PREY TO GOBLINS IN THE WILDERNESS
As we roll up to vote in our 16th Lok Sabha elections, having duly listened to the utterances of the various protagonists, we must not flinch from the realisation that the harangues of politicians were strikingly similar to those of religious preachers out to reinforce the commitment of existing adherents and catch new converts. In return for our official commitment to his cause, the politician/preacher made the promises authorized by his manifesto (and if we actually sign up, we have to toe the party line).
I know I can, with impunity, hold up ‘Hinduism’, as an example: all those slokas that end in ‘phala sruti’, a list of the benefits conferred by praising suchand-such a deity or performing this-orthat vratam. I dare say it’s also permissible to cite a jataka by way of illustration since, dash it all, the Buddha was technically a Hindu like Jesus was a Jew and is even said to have performed his father King Suddhodana’s funeral rites the traditional way while both Venerable Sariputta and Venerable Moggallana (Maudgalayana/Mudgal) who set up the sangha for the Buddha would have appreciated an attempt at examining the nature of things as advised by Sakyamuni himself.
The tale that comes instantly to mind is the ‘Apannaka Jataka’ in which the Buddha is found residing at the great monastery at Jetavana (remember dashing Prince Jeta and the orchard covered with gold?) near Sravasti, a site that came to be locally known as Sahet-Mahet and is now a historical park 170 km north-east of Lucknow. The Buddha is said to have spent nineteen out of forty-five rainy seasons in retreat at Jetavana. In this jataka, Anatha-pindika, the rich merchant who obtained Jetavana for the Buddha, took five hundred non-Buddhist friends to hear the Master preach, “whither also he had a great store brought of garlands, perfumes, and unguents, together with oil, honey, molasses, cloths, and cloaks”.
The Buddha looked so noble and spoke so eloquently that all five hundred “rose up with hearts converted, and…burst asunder the other doctrines in which they had taken refuge, and betook themselves to the Buddha as their refuge.”
Thereafter the Buddha went away to Rajgir for some months and in his absence, the five hundred lapsed right back to their old allegiances. When the Buddha returned, Anatha-pindika rounded them up again for another sermon and the jataka says that the Buddha told them, “No disciples, male or female, who seek refuge in the Three Gems are ever reborn into hell…but, released from all rebirth into states of suffering, they pass to the Realm of Devas and there receive great glory. Therefore, in forsaking such a refuge for that offered by other doctrines, you have gone astray.” And he warned them that those who “fell a prey to goblins in a demon-haunted wilderness were utterly destroyed; whilst the men who clave to the absolute and indisputable truth, prospered in the selfsame wilderness.” And when he had said this, he became silent.
Doesn’t that sound unmistakably similar in tone to some of the things we’ve been hearing lately?