“Impermanent, Tathagata!”
“And is the impermanent pleasant or unpleasant, monk?”
Rahula and I had worked on this particular question a great deal. When we had first begun (and for some time thereafter, to be honest), he had occasionally responded with, “Could not impermanence be pleasant, Tathagata?”
“No, Rahula. Change is painful in every case.”
“But what if things change for the better?” he would sometimes persist.
“That is not possible.”
“Would not the cessation of pain be positive change, Tathagata?”
“Truly understood, Rahula, pain never ceases.” (DP 11:147)
In front of the sangha, Rahula hesitated for a long moment, then called out in a strong voice, “All change is unpleasant, Tathagata!”
“And what is the goal of life, monk?” I demanded.
“Extinction, Tathagata!”
“Excellent, monk. Well done.”
21
As I mentioned earlier, at the same time that Ananda had entered my sangha, a second man, Devadatta, had joined too. Devadatta was Yasodhara’s brother, as well as my distant cousin. He was tall and lean with coal black eyes and a blank, even indifferent expression on his face.
I remember the first time Devadatta openly challenged me. I was telling the noble story of my interactions with a young woman named Kisa Gotami. “Kisa Gotami gave birth to a beautiful child, bikkhus,” I had told my monks, “whom she loved very dearly. One day, however, the child died quite suddenly and Kisa Gotami was distraught with grief. No one could comfort her, she carried her dead child around with her for days on end. Fortunately, bikkhus, I myself was passing her village at the time and, knowing of my reputation, Kisa Gotami ran up to me and begged for my help. ‘Please bring my dead child back to life, Tathagata?’ she pleaded. I informed Kisa Gotami that I could indeed bring her child back to life, but only under one condition: That she gather mustard seeds from every home in the village that had not experienced death. Tell me, bikkhus: What do you think happened at that point?” (MUS; THR)
“Every house Kisa Gotami went to had experienced death, Tathagata?”
“Correct, Sariputta. Very good. Yes, Devadatta?”
“I am wondering, Tathagata—what would have happened if Kisa Gotami had in fact found a house that hadn’t experienced death?”
“She wasn’t going to, Devadatta. I obviously knew that.”
“But with all due respect, Perfect One, not all houses have experienced death. There are newer houses, for instance, filled with younger families. What if Kisa Gotami had gone to one of those?”
I stared coldly at Devadatta. “You are missing the point of my story, Devadatta. The point is that once Kisa Gotami understood that all, yes ALL, houses experience death, she became enlightened.”
“I understand that, Perfect One, I am simply asking: Would you actually have been capable of bringing Kisa Gotami’s child back from the dead if for some strange reason she had found a house that hadn’t experienced death?”
I decided to turn things back on Devadatta. “A question for you, bikkhu: Suppose that you were wounded by an arrow smeared with poison and that your friends brought in a doctor to help you. Would you say to your friends, ‘I will not allow this doctor to help me until I know the name of the man who shot the arrow at me, whether he was tall or short, dark-or light-skinned, whether he used a long bow or a crossbow, what kind of feathers he used on his shaft, what kind of arrowhead he used?’ If you said these things, you would soon be dead, Devadatta. So too with your pointless questions.” (CV 1:426–32)
“I see.”
“No, Devadatta, I don’t think you do see. Honestly, trying to explain things to you can be like trying to describe the color of the sky to a blind man. The blind man can’t possibly understand the color of the sky. What he can understand is that he is blind and that his blindness is why he suffers. I am trying to help that blind man understand this but he will not stop asking me what color the sky is and it’s blue, alright, but does that mean anything to the blind man, no! Please understand, Devadatta, that there are many things I know that I do not teach you. What I teach you is like this one leaf; what I actually know is like all the leaves on all the trees in this grove.” (SY 56:21)
“And you say this not out of ‘ego,’ obviously, because, as you have so often told us, you have no ‘ego,’ right, Perfect One?”
I realized at that moment that Devadatta was a true son of filth, so consumed with dark, irrational hatred for me that he would, before long, try to kill me. I would need to be on my guard against him from that point forward.
That night it was quite warm and Ananda was fanning me. After a moment: “The truth is that Devadatta has made numerous attempts to kill me in previous lifetimes, Ananda.”
“That’s terrible, master.”
“Once, for instance, I was a large, beautiful monkey, a monkey-king, in fact, and Devadatta was a crocodile who wanted to eat me. (CMJAT) But do you know what I did, Ananda?”
“Tell me, master!”
“I jumped onto Devadatta’s head and used it to leapfrog onto the opposite riverbank. Oh, he was quite upset by that, let me tell you, Ananda!”
“You outsmarted Devadatta by jumping on his head, master!”
“Yes, it was splendid.”
“Are you going to do that again, master?”
“Am I going to do what again?”
“Jump on his head?”
“Am I going to jump on Devadatta’s head? Why would I jump on Devadatta’s head, Ananda?”
“Because … it worked so well in that other lifetime?”
“I was a monkey in that lifetime and Devadatta was a crocodile!”
“I’m so sorry, master.” Ananda continued fanning me for a few minutes in silence. Then I continued.
“The fact is that Devadatta wants to BE me, Ananda. I think that’s fairly obvious. And it’s not the first time either. Once, in a different previous lifetime,
