Infants' deaths enrich Indian Buddhist philosophy

by Padma EDIRISINGHE

Why mourn then for him who came to you,

Lamenting through the tears?

Weep not, for such is the life of man,

Unasked he came and unbidden he went,

Ask yourself again whence came your child,

To live on earth this little life?

By one way come and by another gone.

It's human to die and pass to other births,

So, why should you weep?

(From The Elders" verses - recited by Patachara to 500 grief striken mothers)

No greater sorrow can be generated in a woman than the death of her child. The story of umpteen mothers of Sri Lanka of almost every ethnic group in the island who underwent this insurmountable sadness during the war is a separate tale to be told. Does it fall outside the pale of this essay?

No. Human emotions continue to be the same along the long trek of Time. However here the writer will confine herself to the way some mothers reacted to the death of their children in 6th Century BC. Bharatha Desha.

Tinged with a poignant and utterly desperate element initially, the transformation of the female's attitude into the philosophical is almost dramatic.

It leads one to ponder whether it was the physical presence of the Blessed One whose sermons permeated the tapestry of thought patterns of contemporary society that made some women so mature in their outlook.

My sourcebook here is a Wheel publication of the Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy authored by Susan E. Jootla. She, however, makes her own sweeping comments on the times and climes that led to a proliferation of such deaths leading to mothers enter the Sangha society due to the sorrow engendered.

Here she is.

"Many women entered the Sangha in circumstances similar to those of Ubbiri or Patachara. A woman distraught over the death of a child must have been very common in India in those days when limited medical knowledge could not counter a very high infant mortality rate."

Just because it is some 25 or 26 centuries back we cannot conclude that medical facilities were that poor in India. If Bharatha Desha could spawn such a rich philosophy encased in the Buddha Dhamma in that far off time, one has only to expect an advanced medical system too. And these deaths, mostly the deaths of very young children had been caused not only by sickness but by accidental factors generated by the negligence of elders (Patachara's story). It is the same story enacted now.

And those living do not earn publicity as against those who die. I don't know how you would brand that ironical statement, what I mean is literary personnel as those responsible for the Their Gaatha always wove them around distraught women who had lost their off springs who thus get mentioned against mothers of the living.

Among these stories the most famous is that of Kisa Gothami who goes almost mad after the sudden death of her sick infant. Here it is relevant to quote this from Jootla's book that conveys the fact that a mother - child relationship is always stronger than a father - child relationship (Here we will purposely avoid our thoughts running to instances of a rare genre of modern day Lankan mothers, total freaks, throwing their infants to rivers and cess pools and such like apparently out of economic despondency).

The author quotes Buddha himself here on the peculiar predicament of women. (Kindred Sayings. Vol IV). Here is the quote. "Buddha himself pointed out the five kinds of suffering unique to women. Three are physiological-menstruation, pregnancy and child birth. The other two are social leaving her own family to live with the husband's family and having "To wait upon a man".

Now how does all this get connected to Indian philosophy? The answer is obvious. The suffering women, at least a good many of them take to robes and turn philosophical. The intense suffering has served the engineering force to relinquish the mind of its misconceptions and desires. Now they make use of these bitter experience to perceive the universality and omnipresence of suffering to condition themselves to let go of everything in the conditioned realm. Take the case of Kisa Gotami. Buddha tells her to bring mustard seeds from a house where no body has died. Today of course she could have found such a house since elders are spurned by the young family in many instances. But in ancient India where the joint family system prevailed, deaths could be frequent as in some societies dominated by senior citizens.

Now through the mustard seed or the failure to procure it Kisa Gothami comes face to face with the reality and frequency of death. Understanding impermanence, one of the basic characteristics of all existence, she takes to robes and comes out with these lines.

No village law is this, no city law,

No law for this clan or for that alone

For the whole world and for the Gods too

This is the law: All is impermanent"

The lines quoted at the outset of this essay are attributed to Patachara who becomes a great teacher - nun subsequent to a torrent of incredible calamities. It is to a group of 500 such brief striken mothers that she recites these lines preceded by these two,

"The way by which men come we cannot know;

Nor can we see the path by which they go"

The "men" here probably refers to the children the mothers have lost. They were living some 25 centuries back in India. But Patachara's instructional verses are strong enough to take away the sorrow of a woman of South Lanka whose young son died on the battlefield or wipe away the tears of a woman of Jaffnapatam whose bright son was compelled by The Great Monster to take on the cause of Eelam and die for its sake.

The philosophy encased in the Their Gaatha goes on as a beaconlight though in a peculiar twist it transforms the children so dear to a mother to some impersonal beings who come and go along unseen paths. The idea is therapy in itself if understood thus mitigating a mother's intense sorrow over the loss of her child. The bond is to somebody who just comes to you and then goes off...