Thus have I heard:\u00a0 On a particular day, the Lord Buddha had taken rest in the park of the palace of the King of Ayodhya when he was approached by two foreigners of strange language.\u00a0 Both men were old, and as different from one another as both were from the Lord himself.\u00a0 Each with his interpreter approached the Lord and made obeisance to him, sitting down to one side.<\/p>\n
The first man’s hair was short trimmed, still dark, although he was older than the Lord himself.\u00a0 He had round eyes and a prominent nose, yet his face was fair, clean and strong like that of a youth.\u00a0 He had a black beard, squarely cut, oiled and perfumed so that it glistened.\u00a0 Robes he wore were light but impressive, trimmed with gold lace.\u00a0 These, we were told were the common look of a prominent man of Persia, an officer of the kingdom of the Medes.\u00a0 Yet there was no hint in the man of opulence or vanity.\u00a0 His dark eyes shone with a clarity of vision and a kind of open delight, an expectation of sight as much as an awareness of his surroundings.\u00a0 We took it to be a sign of his interest in the teaching of the Lord Buddha.\u00a0 But we were wrong.<\/p>\n
The other man was from the northern kingdoms, the empire of the Chou.\u00a0 In contrast to the first man, this one wore simpler robes, indeed apparently because of the heat, he seemed to wear only the undergarments of his dress.\u00a0 He was heavier than the first man, more ruddy from sun and enjoyments.\u00a0 His dark Asian eyes glistened with a different kind of delight, a kind of enjoyment of the present.<\/p>\n
For a time, there was banter of speech as each of the stranger’s interpreters introduced the two.\u00a0 They were Lao of the Chou and Belteshazzar of the Medes.\u00a0 They themselves, we were told, had been strangers until only days prior, when they had met fortuitously on their travels.\u00a0 They had discovered, said the jolly Northerner\u2019s interpreter, a common love for thought and concern for life, and for many nights they had worn their interpreters weary with discussion.\u00a0 For discussions such as these had were heavy labor for any interpreter.\u00a0 But they had also, in those days, heard of the Lord Buddha, and intrigued by the legends had followed the trail to Ayodhya.\u00a0 It was fortunate indeed for them that Tathagata was so far west.<\/p>\n
All this the Lord Buddha heard without moving.\u00a0 His constant breathing in and out, his calm and placid face showed neither recognition nor concern for these two.\u00a0 Of the Asian, Lao, certainly there was no sign of greatness, but the Persian, surely, wore the robes and carried himself in the manner of a dignitary.\u00a0 And still the Lord made no motion of honor or admission.\u00a0 For us, this was fairly common, as the Lord had often received kings, always without recognition of their glory.\u00a0 Yet this one, from so far away, and with his strange eyes, seemed different.<\/p>\n
But the Asian spoke first.\u00a0 “We have heard, Sir,” he said with a faint bow and a broad smile, “that you are one awakened to the truth of things.\u00a0 We, too,” here he gestured to the other man, “my new friend and I, have learned much of the way of things, though we seemed not to agree on what that way might be.”\u00a0 At this the man paused, seemed indeed to giggle to himself, as his interpreter clarified.\u00a0 “But come, new friend from the Sakya, tell us the truth.”<\/p>\n
For us, the disciples of the Lord, the man’s demeanor seemed terribly inappropriate.\u00a0 He had asked to hear the Lord’s Dharma, yet he laughed and smiled while our Lord sat quiet and serene.\u00a0 It was as if the Awakened One’s transcendence of the world had not been palpable.<\/p>\n
Yet still, the Lord spoke.\u00a0 His eyes opened slowly, and with gentle grace he raised his hands to teach, counting his doctrines from finger to finger.\u00a0 “All things are impermanent,” he intoned, without a rising of voice or a flicker of emotion.\u00a0 “All things merely arise and pass, and all that arises also decays.\u00a0 Thus,” and he counted the doctrine, “nothing has substance or essence in itself, not the flower, which withers with the morning sun, nor the stone that stands beneath a thousand suns, nor even the sun itself.\u00a0 Above all, I have seen that there is no substance to the self, the soul, the man, but that we, too, are but the flicker of a flame, a burning wick that dances for a night and is gone, yet never the same flame for two moments.”\u00a0 He paused and counted.\u00a0 “And so all life is sorrow, all life is dissatisfaction, the unhappiness of those who cling to life and seek its fulfillment.\u00a0 And as we cannot change the transitoriness of time, so we must change only that which we contribute to our sorrow, namely our own desire.”<\/p>\n
