“For, if created beings knew the fruits of giving as I know them, then, if they had but a handful of rice left, they would not eat of it without giving a portion to one yet poorer than themselves, and the selfish thoughts which darken their spirits would disappear from these. Be thine offering, then, gratefully accepted by the Order of the Buddha—a pure offering. For I call that a pure offering by which the giver is purified and the receiver also. And how does that take place? It takes place, Vasitthi, when the giver is pure in life, noble in heart, and the receiver is pure in life, noble in heart; and when that is the case the giver of the offering is purified and the receiver also. That is, Vasitthi, the purity of the supremely pure offering—of such a one as thou hast brought.”
Thereafter, the Master turned to Angulimala—
“Go, my friend, and have these presents placed with the other supplies. But first show our noble guests to seats in front of the temple steps, for from them I shall expound the doctrine to those who are present today.”
Angulimala bade the servants wait, and called upon us to follow him. First, however, we had all our flowers and also several beautiful carpets handed out to us. Then, conducted by our stalwart guide, we passed through the rapidly growing crowd, who respectfully made way for us, to the temple.
Here we spread the carpets upon the steps and twined garlands of flowers round about the old weatherworn and crumbling pillars. Then Medini and I picked a whole basketful of roses and strewed the petals upon the carpet at the top of the steps for the Master to stand upon.
Meanwhile the assembled people had grouped themselves in a wide semicircle, the lay-hearers to the left, the monks and nuns to the right, of the temple—the front ranks sitting on the grass. We also now took our places on an overturned pillar, only a few paces from the steps.
There were probably about five hundred people there, yet an all but absolute silence reigned in the whole circle, and no sound was to be heard save the fitful rustling and low whispering of the forest leaves.
XXXVI
Buddha and Krishna
The setting sun shot its sheaf of rays through the openings between the trunks, consecrating, it seemed, with a heavenly benediction, the silent and expectant company assembled in the depths of the forest; and, between the treetops, roseate evening clouds looked down in ever-growing luminousness, as though, floating out from the blue ether, a second assembly were gathering, recruited from the hosts of heaven.
The temple building, with its black and crumbling walls, absorbed this farewell blaze of sunshine, as a broken-down old man quaffs a rejuvenating draught. Beneath the magic of the red-gold lights and the purple shadows, its masses grew wonderfully animated. The jagged edges of the fluted pillars sparkled, the corners flashed, the snails curled themselves up, the stone waves foamed with froth of gold, the carven foliage grew. Along the stair-like projections of the lofty substructure, round about plinths and capitals, on the beams, and on the terraces of the dome-like roof—everywhere—a confused medley of strange and mystical forms seemed to be in motion. Gods came forth in a halo of glory, many-headed and many-armed figures with all-too-luxuriant and, often, greatly mutilated limbs, the one stretching out four headless necks, the next waving eight stumps of arms. Breasts and hips of the voluptuously limbed goddesses were unveiled as these came swaying nearer, their round faces tilted under the burden of the towering, diamond-bespangled headgear, a sunny smile on their full, sensuous lips. The snakelike extremities of the demons writhed and twisted, the wings of the griffins were spread for flight, grim masks of monsters, showing their whetted teeth, grinned horribly, human bodies swarmed, and, in and through the mad throng, to and fro, now over, now under, elephants’ trunks, the heads of horses, and the horns of bulls, stags’ antlers, crocodiles’ jaws, monkeys’ muzzles, and tigers’ throats reeled in a tangled mass.
That was no longer an edifice decorated with statuary. These were statues come to life, which, breaking through the ban laid upon them by the building, had freed themselves from its solid mass and would hardly tolerate it further, even as a support. A whole world seemed to have wakened up out of its stony sleep, and, with its thousands of figures, to be pressing forward in order to listen—to listen to the man who stood at the top of the steps, surrounded and overshadowed by the whole swarm of them, the long hanging folds of his robe bathed in a golden glow—he, the living, the one perfectly calm soul amid this restless and delusive life of the lifeless.
It now seemed as if the stillness of the assembly grew deeper; yes, it even seemed to me that the very leaves of the trees ceased to whisper.
And the Master began to speak.
He spoke of the temple, on the steps of which he stood, and where our ancestors had for hundreds of years worshipped Krishna in order to be inspired by the example of his heroic life to heroic action and suffering here on earth, to be strengthened by his favour, and finally to pass through the gates of death to his paradise of pleasure, and to enjoy the raptures of heaven there. But now, we, their descendants, had come together to hear from the lips of a perfect Buddha the words of truth, in order to learn how to lead a pure and perfect life, and, finally, by a complete victory over desire for the fleeting and perishable, to reach the end of all suffering, to reach Nirvana. In this way he, the Buddha, the Fully Awakened One, completed the work of the dreaming god; in this way we, grown up, completed what our ancestors had, with the noble enthusiasm of childhood, begun.
“There ye see,” he
