25.

Joshua wandered the soppy rice fields with a man by his side. The man was wearing a white loincloth of the style Joshua had seen in photos of Ghandi. The man was Siddhartha, the Buddha. He did not know how he knew this, nor did he know for certain even that it was true. He assumed it; it seemed natural to him so he accepted it. The Buddha had a full, robust chest, thick sinewy forearms, little body hair. He was very pale in appearance, and the smoothness of his youthful skin reminded Joshua of Grecian sculptures of gods and ideal heroes with ideal physiques. The water of the rice fields crept up past their shins as they walked, water with a lovely coldness compared to the heat of the Indian countryside--Indian?--yes, thought Joshua, certainly this is India.

"I was mistaken in much that I thought I'd discovered," the Buddha was saying. "Ah, I never claimed ultimate authority. Had I indeed known everything, with an intellect finer than that of the greatest god, I would have simply demanded men believe me on faith in my authority. But no--I told men to discover these things for themselves, question what I had to say to see if it was right. I wouldn't have done this had there been nothing I did not know, and know for certain."

"Have you learned anything since then--since your ministry?" asked Joshua.

"I've learned I was wrong about quite a few things," said the Buddha.

"Like what?"

"I said there was nothing that remained of the soul moment-to-moment--I denied there was any soul at all. But why is it that, when men like Sartre believe there is no continuous self over time, they do not fear their own annihilation into nothing that will happen tomorrow, but fear becoming nothing after death? If we do not continue on with something fixed and permanent in our selves, we ought to admit that a day from now, an hour from now we will be nothing, having been replaced by some other fellow. Death then is meaningless--even Nirvana is meaningless--we will not ever see death, since we shall have ceased to exist in five minutes. How long are our lives, then? A minute? Half a minute? Half a second? You see, we could not exit for any length of time if nothing in us were permanent--unless there was some fixed self at the bottom of it, some underlying substance in what we are."

"What is the soul?" asked Joshua.

"I prefer the world 'Self'," said the Buddha.

"What is the self then?"

"This is what I think I meant when I said the self did not exist. I was wrong about that--and I have learned much, much more since my ministry, and still have much to learn. What I meant, what I had discovered was that the self has no essence. There is no reason why a worm was born as a worm and not a man, why you are Joshua Washington and weren't George Washington, why even God is God and not a catfish. The self--to be it itself--requires nothing, has nothing in it of which we can say, 'It must be thus.' Except one thing--one essential property--and that is that it must be identical to itself. The self says, 'I am that I am.' All else is happenstance, luck. The selves need not even be alive or conscious to exist. You yourself existed a thousand years ago--you were a potential being, sleeping in unconsciousness--to say that any man was not you is sufficient to demonstrate your existence on some level."

"I don't know what to believe anymore," said Joshua. "I wish to find a solution rather than the truth of matters--I want practical wisdom, wisdom that will get me out of the Dreamtime, even if it's false wisdom, so long as it will get me out of here."

"Ah, you remind me of myself," said the Buddha. "I was rather grave in those days. Could I not see the beauty in the world? Could I not see in the joy of learning for learning's sake, the loveliness of finding truth? I'll tell you why I was such a pessimist. It was that damned Hindu notion of reincarnation I believed in. Now I know better. We are each given but one life. To make us live and live for infinity--that would be awful, and make my pessimism correct. But supposing we live but once? Not the most miserable pauper's life is then not worth living! No matter the suffering that pauper goes through--it is yet good that he once lived; and could he look back upon his life, from the nothingness after the grave, he would smile at his suffering and say it was worth it. He lived and lived once--this is the trick that God uses to make the most anguishing lives worth living. A Ganges River of water would drown us if we were dropped into its center. But a gallon, a glass of water is pure loveliness and health. Too much life--infinite life--that would magnify even simple boredom to intolerable anguish. But when we live but once, with nothing before this world and nothing after--I think there is hardly a man or woman in this world that would choose not to exist just that one time, no matter the suffering experienced here."

They had moved out of the rice fields now and were on a hillside path. The grasses were knee-high, poking up in straight green shoots, as the pair made their way higher up the hill, crisscrossing with the path. "Where are we going?" asked Joshua.

The Buddha did not answer but said, "Do you ever wonder why we have no memory of being babies? Why going back to your beginnings you only get bits and pieces, most of it foggy?" "I'm not sure what that means," said Joshua. "All it would take," said the Buddha--"all it would take for a person to be enlightened from birth--to be the very avatar--is to remember his first moment of existence, as clear-cut from what came before it as waking from deep sleep. If that happened to anyone, anywhere--he'd be the most supreme, the wisest, the holiest messiah that ever could be. Don't look at the blackness ahead, beyond death--ponder rather the mystery of your origins--meditate on your first instant of existence. That is how to understand the true nature of things."