“They may think they enjoy children, but they are mistaken. What they are experiencing is not ‘joy,’ you see, but rather misery. I repeat, do not love your children, my friends, rather detach from them; detach from everyone beloved to you, in fact.” (RH)
“But what exactly is wrong with love, sir?” the stocky man continued.
“Love is nothing but a trap, my friend. (MJ 39: SZJ 21) Consider the following situation, if you will: You have a beloved. ‘How I hope my beloved doesn’t die,’ you think to yourself. Then, not long afterwards, ‘Oh, now my beloved is dead and I am so terribly sad.’ Cut off all your feelings for this person, however, and you will not fear their death, nor will you grieve it. For the man set free of love in this manner (and I am speaking now of love for a specific person obviously because it goes without saying that you should love all living beings in the entire universe just like I do), for this liberated man, there is no pain. ‘Let my beloved get sick and die, I feel nothing,’ is what he will think.”
“Are you saying that it is wrong to care for others, sir?”
“I am saying that it is right to care for yourself and to let others do the same.” (SY 47:9–13)
“I have a child, sir, a son,” interjected a second, taller householder. “It is very important to me that he be well and happy. I cannot understand what is wrong with that feeling.”
“Let me ask you this, friend,” I replied. “If your son was killed tomorrow, would you be sad about it?”
“I would be utterly bereft, sir.”
“And this is because you are attached to your son, correct?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But tell me, my friend, before your son was born were you attached to him?”
“Was I—? Well, no, because he didn’t exist yet.”
“So it was only once he existed that you became attached to him, is that right?”
“Ye-es.”
“But if he was killed then he would not exist anymore, would he?” (SY 42:11)
“What? I don’t …”
“My son Rahula could be slowly and horribly tortured to death and I would not even care. This is what you should aspire to, friends.”
The stockier householder piped up once again. “I for one quite like life, sir.”
“I’m sure you think you do.”
“No, sir, I do like life. I like sunshine, for instance.”
“Ah, but what about rain?”
“I like rain too. I like the cool water.”
“Ah, but what about scalding hot water?”
The taller householder spoke up. “You are the most negative person I’ve ever met, sir.”
I smiled, bemused. “I tell you that life is pain and love is a trap and that the only worthy goal is death, and you find these ideas negative?”
“I think life is wonderful,” the taller householder suddenly announced, and now he and the stockier man started going back and forth. “I love my wife, for instance …” “Yes, and our children and our little house …” “I love to eat …” “And to sleep and to bathe …”
“Shut up, you defiled imbeciles,” I thought to myself.
“I love to laugh,” the stocky man proclaimed. “I even love to cry sometimes,” the taller man added. Another man, small and wiry, joined in. “I like singing and dancing!” Then a fourth man: “I like being with my friends.”
“You are all delusional morons, all of you.”
The householders looked at me. “We all love being alive, sir. For whatever time we get.”
“Yes, we don’t want life to end, why would we want that?”
“Because what if this life is all there is? Why would we want to shut it down?”
“What I am telling you, my friends, is that the one thing that truly matters is pain.”
“But what makes you think that is true for everyone, sir, what makes you think it’s not just true for you?”
I stared at the householders for a moment, unsure how to even respond to such a ludicrous question. “Wicked men abusing good men are spitting up at heaven,” I finally said. “They’d better be prepared to be drenched in spit.” (SOA; SZJ 7)
The tall man looked at me, clearly surprised. “Are you saying that we are wicked men and you are a good man, sir?”
“I am not saying that I am a ‘good man,’ no, I am saying that I am a ‘perfect man.’”
“Is that really for you to say, sir?”
I rose to my full height and faced them all down. “I am worth sixteen times what any of you is worth.” And with that, I turned and walked away. (DP 5:70)
Later that night, as he finished massaging my scalp, Ananda looked at me nervously. “Master?”
“Yes, Ananda?”
“Do you remember when you asked me to more fully articulate your perfection?” (DG 14; ACC 3:118–24)
“I do.”
“I have written a story attempting to do so. May I read it to you?”
“That sounds lovely, old friend, go ahead.”
Ananda smiled, stood up. He closed his eyes and started reciting his story, speaking in a stiff, overly formal way and punctuating his words with self-conscious arm movements. “Hear me now! The Buddha is like a thousand suns, each one more perfect than the last! The Buddha’s eyes are large and pure, like two beautiful pools of flower-filled water! The Buddha’s teeth are white like rice and also they are perfectly even, very nice and close together with no unsightly gaps at all!”
“That’s charming, Ananda, thank you.”
“The
