Free Miss Buddha by Ulf Wolf Page A

know.”
    “Many drops are animals now; many more are
plants. They each have perhaps a thousand lives to live before they
are born human and so can even begin to walk this path.”
    “I know.”
    “Are we to wake them all?”
    The Buddha looked at his friend, then toward
the setting sun. He then gazed up into the oncoming darkness, now
scaling the sky from the east. He then looked at Ananda and lowered
himself to the ground.
    “Sit, Ananda,” he said.
    Ananda complied.
    Then the Buddha said: “We are not to wake
them all. They are all to wake themselves.”
    Ananda felt that perhaps his friend and
teacher was using a very fine sword to split his words. “They
cannot wake on their own,” he said. “We need to help them.”
    “My task, Ananda, is to formulate and
finalize the Dhamma,” answered the Buddha. “Your task is to
remember it and pass it on. That is all we can do. The rest is up
to each drop of animal, plant, human, asura, or deva.”
    “But with no one to stir them, perhaps they
never will. Perhaps they will stay asleep.”
    “There is no such thing as permanent
sleep.”
    “But there is such a thing as deep and very
long sleep?”
    “Yes, Ananda, there is.”
    “Is it enough, then?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Is the Dhamma, and passing it on down
dawning ages, sufficient? Will life recover?”
    “What choice do we have?”
    “I don’t know.” Again, Ananda’s voice
cracked with a compassion that bordered despair.
    “We can only point, Ananda. Each drop has to
do its own seeing, its own walking, its own arriving.”
    “But you stir so many with your words.”
    “As do you.”
    “But you grow older each day and Parinibbana
awaits you.”
    The Buddha did not answer right away.
Instead he shifted, and looked up again at the darkening sky, stars
beginning to emerge. “I will return,” he said finally.
    “But you are fully enlightened.”
    “Yes.”
    “There is no return from Parinibbana.”
    “You know this for a fact?” said the
Buddha.
    “I have heard it said.”
    “I will return,” said the Buddha again.
    “Then,” said Ananda after some silence, “so
will I.”

:: 14 :: (On the road)
     
    It took Ananda a few days to arrange
everything. To find someone to keep an eye on the cabin, not that
it needed much looking after. A full service of his car—best to be
safe, it was a long drive. Then packing for not quite sure how long
he would stay, not that he had many things to pack.
    He set out early one morning in June,
heading south on the I-95.
    Gotama had spoken no more, and there was a
small voice within that suggested—more like a suggestion of a
suggestion—that perhaps he had dreamed him. But a larger part of
him knew, as if by the timbre of Gotama’s voice-less voice, that
his friend and mentor, his Buddha, had found him and called upon
him again to help.
    Towns marched past the road; some
small—barely a gathering of houses to his right, others large
enough to sport tall motel signs and arrows pointing to swift and
very unwholesome foods.
    Another town—mainly to his left this time,
another motel—no, two—and three more gasoline stations. He checked
his fuel gauge just to make sure: plenty to go. His little car gave
him nearly forty miles for each gallon of gasoline, and on longer
trips, like this, even more. He liked his little car, had even
named it. Frugal, he called it, for obvious reasons. Happily,
Frugal. It had been a prudent purchase.
    And then, it was just past a town called
Ontario, Gotama spoke again.
    “You are on your way, then?”
    “Yes.”
    “How long before you arrive?”
    “Two days.”
    “This is good, Ananda.” Then his friend
said, “I have given this some thought.”
    “About how we do this?”
    “Yes.”
    “And?”
    “You are a writer, Ananda.” Not really a
question.
    “Yes.”
    “Mainly fiction, but some non-fiction?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. This book will be non-fiction. It is
about first-time mothers.”
    Although Gotama