Siddhārtha shook his head. “That is where you and the other ministers must help them. My father the king has asked you to be his hands and feet, has he not?” The prince’s eyes were like perfectly still pools of water, while Uddaka’s eyes burned like flames. The old captain understood the workings of the prince’s heart as though its design were inscribed upon his own. Yet now was not the time for sympathy or compassion.
“My prince, if you will not remain of your own free will, then you leave me with no choice but to end this journey with steel.”
Uddaka realized then for the first time that he would, in fact, be able to cut down his own prince if it came to it. He lifted his sword, its crescent blade as slender as the branch of a willow tree. The prince smiled sadly—the smile of someone who suffers that particular kind of agonizing loneliness one feels upon losing the friend who knew them best.
Uddaka placed the point of his blade on the prince’s chest.
“Now, my prince, will you leave with these Brahmins? Will you abandon us?”
Siddhārtha laughed like a summer breeze. “Old Uddaka. If cutting me down will solve your problems, then please, end this life now. I care not.”
Uddaka felt the color of his face fade like a wilted leaf. “My prince. I have been appointed chief of the honor guard that serves you and your father. Though it is perhaps not my place to say this, I am the most loyal of your subjects. Do you say these words to me thinking that there is no way I could possibly bring harm to you?”
A sudden hardness came over the prince’s face, and a strong light shone in his eyes. “Old Uddaka,” he said, “it seems to me that life and death are as one within that kora you wield. Should you swing it down upon my body, you may end my life, but you will never cut my heart. My heart is here in this stone-tiled courtyard, and in those red flowers blossoming over there—it is everywhere within Kapilavastu, it fills this land. Tell me, Old Uddaka, how will you cut that?”
The old captain was at a loss for words, now that he was faced with the very situation he had feared might come. In silence, he steadied his grip on his sword. “My prince.” Uddaka lifted his blade.
“Wait!” called a voice from where the four Brahmin monks stood, as silent as wooden statues until now. Uddaka could not tell whether one of them had spoken, or all had spoken in unison. The sun blazed on his upraised blade, paused at its zenith, and Uddaka felt as if he himself might fade in its light.
“Great warrior,” the monk farthest to the right spoke. “Your prince does not abandon Śākya.”
“Explain what you mean.”
“Great warrior—”
Udakka took two strides toward him. “I am Uddaka, captain of the honor guard to King Śuddhodana.”
The Brahmin monk faced him directly and pressed his hands together, elbows out to the sides. “I am Maudgalyayana, Brahmin of Dowa Mintaka Temple.”
The next monk spoke. “And I am Subhuti, of the same.”
“Mahākāśyapa.”
“Pūrna.”
The four Brahmin monks looked startlingly alike. All had large angular heads, thrusting jaws, short necks, broad chests, wide noses, and deep-set eyes rich with shadows. Uddaka had always thought they looked rather countrified and dull, and he thought no better of them now.
“The prince goes to meet Brahmā.”
“What did you say?”
“Surely you know of the God of the Brahmin?”
“I know that Brahmā is Heaven.”
Subhuti stepped forward. “Warrior. Brahmā is the highest reality. Brahmā is the procession of the sun, moon, stars, and constellations; the birth, growth, destruction, and death of all things. Brahmā is the existence of all and the negation of all. Brahmā is the divine basis of everything in the universe.”
“So the prince is going to meet this Brahmā? Is he even a person? I have a hard time understanding how something could be both all of existence and a man of flesh and blood.”
“Warrior.” Pūrna made the abhaya mudrā, the gesture of no fear, with his hands and bowed to Uddaka. “Brahmā holds this vast universe in his hands and meditates upon it. That all things change form is Heaven’s will, the will of Brahmā.” A bead of sweat left a shining trail down the side of Pūrna’s wide, flat nose.
