Buddha's Lions:
The Lives of the
Eighty-Four Siddhas

It's kind of strange to spend your life in pursuit of something that can't be defined, but serious Buddhists do that. Although we're told it can't be known or logically understood, or even intentionally pursued, we've heard stories of enlightenment and either go after it tenaciously or stop believing in it and turn what we do into religion instead.

I don't look at enlightenment in the way most Buddhists see it or conceive it. To me the old meditations led to something which fits the descriptions of enlightenment, but did leave me unable to explain what it might be. It wasn't what I expected, and it wasn't exactly as scholastic Buddhists describe it.

To find examples of what I mean I have to go back in history fairly far, because in the beginnings of Buddhism the experience seems to have been different, with fewer rules and simpler approaches to the problem. In Buddha's Lions: The Lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas, 84 examples of enlightened people show us this older side of things. Most would think the stories exaggerated or symbolic, but if you consider them literal descriptions of what happened you do get that older view of what enlightenment actually means.

One of my favorite stories from this book is the story of Manibhadra. This young girl came from a wealthy family and at 13 was already entrenched in ordinary life and engaged to be married. One day a guru stopped to ask for food and after a conversation with him, she asked to learn how to obtain liberation. They spent several days in the local cemetery as he taught her the different stages of the path, and then she went back to her family.

Her parents were very upset with her, thinking she was rebelling against the arranged marriage that was still pending, but even though they beat her she was calm about all of it. She explained that she'd been around so long that every living being had been her mother and father at some time, and she'd just accept the beatings as part of her path. Her parents thought her remarks were silly, and she continued her ordinary existence as before but practiced her meditations faithfully. She married, had children, and was a good wife to her husband.

Twelve years later while carrying a pot of water back to her house, she dropped the pot and stopped where she was, just staring at the broken vessel for the rest of the day. When people spoke to her she didn't respond, just kept staring at the pot.

At the end of the day she seemed to come out of her trance, but looked around her at the people who had gathered there and couldn't understand what they said, accusing them of being possessed.

At sundown she flew up into the air and hovered there for 21 days before heading out into the Outer Heavens to visit the Dakas. While hanging around, she gave instructions in the path to any who cared to listen.

Part of her speech:

"Living beings without beginning,
break the pot of the body.
Why should I return home?
My pot is now broken.
I will not return to my home in samsara;
now I will go to the great bliss.
Behold, O guru, a great wonder:
desiring great bliss, I have recourse to you."

Today not many believe such things actually happened, but this book records 84 unique examples in detail, with some hints about how and why it was done. There are stories of monks who ate pigeons, hunters who gained control of life and death, scholars who fell in love with young prostitutes, and beggars who lived on fish guts. They all succeeded in finding that undefinable miracle. Every rule modern Buddhists consider essential is at some point in one of these stories broken, and the outcome is something few people today even imagine might be true.

Illustration taken from Buddha's Lions, translated by James B. Robinson.