Back when the Buddha was alive, women and men who attained enlightenment sometimes composed exultant verses about how it felt to be liberated. Each of these songs, as collected in the Therigatha and Theragatha, is embedded in a life story. (Theri means “enlightened woman,” thera, “enlightened man,” and gatha, “verses.”) The stories tell of hard lives—domestic servitude or prostitution for the women, farm labor or commerce for the men—all tightly bound by India’s ancient caste, family and clan structure.

While our lives differ in crucial ways from the daily existence of these ancient women and men, and while their stories are often quite extreme—taking us into the darkest realms of desire and suffering—still we may recognize our own obsessions, griefs, appetites and sorrows writ large in the misfortunes of Patacara, the lust of Rajadatta. These stories operate on several levels: they bring us information about the hearts and minds of ancient followers of the Buddha, but also they may inspire us to persist in our practice, their very larger-than-life quality shocking us out of our habitual mind-states. For me, Patacara’s “Nibbana of the little lamp” offers particular inspiration: attention to the simplest action can be an opening to liberation.

Typically a woman’s moment of awakening happened while performing humble duties—cooking the curry, carrying a jug of water, snuffing the lamp. Or if she was a prostitute, she might foresee the eventual transformation of her beautiful firm body into that of a wrinkled, toothless hag. The gist of the awakening usually was an experience of anicca, impermanence. The women’s songs express a transcendent sense of relief and joy.

Mutta

Oh free, indeed! O gloriously free

Am I in freedom from three crooked things:—

From quern, from mortar, from my crookback’d lord!

Ay, but I’m free from rebirth and from death,

And all that dragged me back is hurled away.

Here is one of the women’s stories that I find most powerful:

After countless former lives of practice, Patacara was reborn in Savatthi, a village in Northern India. When her second child was due, she and her husband set out for her family home. But a great rainstorm blew up, and as night was coming, her husband went off to cut grass and sticks to make them a shelter. In the dead of night she gave birth to the baby by herself on the muddy ground. Next morning, carrying the newborn and with the toddler following behind, she started on her way and found her husband dead by a snakebite in the forest.

Lamenting, Patacara plodded on until she came to the river, swollen by rain, where she set the toddler on one bank and forded the rushing water to put the newborn on the opposite shore. But when she was halfway back across to retrieve the little boy, a hawk dived down, picked up her infant and flew away. Then the little boy toddled into the river and was swept under. Patacara came weeping into Savatthi, having lost her husband and both children. When she searched in desperation for her parents and siblings, she found that during the storm their house had collapsed and all had been killed.

She went mad. From that day on she wandered in circles, her clothes falling from her, the townspeople taunting her and pummeling her with refuse and clods of dirt. But when the Buddha gave a talk near Savatthi, he saw Patacara and recognized her attainment in previous lives. Through the strength of his own mind he stabilized hers. She told him the reason for her madness, thinking he would comfort her. But instead he said, “With that I cannot help you,” and told her why: “You’ve been shedding tears for the death of children and others in countless previous eons, lifetime after lifetime, your tears more abundant than the waters of the four oceans.” He then offered his essential teaching: “No child or other relative can be a refuge or hiding place for you. Therefore, purify your conduct and accomplish the path leading to nibbana.”

Patacara became a nun and practiced hard until the moment of her enlightenment, which she described in this song:

Patacara

One day, bathing my feet, I sit and watch

The water as it trickles down the slope.

Thereby I set my heart in steadfastness, [. . .]

Then going to my cell, I take my lamp,

And seated on my couch I watch the flame.

Grasping the pin, I pull the wick right down

Into the oil. . . .

Lo! the Nibbana of the little lamp!

Emancipation dawns! My heart is free!

The men’s verses often tell of their sexual desire and their efforts to quench that fire. (Culturally, it speaks volumes that there are no comparable verses by women. One could speculate that the wives and prostitutes of that time were not allowed the luxury of sexual desire and pleasure.) One favorite male method for extinguishing lust was to meditate in graveyards to observe the decomposition of corpses. Others tell of the freedom to be won through choiceless awareness.

Kassapa the Great

I came down from my

mountain hut

into the streets one day

to beg food

 

I stopped where a leper

was feeding himself

With his rotted leper’s hand

into my bowl

he threw a scrap

 

into my bowl as he

threw it

one of his fingers broke and also fell

I simply leaned against a wall

and ate

 

Taking whatever scraps

are tossed

finding medicine

in cow dung

 

sleeping

beneath a tree and wrapped in

tattered robes—

only a man like that

walks free in all the four

directions

 

only a man like that

walks free

Rajadatta, the merchant, came to ruin from giving all his money to a beautiful prostitute. After he heard the Buddha’s teachings, he became a monk and went to the charnel ground to practice austerities. That same prostitute was arrested and killed for stealing, and her body was thrown into the graveyard where Rajadatta practiced. When he came upon what was left of her corpse after the dogs and jackals had eaten parts of it, he was horrified to find himself sexually aroused, and he ran away. Then he sat in meditation to look at his experience, and through great effort he achieved liberation.

Rajadatta

Quicker than boiling rice

overflows the pot

I fled the graveyard

fled that poor dead creature

fled until I reached

a safe secluded spot

to sit

and cross my legs and

calm my mind

 

I considered

the object

considered the hungry ignorant acts

that brought it where it lay

considered the tangle of worms

and corpses

I stared into countless

rounds of suffering

stared into greed and hunger

stared on vanity

stared until desire

blinked like a lamp

and went out

Lust no longer assailed me

I made wisdom my own then

yes I accomplished

what had

to be done

 

∞

Patacara’s story and translation of women’s verses from Caroline Rhys Davids’ 1909 Psalms of the Early Buddhists, Volume I: Psalms of the Sisters.

Men’s verses translated by Andrew Schelling, from Songs of the Sons and Daughters of Buddha by Andrew Schelling and Anne Waldman. Reprinted by permission of Shambhala Publications.

From the Fall 2010 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 27, No. 1)

© 2010 Sandy Boucher