Both listeners were behind the sermon, as translators struggled with the difficult but profound secrets of death and rebirth.\u00a0 Others among the bikkhus<\/em> who surrounded the Lord lent their voices where they knew foreign words, and for a time a cacophony seemed to swallow the group.\u00a0 Throughout the noisy struggle of understanding, the Asian Lao smiled, then frowned, then clapped his hands or laughed aloud.\u00a0 The Persian, ever more dignified, yet so strangely aware, pursed his lips and squeezed his brow, nodded perhaps as he saw the reason of the teaching of the Sage of the Sakyas.<\/p>\n Yet it was the Northerner, Lao, who spoke.\u00a0 “Ha!” he exclaimed quite improperly.\u00a0 “I followed your wisdom well where you spoke of impermanence and change,” he prefaced, “but can hardly agree that the result is sorrow and dissatisfaction.”<\/p>\n Lao laughed again, and many of the bikkhus<\/em> were taken aback by his audacity.\u00a0 Still, I for one could see the happiness in his eyes and heard in his laughter not the mockery of the worldly unbelievers but a kind of jolliness I had not known for many years.\u00a0 His eyes sparkled as his gaze swept his surroundings.\u00a0 I felt his delight a moment, and then felt the guilt of worldliness.\u00a0 I looked to the Lord Buddha; his eyes were shut, quiet, unperturbed.<\/p>\n Others, however, were perturbed.\u00a0 Sariputra, in fact, spoke with some strength in his voice and urged the stranger to respect.\u00a0 “This one, sir,” he said with struggling control, “is the Awakened One.\u00a0 Do not disrespect the Sakyamuni.”<\/p>\n I believe I might have defended the happy Asian myself, but the Persian spoke first.\u00a0 “You must realize, sir,” he said to Sariputra, “that this man, too, is a great Sage, known in his own land as a master teacher.\u00a0 Do not disrespect him.”<\/p>\n The Master Lao, as I began to call the happy man in my thoughts, got the interpretation from his translator and beamed at the Persian broadly.\u00a0 Yet he also waved his hand up and down as if to shoo him away, and he began to laugh.\u00a0 “What are honors to us, sir,” he called out.\u00a0 “We old men have all seen that those with the greatest honors often die young, princes thwarted by their brothers, kings assassinated by their ministers.\u00a0 Better the simple and debased than the complex and elevated.\u00a0 Kings and herdsmen all become dust, and from dust the food of kings is grown.”<\/p>\n All this was translated, with the interpreter himself nodding as he understood the message of the Master of Asia.\u00a0 And there were murmurs among the bikkhus<\/em>, as they recognized the ideas for something very like the message of their Lord Buddha.\u00a0 And yet it was somehow more worldly, and strangely appealing.<\/p>\n When the translation was done, I thought the Persian would speak, but the Lord Buddha inserted himself, spoke quickly as I had never seen before.\u00a0 “Life,” he put in, but then paused and settled again into the teaching mudra<\/em>, “is suffering.\u00a0 But suffering is itself caused by our desire, and our desire can be conquered.\u00a0 Thus can life be conquered and release from life and the cycle of lives attained.”<\/p>\n The bikkhus<\/em> sighed as the translators began.\u00a0 We knew the message, the Truth, and it rang clear and hopeful to our ears.\u00a0 But the Asian master shook his head at last.\u00a0 “But if life is change, then suffering, too, changes, and so the two, suffering and joy, flow and revert to one another.”\u00a0 Master Lao paused and his smile disappeared into a seriousness I had not expected.\u00a0 I glanced to the Lord Buddha, whose hand had risen to the teaching mudra<\/em>.\u00a0 But Master Lao continued on, not irreverently, but with an assurance of insight I found warm and compelling.\u00a0 “The changes of time are not bad,” he said, “for each motion finds balance in another.\u00a0 And behind them both is the great pattern, the Way of Heaven.\u00a0 For from nothing is the Way, and from the Way is the balance of two, and from the balance of two come the ten thousand things.”\u00a0 Here at last he paused and he again beamed broadly.\u00a0 “And the 10,000 things are always in harmony.”<\/p>\n As the Asian master finished, I felt a smile grow upon my face from within, a strange jollity like the one he so freely flowered.\u00a0 I looked around myself with this new glow and saw that some of the other bikkhus<\/em> also were smiling, and some almost laughed aloud.\u00a0 Yet I quickly realized that this was wrong, that this worldliness seemed very unlike the behavior of a true renouncer.\u00a0 I bowed my head and looked shyly at the Enlightened One, who sat still and quiet, unmoved and unperturbed by the world.\u00a0 I was ashamed.<\/p>\n Then the Lord spoke again, quietly and without rancor, almost as if no other Master were present.\u00a0 “Bikkhus<\/em>,” he said, “it counts little for a true monk to seek the permanent among the transient.\u00a0 What is the Way but the Dharma of the Buddhas?