The Buddha's Wife

Hi Folks!

How are you and how's life?

Mother Nature is whacking the world, isn't she?

She's chastising us for our insensitive, entitled behaviour. 

 

It is time to step back and contemplate on our own life, the choices we make, the words we speak and the thoughts we allow to rule our own life and influence others.

We ignore the power of our deep thoughts, the vibrations they create, both positive and destructive because we are not in the habit of taking personal responsibility for our thoughts and actions. 

As the Buddha said, 'Pubbe hanati attānam, pacchā hanati so pare'.

‘First, he harms himself, and only then, others’.

But our thoughts, words and actions are the very seeds which sprout, grow and give abundant fruit which will be of the exact same quality and potency as contained in the tiny seed.

This is accepted as 'reaping what we sow', or more fashionably, 'actions have consequences', which amazes amazing number of people all over the world who are shocked and frequently put off by it.

For some reason, many cultures vehemently deny the shorter word for it. 

Karma.

 

Today's topic is about the same truth.

In a different context.

The Buddha's story is fairly known in some parts of the world.

Let me give a short recap.

He was a prince born to a wealthy chieftain who was told by the best astrologers of his court that the child would either be a world -conqueror, or a Buddha, the Awakened One.

The doting father of the only son obviously kept the child away from all misery and got him married to Princess Yasodharā at the age of sixteen.

He trained him to be a world-conquering King and Prince Siddhartha followed all is duties quite obediently and meticulously.

Then on a truant trip to the city, there were four things he registered which disturbed him and triggered his chain of thoughts.

An old man, an ill man, a dead body and a monk who sat in the noisy marketplace under a tree, detached, with closed eyes, peaceful, with a glow on his face the kind of which the prince had not seen before.

Suffering.

Why was there suffering at all?

Old age, illness, death were sufferings. And it was birth which kept the cycle going endlessly.

Was it really endless? Would there ever be an end to suffering?

He was determined to know more about achieving the permanent end to suffering, when there would be no rebirth.

To this end, he left the house the night his wife Yasodharā delivered a son and tried different ways to eventually make the discovery to the annihilation of suffering.

For 45 years after this, he distributed the knowledge to all.

This, in short, is what people know of his life.

The one big point of deep anger and disrespect towards him is the way he left his wife without a word and became a monk.

Well.

I wondered too.

However, during my studies of Pali suttas, reading numerous discourses, their commentaries and research articles on his overall conduct, something seemed to be missing.

He taught about the three mental defilements of Greed, Hatred and Delusion which cloud the mind and keeps one in the cycle of rebirth.

He gave very succinct minute descriptions of each and the methods to come out of it.

He spoke of the Four Noble Truths which cover his teachings, the theory and practice. 

And he spoke on Karma.

He explains very patiently and methodically how it works and how it is not extinguished by not believing in it at all, appeasing someone here and there or insisting it dies out at one's physical death because one believes so, ‘knows’ to be so, someone said so etc. etc.

Such a person would not have been deliberately cruel and hurtful to his wife because it would have generated bad karma on his part.

I had known of only one previous reference to Yasodharā when she had been blessed by the previous Dīpankara Buddha, that she would be Prince Siddhartha's wife when he would become Gotama, the Buddha.

 

Then I found two Jātaka Kathās, Birth Stories, which clarified everything.

It was not so much to do with him.

Yasodharā had been with him in countless lifetimes when he was a Bodhisattva on the path of becoming a Buddha, yet to reach the final goal of liberation. 

In two particular past lifetimes which matter here, she had been his devoted wife, also on the same path, immersed in meditation.

They supported each other as they walked the path to achieve Enlightenment.

In both lifetimes, she told him that she wanted to leave her householder's life to meditate in the forest.

In each, he requested her to stay until the children were older.

In the second such life, when she said she wanted to leave, he again asked her to stay until the boys were older and then they both could go to meditate, but she wanted to leave immediately.

So he said they would explain to the children in the morning and leave after making arrangements for them.

She agreed.

And quietly left in the night.

He stayed back to take care of the children.

It was this karma that Yasodharā had to pay for.

 

She was a highly intelligent and spiritual woman.

She did not berate her husband for deserting her and the child.

After he left to seek Enlightenment, along with her mother-in-law Pajapati Gotamī, she wore simple robes and gave her time to charity and serving people.

There was no anger or hatred in her mind for this abandonment.

When he came back enlightened, she asked their son to go and ask for his inheritance, and when the Buddha ordained the child, she did not complain.

When Mahāpajāpati Gotamī requested the Buddha to allow female Ordination, she too ordained to become a nun, and through practice, reached the highest state of Arahat.

It is Karma which generates emotions, future lifetimes of joy and suffering, pain and pleasure.

It makes no difference whether you believe in it or not or remember it or not.

It knows.

The karmic debts are neutralized, sometimes, even after reaching Arahatship or Enlightenment, as long as the physical body is there.

Like the Buddha himself, even after his enlightenment suffered from backache.

His chief disciple Arahat Moggallāna died a very violent death at the hands of bandits because in a previous life he had done the same to them.

The Buddha's wife neutralized her own karmic debt by undergoing what she had made him and their children undergo in previous lifetimes.

She then ordained to adhere to the teachings, meditated and liberated herself, because that had been her wish too, in many lifetimes.

She is therefore, not to be pitied.