Nothing Is Blue by Biman Nath

Author:Biman Nath
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-9-3513-6051-3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

Xuanzang and Ananda reached Kanchipuram after a year. Sailors at Tamralipti had told them that Kanchipuram was a good place to look for people who could take them to Simhala. Xuanzang told Ananda that first he would like to pray for a few days, since this was where Dharmapala, the teacher of Shilabhadra, came from. Then they began looking for sailors who could take the bhikkhu to Simhala, but the sailors were reluctant. It was not safe to go there, they said, but could not tell them why.

At the monastery where Ananda and Xuanzang were staying, two monks from Simhala came to meet the bhikkhu and told him their kingdom was going through chaotic times. ‘There is a famine,’ exclaimed one of them. ‘We’ve fled the country to come here, to the land of the Buddha.’

‘I’ve heard about the scholars in your country. I wanted to study with them,’ Xuanzang said. He could not hide his dismay. The two Simhalese monks smiled at him, and said that they were the wisest of the monks back home, and Xuanzang was more than welcome to discuss the scriptures with them.

Ananda saw Xuanzang’s eyes narrow down to thin slits, looking closely at them. He asked them the meaning of a verse he had learned from Shilabhadra. When the monks offered their interpretation of the verses, Xuanzang remained silent. He later told Ananda that he thought the monks were pompous and ignorant, a feeling that Ananda himself shared.

They were confused what they should do next. Xuanzang could not risk going to a country in turmoil, and he said he was not sure he would gain much from the trip. He told Ananda that perhaps he had been chasing a mirage, a false hope of sailing to Simhala. ‘Perhaps,’ he asked Ananda, ‘we should go back to Nalanda. What do you think?’

Going to Simhala had not figured in Ananda’s plan. He was not as depressed as the bhikkhu. He had in fact enjoyed their travel down the coast. Their walk had taken them through a myriad places—some of which he knew only from legends and fables.

They had passed through the kingdom of Kalinga, a country that Emperor Ashoka wished to conquer centuries ago but which had conquered him instead. Emperor Ashoka had stopped waging wars after a bloody battle in Kalinga, and turned to the message of the Buddha. Then they visited the birthplace of Nagarjuna, the scholar behind the concept of nothingness. Nagarjuna had lived in Nalanda a few centuries ago and took the world of samanas by storm with his thoughts on meditation, dhyana, for nirvana. They visited many monasteries on their way, including a small, rather deserted, monastery on a hill by the coast, whose lamps shone like a lighthouse at night to help sailors in that treacherous part of the sea, the monastery where Ratnakar had studied before joining Nalanda.

Travelling with the bhikkhu helped soothe Ananda’s troubled mind after they left Gauda. ‘Bhante,’ Ananda suggested, ‘we could go back to Nalanda, but perhaps we could go by a different route.

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