“Wonderful, thank y—.”
“The Buddha’s webbed hands are elegant, as are his webbed feet! The Buddha is like a king, to be specific, a Goose King!”
“Thank you, Ana—”
“The Buddha is like a mountain, grand, lofty and monumental! Bow your head to the magnificence of Buddha Mountain!”
“Ananda, stop …”
“You could not possibly understand the Buddha’s greatness because it is far too vast for you to comprehend! Bow down to Buddha Mountain, I say again, bow down to this holy mountain of a thousand perfect suns!”
“Is that … it?”
“Do you like it, master?”
“I do, Ananda, thank you. But now we need to rest, my friend.”
“Did you like how I filled your bath with lotus flowers earlier this evening, master?”
“I did, Ananda, yes.”
“Did you like how I covered your bed with lotus flowers too?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice that I rubbed lotus flowers into your robe, to scent it with their delightful fragrance?”
“Yes, that was fine.”
“I could think of no other place to put lotus flowers, master, but now I am wondering, would you like me to rub some in your hair?”
“No, Ananda, and that’s enough, now stop talking.”
“Yes, master, I’m sorry. I love you, master.”
17
At this point in the story something unfortunate happened: Women took center stage for a while.
The first thing I had to deal with was several of my students struggling to resist, shall we say, “feminine charms.” (ATT 7:9) “I have heard, bikkhus, that some of you have been struggling with lustful thoughts,” I told them. “I wish to help you with this. In order to do so, I need you to please close your eyes. Good. Now please imagine a sixteen-year-old girl. Imagine that this girl has exquisite form and shape, that she is lovely in every conceivable way. Do you have this girl in mind, bikkhus? Excellent. Now please think of this exact same girl at ninety years of age. Ah, not so attractive now, is she? Crooked, isn’t she? Hunched and toothless, with milky eyes and thin grey hair, withered and blotchy, frankly a hag, isn’t she? Do you have this hag in mind, bikkhus? Good. Now please imagine her as not only old but also sick. Imagine her laying in a pool of her own urine and excrement and please tell me: Do you desire her now? If so, please imagine this sickly crone a few years later still. She’s dead now, bikkhus, a corpse dumped on the ground, three days dead, bloated and oozing fluid, picked at by both dogs and birds. Do you still desire her? How about a few days later when she’s nothing but a bloody skeleton? Or a few weeks after that when she’s a pile of bones? Or after that when she’s nothing but a pile of dust? What do you think of your lovely sixteen-year-old girl now, eh, bikkhus?” (SP; MHD 1:84–90)
As I walked among my monks, I continued: “The desire for sexual pleasure is like the desire which lepers, covered with sores and eaten by worms, feel to scratch their foul-smelling wounds, bikkhus. The more the lepers scratch, the more infected the wounds get, yet they continue to scratch anyway and why? Because they are unable to stop themselves. Listen to me now, bikkhus, and listen well: There is no disaster in the world worse than sexual pleasure, none.” (DP 14; MGD 1:504–08)
From the back of the group came a small voice: “Have you yourself ever had to overcome lust, Tathagata?”
“Of course I have, bikkhu, I understand lust extremely well. To illustrate, let me tell you a story about one of my previous lifetimes. I was a golden peacock, so beautiful that I was frankly disconcerting to others. One day I remember drinking from a pool, looking down and seeing my own reflection in the water and thinking to myself, ‘It’s true, I really am the most stunning peacock in the world. My beauty could literally be dangerous to others. I should hide myself away.’ Which I did, bikkhus—but sadly I was spotted by some greedy humans who quickly became obsessed with the idea of catching me. But they always failed to do so and do you know why, bikkhus?”
“Because you outsmarted them, Tathagata?”
“I did outsmart them, Moggallana, that is definitely true, but they also failed to catch me because I was holy and my holiness protected me. (I was also extremely charming, I forgot to mention that, but I was.) But—and this is the relevant part of the story for you, bikkhus—I had one weakness: Females. A human hunter took advantage of this weakness by tempting me with a peahen (the hunter actually taught the peahen to dance, which was undeniably impressive, just not something you see very often), but when I approached her, he quickly captured me. That’s right, bikkhus, the Buddha was captured.”
“What happened then, Tathagata?”
“I had a long talk with the hunter, Sariputta. We discussed right and wrong, morality in general, and before long he understood that killing me would be wrong. He renounced being a hunter, but that was not good enough for me; I told him that he needed to perform an Act of Truth (that’s how I put it, an Act of Truth) by freeing ALL birds, which he did. All birds have been free from that day forward, all animals have been free in fact—there has never been one single captive animal since then, thanks to me, bikkhus. Then in the end the hunter and I flew away together.” (GPJAT)
“The hunter could fly, Tathagata?”
“Oh yes.”
There was a long moment of silence before: “I’m sorry, Tathagata, but I don’t quite understand what harm lust did to you in that story?”
“I was captured, Mahanama. As great and holy and beautiful and charming as I was, I was captured and nearly killed and all because of an attractive dancing peahen. Now granted, in this particular story, it all turned out
