Not everybody was enamored of the Buddha, however. During his stay in the Bamboo Grove, many of the citizens of Rajagaha were understandably worried about the dramatic growth of the Sangha. First the wild-haired brahmins, now Sanjaya’s Skeptics-who would be next? By taking away all the young men, the monk Gotama was making them all childless and turning their women into widows. Soon their families would die out! But when this was brought to the Buddha’s attention, he told the bhikkhus not to worry; this was only a seven-day wonder, and, sure enough, after a week or so the trouble stopped.

At about this time, the Pali texts tell us, the Buddha made a visit to his father’s house in Kapilavatthu-but they give us no details. The later scriptures and commentaries, however, flesh out the bare bones of the Pali text, and these post-canonical tales have become part of the Buddha’s legend. They tell us.that Suddhodana heard that his son, now a famous Buddha, jwas preaching in Rajagaha, and sent a messenger to him, ith a huge entourage, to invite him to pay a visit to ipilavatthu. But when this crowd of Sakyans heard the Buddha preach, they all became Arahants and forgot Suddhodana’s message-a sequence of events that happened nine times. Finally, the invitation was passed on to the Buddha, who set out for his home town with twenty thousand bhikkhus. The Sakyans put the Nigrodha Park outside Kapilavatthu at the bhikkhus’ disposal, and this became the Sangha’s chief headquarters in Sakka, but, showing the pride and hauteur for which they were famous, the Sakyans refused to pay homage to the Buddha. So, descending, as it were, to their level, the Buddha staged a striking display of iddhi. He levitated, jets of fire and water gushed from his limbs, and finally he walked along a jeweled causeway in the sky. Perhaps he was trying, as was his wont, to speak to the Sakyans in a way that they could understand and enter into their mind-set. His father Suddhodana had wanted him to be a cakkavatti, a World Ruler, and this legendary figure, it was said, would also stride majestically through the skies. In Uruvela, the Buddha had shown the brahmin ascetics that he could overcome their gods; now he showed the Sakyans that he was more than equal to any cakkavatti. And the spectacle had an effect, though a superficial one. The Sakyans were stunned into acquiescence and bowed down before the Buddha.

But, as usual, iddhi could not achieve a lasting result. The next day, Suddhodana was scandalized to see his son begging for food in Kapilavatthu: how dared he bring the family name into such disrepute! But the Buddha sat his father down and explained the Dhamma to him, and Suddhodana’s heart softened. He immediately became a “stream-enterer,” even though he did not request ordination in the Sangha. He took the Buddha’s bowl from him and led him into the house, where, during the meal that was prepared in his honor, all the women of the household became lay disciples, with one notable exception. The Buddha’s former wife remained aloof, still, perhaps understandably, hostile to the man who had abandoned her without saying good-bye.

The Pali texts record that at some unspecified time after this visit to Kapilavatthu, some of the leading youths of Sakka made the Going Forth and joined the Sangha, including the Buddha’s seven-year-old son Rahula, who had to wait until he was twenty before he was ordained, and three of the Buddha’s kinsfolk: his cousin, Ananda; his half-brother, Nanda; and Devadatta, his brother-in-law. They were accompanied by their barber, Upali, who had been taken along to shave the new bhikkhus’ heads, but asked for admission himself. His companions asked that the barber be admitted before them, to humble their Sakyan pride. Some of these Sakyans became notable figures in the Order. Upali became the leading expert in the rule of the monastic life, and Ananda, a gentle, scrupulous man, became the Buddha’s personal attendant during his last twenty years. Because Ananda was closer to the Buddha than anybody else and was with him almost all of the time, he became extremely knowledgeable about the Buddha’s sermons and sayings, but he was not a skilled yogin. Despite the fact that he became the most learned authority on the Dhamma, without the ability to meditate, he did not attain Nibbana during the Buddha’s lifetime. As for Devadatta, the scriptures, we shall see, assign him a role that is similar to that of Judas in the Gospel story.

The mention of the Gospels, with their colorful portraits of Jesus’s disciples, makes a Western reader long to know more about these early Buddhists. Who were these people who flocked into the Sangha by the thousand? What drew them to the Buddha? The Pali texts tell us little. The legends indicate that the first recruits came from the brahmin and ksatriya castes, though the message was preached to “the many,” and everybody was welcome to join. Merchants were also attracted to the Order; like the monks, they were the “new men” of the developing society, and needed a faith that reflected their essentially casteless status. But there are no detailed stories of individual conversions, such as the Gospel tales of fishermen dropping their nets and tax collectors leaving their counting houses. Ananda and Devadatta stand out from the crowd of bhikkhus, but their portraits are still emblematic and stylized compared with the more vivid character studies of some of Jesus’s disciples. Even Sariputta and Mogallana, the leading disciples of the Buddha, are presented as colorless figures with apparently little personality. There are no touching vignettes about the Buddha’s relationship with his son: Rahula appears in the Pali legends simply as another monk. The Buddha instructs him in meditation, as he would any other bhikkhu, and there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that they are father and son. We are left with images, not with personalities, and with our Western love of individuality, we can feel dissatisfied.

But this is to misunderstand the nature of the Buddhist experience. Many of these early monks achieved enlightenment precisely by contemplating the doctrine of anatta. This enabled them to transcend self; indeed, the Buddha denied that there was any such thing as a constant personality. He would have regarded the obstinate belief in a sacred, irreducible nub of selfhood as an “unskillful” delusion that would get in the way of enlightenment. As a result of the spirituality of anatta, the Buddha himself is presented in the Pali Canon as a type rather than an individual. He contends with other types: with Skeptics, brahmins and Jains. He owed his liberation precisely to the extinction of the unique traits and idiosyncrasies that Western people prize in their heroes. The same goes for his disciples. There is little to distinguish the Buddha from his bhikkhus, who are all depicted as minor Buddhas. Like him, they have become impersonal and have vanished as individuals. The Canonical texts preserve this anonymity by declining to delve into the secrets of their hearts. Nor will they reveal the lovable quirks in their characters before the achievement of enlightenment. It may be no accident that it is Devadatta and Ananda who stand out from the rank and file. Devadatta is filled with egotism, and the gentle Ananda has failed to achieve enlightenment and consequently has more observable personal traits than, say, a spiritual giant like Sariputta. We see farther into Ananda’s heart during the last days of the Buddha’s life, but, as we shall see, he cannot share the Buddha’s perspective. To a Westerner, who would decry this loss of personality, the bhikkhus would probably reply that the surrender of the ego was a price worth paying for the inner peace of Nibbana, which is probably impossible for anybody who is still immured in selfhood.