ONE HUNDRED BUDDHAS by Satyapal Anand

Happy landings! Sailing thru the unchartered waters of Buddism, especially for a poet, is a hard task. The Light of Asia became an all-time best-seller and so did Hermen Hesse's Siddhartha, but these were western telescopic

Studies of an Eastern faith and, in hindsight now, look rather puerile. I, Satyapal Anand, fortunately, am an Oriental with a penchant for arcane, mystic, oracular and esoteric subjects. Who would be more fit than your truly to compose forty poems (forty poems, indeed!) presenting Lord Buddha and his chosen disciple, Anand, in a verbal duel? That exactly is the warp and woof of this book. Poetic dialogues between these two – or The Wise One speaking, person qua person, to a disciple, or discoursing to a live audience, answering questions on subjects hithertofore an anathema for religious reformers – this is what happens in the book.

Are you remorseful on leaving your wife and child? Do you still have desire for the other sex? Nonviolence, all right, but what would you do if someone attacks you with an axe? Do you just offer your head on a platter? Growing food or killing a query as a food – what is your answer, O Buddha? Are you really going to get Nirvana (freedom from life and birth cycle) after this life span?

Strange indeed are these questions, but stranger still are the answers, that sometimes negate, sometimes go quite contrary to what we generally understand of this faith that began in India five centuries before Christ and spread in half the world in South East Asia. No, Buddha says, I am not remorseful but I do feel sorry for my young wife whom I left without a mate. Yes, non-violence is my message but self-defense is your right if someone attacks you. Growing or gathering food is the basic duty, but meat-eating is not a sin, particularly if cooked meat is offered to you as alms. And, lest you feel jealous of me for you think I am going to get nirvana after I die as Buddha, be informed that I am not getting freedom from birth-death cycle. I have to have another birth in which I must prove the Truth of my Being as Jesus Christ and be crucified before I earn the right to nirvana.

Well, well, well! It is a strange book, to say the least.