Uddaka shook his head in silence, then finally spoke again. “Monks. Let me ask you this. In Śākya last year and the year before the crops withered so badly we collected hardly anything in taxes. In Kapilavastu, the mending of the waterways has failed. The farmers abandon their fields, the merchants have left the markets, and entire families line up every morning to receive alms porridge. And a terrible illness has been affecting the poorer folk, leaving many severely crippled. Monks, if this truly is the will of Brahmā, then Heaven is not here for the sake of man, and it never was!”
Uddaka glared at Maudgalyayana with the eyes of a wounded hawk. His gaze went to Pūrna, and Subhuti, and Mahākāśyapa, finally coming to rest on Prince Siddhārtha.
The prince bowed deeply to the four Brahmin monks, then stood before Uddaka.
The sun beating down upon the courtyard felt hot enough to sear the flesh of the six men standing there. Sky and earth were filled with the resounding sound of the cicadas, and yet in the space before the palace a quieter sound held sway, a low twilight hum. The crowd surrounding the courtyard waited like a shadow.
“Old Uddaka.”
“My prince.”
Such tension ran across the three paces of air between the two men that they might have been joined by ribbons of steel.
“The will of Heaven does not serve man. All laws flow and change by the workings of mutual dependence, relationships, and karma. Man is the same. The changing of relationships determines the form of existence. Reality is not a fixed entity within the cycle of life and death, reality is change. Existence is impermanent, form is empty, emptiness is form.”
“My prince, tell me. Is the suffering of your people the will of Heaven?”
A look of deep pain came over Siddhārtha’s thickly bearded face. “I believe this is but another face of the world. Heaven includes all things. That is why it is called Brahmā. However, Old Uddaka, I cannot say this with utmost heartfelt conviction, for there are many questions to which I have not yet found answers.
“Hear me, Old Uddaka. The continuation and sustenance of an individual’s life is a temporary manifestation, subject to the strict laws of constant change. There can be no rigid, unchanging self. We find that if all men cling to the self and do not allow themselves and others to change, it leads to the great misfortunes of unhappiness and interminable social evils. Yet if we accept this basic truth that all is in motion, what of Heaven? Must we deny the existence of Heaven? The existence of the gods? The existence of the self? And what of love? These are the matters I wish to contemplate. No, I must contemplate.”
He spoke softly, yet long years of anguish showed in his voice.
“If that is so, my prince,” said Uddaka, “if there is no unchanging self in this cosmos and the body must perish . . . then I will be the agent of that change!”
Uddaka’s kora swept from the brilliant sun down onto the prince’s head.
For a moment, the stone-tiled courtyard, shimmering in the heat, flattened like a painting. Nothing moved across the sun-baked stones save the hot wind that blew oily thick through the railings on the serpentine stone stair, stifling the onlookers.
Old Uddaka was frozen, every muscle rigid, as if he had turned to hard clay; the naked blade in his hand was stopped a hair’s breadth from the prince’s forehead. Only his keen eyes looked as though they might erupt with flame.
“We should be going, Prince Siddhārtha,” Maudgalyayana said with a wave of his hand. One by one, Mahākāśyapa, Pūrna, and Subhuti turned and walked toward their palanquins.
Yet still the prince could not depart, for a beautiful woman was now clinging to his leg. Her abundant black hair tumbled in disarray, and from between its flowing strands, two eyes like deep lakes stared up into his face. This was the prince’s wife—the Princess Yaśodharā. The golden beaded necklace that hung upon her breast sparkled by the prince’s feet.
“My prince! Why must you leave us? Why must you leave me?”
It was often said that the Princess Yaśodharā most resembled Siddhārtha’s birthmother, the king’s first wife, Māyā. Māyā had been a princess of Koliya, Śākya’s neighbor to the east, and a famed beauty. During her pregnancy, following the custom of the day, she had left Śākya to return to her home village for the birth. Yet the prince had come early, in a place called Lumbinī halfway between the two kingdoms, and seven days later, the mother had died.