| MCMXCVII
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Join Date: May 2005 Location: #*@* |
08-14-05
************************************************************ |3 u d d ha Near the end of his six-year fast, Gotama was reduced to a skeleton, his limbs were blackened, knotty stems, his ribs stuck out like the beams of an old shed, and his spine could be grasped from the front. His head resembled a withered gourd, his eyes were glazed as the water on the bottom of a nearly dry well, and his skin was the color of cremation ashes. No longer human in form, he was taken for a dust demon by the village children, who cast garbage on him.
After six years of search, Gotama had reached the maximum teansion of the search. Both his endeaver and effort had reached the extreme. Finally, he collapsed and was left for dead.
Gotama slowly regained consciousness, dragged himself to the river, and washed away six years of grime and filth. A village girl gave him a nourishing bowl of payasa (a costly food that contains rice cooked with milk and mixed with crystal sugar and fragrant spices) which restored and refreshed the exhausted seeker.
Gotama's mind and body were in proper balance for the first time in his life. He dropped everything now - the world he had already left six years ago; now he left sannyas also. He had left all sorts of pleasures before and he had waste six years in practicing yoga; now he left that too.
Now Gotama decided that he would not do anything further and that he would not search any longer. He simply understood that nothing was going to be achieved. That night he went to sleep under a tree. That was the first night in may lifetimes that he had slept in such a way as if nothing existed to be done the next morning - there was no desire for tomorrow, there were no goals remaining. And there really was nothing left to be done. He had already left his kingdom, his family and any planning about the world; he had begun another plan of life, and that too had failed. Now there was nothing to do. If he woke up tomorrow morning, good; if he did not wake up, that too would be good. If he lived on, it made no difference; if he died, it made no difference - all was the same. There was absolutely nothing left to be done tomorrow morning, there simply was no meaning in tomorrow for him any longer. The question had been "What will I do if I am here in the morning?" Up to now there was doing and doing and doing, but now there was nothing to be done at all.
Gotama slept that night so free of any purpose that there was no idea what he would do if he woke up in the morning. The sun would rise, the birds would sing, but what would he do? And there is a void as the answer.
Gotama went sleep that night. Deep inside him was a void. In that morning, his eyes opened. It was said that he did not open the eyes, but they opened on their own. His eyes were tired of remaining closed; they had been closed the whole night and now the resting was complete and the eyelids opened to their own.
Inside Gotama was a void. In such a void he saw the last morning star setting, and in that seeing became enlightened. Along with that disappearing star disappeared the whole past of Gotama. Along with that disappearing star the whole journey, the whole search disappeared.
Gotama exclaimed, "For the first time I saw a star setting in the sky - my eyes are open. What I could not attain through incessant search was attained that night without any searching. What could not be attained by running after it was attained that night just sitting, just lying down. What could not be attained with effort was attained that night with restfulness." Gotama was then the Buddha.
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