Sid by Anita Feng

Author:Anita Feng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

Yasodharā

The next morning, when Siddhārtha’s charioteer appears at her bedchamber door, she sees everything written on his face before he can open his mouth to explain. Siddhārtha has not gone for morning ablutions; he has not gone out to walk in the gardens. No, he has gone and abandoned his wife and son.

“Good friend of Siddhārtha, where is my beloved? Go bring him to me now. I will and must see him immediately.”

She lets her combed hair fall; she lets her breasts ache. She lets everything golden be melted down to tears. Her beloved has gone to become a Buddha and she will not ever again look at the flower-decked bed where they lay as their hearts desired.

“Charioteer, do you not know that Siddhārtha and I have been married for innumerable lives, that we were first born in the animal world as wild rabbits and since that earliest incarnation, we two have never been apart? In every samsaric birth I have been his consort. Once we went as ascetics together to the forest. We happily carried out two children in our arms. Why then has he left me alone now? Is there anywhere in the world another woman so bereft?

“In a former birth we were tiny birds in a tender field, and our young one fell into the talons of a hawk. I well remember how Siddhārtha strove to save him. Why then does he leave his young son now?

“Once we were born as kinduras—halfhuman and halfbird. Does he not recall the nobleman that was out hunting and saw us, that fell in love with me and killed my beloved Siddhārtha in an attempt to win me over? I, however, refused to leave my dead husband. Only upon hearing my lamentations were the gods moved by my grief so that they restored him back to life.

“Am I not, again and always, his Yasodharā?”

The charioteer stands, mute, in front of her lamentations. He watches as she tears off her pearl and gemstone necklaces, her golden silks, the rings on her toes, the ornaments in her ears. Finally, she sits on the cold floor as if turned to stone.

The charioteer quietly departs, stepping backward into the full measure of his own, and indeed, the whole city’s grief.

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