\u00a0 What is the path but the 8-fold path that leads to equanimity and peace.\u00a0 And why?\u00a0 Because there is no speculation in the teaching of the Buddhas, no guesses about higher harmonies.\u00a0 Know your own mind and your own world, and see that it arises and falls.\u00a0 This is your meditation; this is your awakening; this is the way beyond life, death and rebirth.”\u00a0 The Holy One paused, and the translators and the monks struggled through the words.<\/p>\n And when the translators had spoken, there were murmurings among the bikkhus<\/em>, but the Asian master said nothing.\u00a0 Indeed he seemed for the first time almost impatient, perhaps only because he was heavy of frame and was feeling the weight of his sitting.\u00a0 But of a sudden, the smile was less and the words were simpler.\u00a0 Then, just as suddenly, he waved a meaty hand at the Persian and spoke in his singing language.\u00a0 And as the Persian’s translator whispered, the Pali speaker translated, “Come, Belteshazzar, what have you to say to all this?”<\/p>\n The Persian paused, as if listening to the wind, and then spoke in careful words.\u00a0 His discourse was long, but he paused for the translations at appropriate moments, smiling at the speakers as they struggled for words in the languages of the Arya and of the Chou.\u00a0 He said something like this:<\/p>\n “Honored One, I was not born into this luxury, but was taken as a slave when still a boy.\u00a0 I knew prison and the promise of death.\u00a0 Then, by the power of the Most High God, I knew insight and escape and the pleasure of emperors.\u00a0 By the wiles of men and the vicissitudes of time, I knew betrayal and punishment and execution.\u00a0 So the change, of which you speak, I know well.\u00a0 Indeed I know the changes of time very well.<\/p>\n “For by the power of the Most High God, I have seen the way of time and worlds, the end of ages and the coming of the Holy One who shall redeem my people and be a blessing promised to the earth.\u00a0 By the power of the Most High God, I have seen mysteries no man could fathom, yet knew them inescapably as truth.\u00a0 For both realities, the Way of time and the knowledge of the soul, are the work of the Most High God.<\/p>\n “So yes, we know that life is quickly gone by, and that the world melts away before us, like snow before spring sunshine.\u00a0 For ‘all flesh is grass’, as prophets and poets have declared, and their words are trustworthy and true.\u00a0 Yet the prophets and poets also tell us that the skies declare the glory of the Most High, and that our own lives are God breathed.\u00a0 How glorious this world and its being, as you have said, Master Lao.\u00a0 Yet how torn and shattered by disobedience and calamity, as you have seen, Honored One.\u00a0 But my people, from the first Fathers to this day, have seen the rise and fall of life and have understood it to be the plan of the Most High God, whose ways are not merely a heavenly harmony, but are the plan of salvation for us all.\u00a0 Behold the kingdoms that rise and fall!\u00a0 Hark, the words of life and death that come by the prophets!\u00a0 Look, for the time is coming when the Holy One Himself will sit on the thrones of the nations and call all people to Himself through His Anointed One.\u00a0 This is the way of the Most High God.”<\/p>\n As his speech ended, the translators mumbled and stuttered to explain, but the declarations seemed less like a sage’s understanding than the declarations of a priest — a priest or a madman.\u00a0 Yet this man’s eyes shone clear and looked at each of us around the circle, as if he saw both a distant vision and the gaze of every man.\u00a0 Mutterings around the circle of bikkhus<\/em> suggested confusion, an uncertainty of what these words could mean.\u00a0 But I felt a wonderment and attraction, like an invitation to a banquet that was neither the enjoyment of this world nor its denial, like the promise of the company of friends.<\/p>\n But the Master of Asia spoke in response, smiling with regained mirth as he waved the Persian down.\u00a0 “Gods and gods,” he said, “is something we know well.\u00a0 But the gods have little concern with life, and we do well merely to keep them happy and distant.”<\/p>\n And my Lord Buddha, too, spoke in response.\u00a0 “Truly the gods themselves seek this Dharma of the Buddhas,” he said.\u00a0 “They, too, gather in these ranks to find peace and liberation from the three realms.\u00a0 The gods themselves are bubbles in the air, here for the moment and then gone to rebirth and redeath.”<\/p>\n With the translations done, the Persian nodded.\u00a0 “Yes,” he said, “I know these gods.\u00a0 But I speak not of these things.\u00a0 For beyond the gods there is the God of Gods, the one eternal creator of worlds and times, whose breath formed the sun and stars that are the ‘gods’ of the nations.\u00a0 And this one eternal God is called I AM, for He alone is the permanence of eternity, and the harmony of justice and love.