara, where even on the threshold of Parinibbana, he does not cease to enlighten those beside him. The last words of the Tathagata are, "Behold now, brethren, I exhort you saying, "Decay is inherent in all component things. Accomplish earnestly!" So the Buddha passes away under the twin Sala trees, in the Sala Grove of the Mallas of Kusinara, on the further side of the river Hiranyavati, laying himself down on his right side, with one leg resting on the other, mindful and self-possessed. "The twin Sala trees were all one mass of bloom with flowers out of season, and all over the body of the Tathagata these dropped, and sprinkled and scattered themselves, out of reverence for the successor of the Buddhas of old." Brewster acknowledges all the translators of the literature he uses for his biography, the Rhyes Davids of the Pali Text Society, Oldenburg, F. L. Woodward, Major Strong, citing the Pali Scriptures used, the Mahavagga, the Culavagga, the Digha Nikaya, the Majjima Nikaya, the Samyutta Nikaya, the Anguttara Nikaya, Thera-Theri Gathas, the Udama, and the Buddhavamsa. It is necessary to mention that some of the contemporary writings that brought the Brewsters to Ceylon in the 1920s, especially accounts and photographs of the ancient Buddhist cities, and temple paintings, had appeared in the internationally circulated Buddhist Annual of Ceylon, edited by S. W. Wijayatilake of Matale who learned his Pali under Ven. Ratmalane Dhammaloka Thera at the Ratmalana Purana Vihare and his brother S. A. Wijayatilake, the well-known scholar and teacher of Western Classics who later became the Principal of Dharmaraja and Ananda. Some of Brewster's writings appeared in the Buddhist Annual even before he set foot in the ancient cities of Lanka where Buddhism had brought a new direction to civilisation with the mission of Arahat Mahinda, son of Emperor Asoka of India about 300 BC. It is very likely therefore that the young editors of the Buddhist Annual of Ceylon were meeting the Brewsters at Lake View in the 1920s long before S. A. Wijayatilake by sheer coincidence took up residence himself at Lake View, as Principal of Dharmaraja. He used the same extensive library room and study at Lake View, where the Brewsters worked on their stay and where D. H. Lawrence himself would have sat and written the accounts of his travels in a country he could not unravel. Such are the crossings and recrossings of the ways in Samsara. |
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Brewster's 'Life of Gotama the Buddha' is different from most
biographies of this unique teacher of gods and men because it traces his
life entirely from the Pali Canon, naming the Sutras from which they are
exclusively taken.
