Miss Buddha by Ulf Wolf Read Free Book Online Page A

from his old friend just then. He was mid-symphony, a
two-year long multi-colored and many-harmonied tribute to creation
itself, mirroring, to the best of his recollection and abilities,
the ascent of the potential of life into life itself.
    In fact, he was—if only briefly—tempted to
feign deafness, or ignorance, or absence, anything to allow him to
work his creation to conclusion. And had he not already promised to
perform this symphony once finished? It would not do to break
promises, now would it?
    This line of reasoning, however, did not sit
well with his conscience, for he had already, and priorly, promised
Gotama Buddha to return to Earth when the Bodhisatta deemed the
time was right; and now he deemed it so, though it could hardly
have been more ill-timed, at least not by Ananda’s reckoning.
    Still, maintained his conscience, a prior
promise is a prior promise, and so Ananda—in synchronized cessation
of a million energies in as many vibrations—dissolved his symphony
into the nothing it had sprung from and then left Nimmanarati for
the Indian subcontinent.
    :
    Ananda’s father, Amitodana, was the brother
of Suddhodana, Gotama’s father (both of the royal warrior caste
family of the Sakyans) so they were—in an act of beautiful
synchronization—to be first cousins this life.
    And not only that: they were born on the
same day, Siddhattha Gotama and he; Ananda in Kapilavatthu—where
they were to grow up together—and Siddhattha in Lumbini, in a
garden beneath a Sal tree, where his mother, Queen Maha Maya, on
her way to her father’s kingdom to give birth according to Sakyan
tradition, were to rest for the night. For that was the night
Siddhattha (and so, too, Ananda) decided to arrive.
    Siddhattha’s birth was quite an occasion,
sages and seers from all over arrived to pay homage and predict
futures. Of all the holy men that foretold Siddhattha’s life,
however, only one, Kondanna, got it unequivocally right: this boy,
he said, will become a Buddha.
    Kondanna’s prediction,
however, did not sit well with the Gotama’s father, King
Suddhodana, who preferred to believe the predictions of the
remaining lot of holy men, all of whom gave Siddhattha a
fifty-fifty future of growing up to be either a great king, or a
great holy man; the King’s preference coming down on the side of
“great king.” Queen Maya, however, wished with all of her heart that Siddhattha
would indeed become a great holy man, if not a Buddha.
    Unfortunately, Queen Maya, did not live to
see her wish come true, she died within a week of Siddhattha’s
birth; welcomed to Tusita by many a deva singing her praises.
    :
    He lived a sheltered life,
did Gotama Siddhattha, much too sheltered for Ananda’s liking—for
he always had to go to the palace to visit him , since he would never leave his luxurious
seclusion to see Ananda, and would never accompany Ananda on his
expeditions into the fields and forests surrounding
Kapilavatthu.
    Strange.
    And stranger still: his uncle Suddhodana had
told him, and in no uncertain terms, that Ananda was not to, under
any circumstances, describe or even mention to Siddhattha anything
about life in the city or surrounding country, unless—and only
if—it was to tell his son how beautiful the city and its land was,
and how happy was its people.
    Siddhattha was to become king, and his mind
and heart were not to be sullied by the mundane, is how Ananda’s
father explained this to him when one day Ananda asked. And being a
good son, a good cousin, and a good nephew, Ananda complied, and
would never—although Siddhattha at times asked—demean the city or
the country, but would always, and quite cleverly, either praise
their beauty or steer the conversation back to the palace and its
grounds and the many places to rest or hide or eat or enjoy the
blessings of either the sun or its shadow.
    Ananda, and many others, carried out the
concealment so well that Siddhattha spent his first twenty-nine
years well