\u00a0 And I have seen his way — not my own path of deliverance, nor the pathway of the stars of heaven, but the Lord God’s mighty hand in the history of the nations.\u00a0 And He shall draw all peoples to Himself until every land and every nation has heard His voice.”<\/p>\n To this, there was little to answer.\u00a0 For what visions of other worlds would the Master Lao claim?\u00a0 And the Lord Buddha himself insisted there was no use in such visions.\u00a0 But I, somehow moved like a sail billowed by an unseen wind, spoke.\u00a0 I spoke.\u00a0 I spoke when the Buddha was silent.<\/p>\n “But reverend sir,” I whispered, “I have heard that among the Persians, as among the Arya and the Asians, there are many gods.\u00a0 How can there be one that is ‘Most High’?”<\/p>\n And the Persian noble met my gaze with his dark eyes and smiled.\u00a0 “Did I not say, young one,” he said to me, “that I was taken a slave?\u00a0 As a boy younger than yourself, my land was conquered by the Babylonians, and by the conquering masters I was taught the ways of the Persians’ gods, commanded to eat their foods and required to perform their sacrifices.\u00a0 But I refused.\u00a0 For there is one God, beyond and above all created things that the nations take to be gods.\u00a0 And Him alone must we worship.\u00a0 For the God Most High hears us, moves his hand and his breath among us.\u00a0 Thus He is God beyond the gods, yet God who deals with the worlds and nations of men.”\u00a0 Thus he seemed to end his declaration, but then added, “As he deals with each man’s soul.”<\/p>\n I felt silenced, and in that pause, as the translations died away, the Persian again took on a distant yet worldly gaze.\u00a0 He looked off to the west and pointed as if we could see his vision.\u00a0 “You see,” he said, “I come from a people called by the One God to know Him uniquely, and to hold fast to the worship of the one God, whatever the nations may do.\u00a0 I come from a people called since the great Patriarchs to know the Most High God and to speak His name to the nations, whatever they may do to us.\u00a0 And for this, we are held to a higher standard of holiness, a standard we often fail to maintain.\u00a0 Yet in the Lord’s mercy and in His glorious plan for the redemption of the world, there is ever a remnant, ever a faithful few that know the eternal Lord God and keep His ways, whether in peace or in war, whether praised by the nations or pursued by their armies, whether raised to the status of a king,” he paused and smiled to himself, “or fed to their lions.”\u00a0 He looked at me again and almost winked.\u00a0 “I, Belteshazzar, have been both,” he said.<\/p>\n It seemed to me there was little to say about this Persian slave’s God, and about the wonders he claimed to have seen.\u00a0 But the Master of Chou seemed undaunted.\u00a0 “Kings are fed to lions,” he said in the singing tongue of Chou, “as lions are fed to flies.\u00a0 Flies are food to poultry and poultry is brought to the plates of kings.\u00a0 Such is the Way of things.”<\/p>\n And then the Lord Buddha spoke: “Nothing is eternal,” he said, “whether gods or souls or the Way of Heaven.\u00a0 And only in this knowledge, in this teaching of the Buddhas, is there freedom.”<\/p>\n I heard these words of the Buddha, but for a time I could not look to the Enlightened One.\u00a0 Somehow I knew what I would see there, and simply in that moment did not want his peace and equanimity.\u00a0 I did not want merely to let the Persian’s God rise and fall in my consciousness, as if His disappearance from my mind would be the same as His disappearance from reality.\u00a0 I did not want to be unmoved by the God of the Persian slave-king.<\/p>\n Perhaps, as many other sutras so clearly declare, the many bikkhus<\/em> and gods who heard these closing words of the Buddha were awakened to the truth of his Dharma.\u00a0 But I, I was not awakened.\u00a0 Indeed, I was moved, and felt for a moment that I would rather have followed the Master Lao to his way of life, as I was enticed by his delight and jolly pleasure.\u00a0 And even more, I was moved by the Persian man’s Great God, and wondered that such a great One could act in men’s lives.<\/p>\n But as it ended, the two foreigners merely bowed and left, returned to their nations or wandered out the end of their lives.\u00a0 And I looked to the unmoved, unmoving Buddha, watching always for joy or purpose or the hand of Belteshazzar’s great God.\u00a0 But for this, I felt ashamed, and though I have been a monk these many years, I have never truly learned to sit silent and unmoved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thus have I heard:\u00a0 On a particular day, the Lord Buddha had taken rest in the park of the palace of the King of Ayodhya when he was approached by two foreigners of strange language.\u00a0 Both men were old, and … Continue 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