First Letter Home: Gautama

Picture of Envelopes

Alexander the Great is writing a letter home to one of his two main wives. Her name is Roxana and she is the daughter of a nobleman from Bactria. He is writing home about the guru named Gautama because this story makes Alexander think about his love for Roxana.

To my beloved Roxana,

    Each day I wake up and feel I have succeeded in making the whole world mine, and every day the world seems to get a little bigger. I feel tired of this constant pressure of being a king.  Today I encountered another wandering guru. I don't seem to understand how such people can live lives like this. Their passions are so much different from ours. They desire no land, no money, no power. They only desire enlightenment and understanding. They care nothing for possessions. Only knowledge. How can such a life be lived?

    His name was Kutanga. He passed along a story to me of one of his ancestors. This story is absolutely enchanting. As the words fell off of this poet's lips, I felt as if he transported me to this ancient world of which he spoke. He spoke about Dharma, or the righteous path which all gurus hope to walk upon. He also explained to me that we are currently living in Kali Yuga, the worst of all time periods in Hinduism. There are four time periods and they are explained with the symbol of a cow. In the first and best time period, the cow is standing on all four legs. With each successive time period, the cow is standing on one less leg, and the age in which we live, the cow only has one leg to stand on!.  He was telling me about the life of a man named Gautama, who lived during the three-legged cow period. I won't bore you any more with my words. I will try and use this Kutanga's words...

    In a time long away from the present. Back before the cow was made to stand on one leg. During this three-legged world lived a man named Gautama. He was nearer to enlightenment than any person that I have ever known. Compared to him, we all live our lives completely absorbed in the illusions of Maya. We are lost in the waves of deception. But he had denied himself worldly pleasures. He had shunned society, friendship, wealth, food, heat, all of those things which allow comfort and deception to creep into simple lives.

    His discipline had grown so strong, his life so noble, that even the Gods began to revere him. They thought him to be even more majestic than their great creator Brahma. This, of course, infuriated the great creator.

    So Brahma began to scheme. He knew that he could never be defeated or changed in any way, but he could not allow a mere guru to steal the praise he knew to be his own. So he sent his most beautiful creation, a girl named Ahalya, to deceive and seduce Gautama. He hoped that either Gautama would speak evil words about Brahma and the Gods or attempt to go to bed with Ahalya, and either way Brahma would make Gautama's impurities come to light.

    Ahalya was sent to live with Gautama from the time she was a child until she was a full-grown woman, so that she was in his care for over ten years. Unfortunately for Brahma, the only thing that Gautama did to Ahalya was teach her the ways of peace and asceticism. Ahalya ended up becoming even more beautiful and pure through living with Gautama than she had been during the time she had spent living among the Gods. This infuriated Brahma, whose one and only focus was to cast Gautama in a new and negative light.

    So, Brahma told Gautama that he could marry Ahalya. But Gautama was past any sexual or emotional desires. So he allowed Ahalya to continue to live with him and he pledged to take care of her until his death. He hoped that he could help preserve Dharma through his care of Ahalya.

    Many years passed. Gautama had aged significantly but Ahalya was still the beautiful woman that she always was. Eventually, some of the Gods began to miss Ahalya's presence in heaven. Brahma had long since forgotten about Ahalya, having moved on to much more important issues of the universe, but Indra still missed and desired Ahalya. So one day while Gautama and Ahalya were sleeping, Indra came down as a flaming comet and rushed towards their forest. He hoped that he could destroy their home and steal Ahalya away to heaven.

    Gautama heard the screaming comet approaching and threw himself upon Ahalya to protect her from the impact. The force of the comet smashing into the forest caused Gautama and Ahalya to fly across the land. Finally they landed upon the tops of the Himalayas. Indra, in anger, let out an enormous scream. He yelled so hard and with so much force that his bones actually become scared and began to flee. But no matter how hard they pushed, Indra's bones could not flee through his skin. Eventually Indra stopped screaming and his bones stopped moving. But Indra was left with thousands of large bumps, almost like horns under his skin, where his own bones had tried to escape the noise.

    My love, I only hope that I can love you with the purity that Gautama felt towards Ahalya. I know that I am a much greater man than he was, but in the way that he constantly pursued Dharma, I still feel like he showed me something worthy.

                                                                                                                                                                A.
Author's note
I made some very major changes to the story. In the original story, Brahma sends Ahalya to Gautama because Brahma fears that Indra will sleep with Ahalya in heaven. Eventually Gautama and Ahalya become married. Later Indra sleeps with Ahalya while disguised as Gautama. Gautama then cursed Ahalya and turned her into stone and cursed Indra, which caused his entire body to be covered with female genitalia. In my version, I changed the story to allow Brahma to get angry instead of Gautama. I wanted to portray Gautama as a selfless guru who lived a life of asceticism. In both my story and the original story, Brahma sends Ahalya to Gautama because of his purity. In the original story, it is because Brahma wants to protect Ahalya from Indra. In my story, however, it is because Brahma wants to prove to the other Gods that Gautama is corruptible like all other men. I felt that since Gautama was being directly tested by the Gods, it would make him seem even more devoted to his cause of Dharma.

Because I wanted Gautama to remain a static character, a character of constant discipline, I chose not to have him marry Ahalya.  If he were to marry her, then his role as a guru would appear corrupted to some readers. So, instead of Gautama marrying Ahalya, I chose instead to allow him to devote himself to her but on a level of spiritual teaching and protection, not marriage. Besides being devoid of sexual desires, I also didn't want Gautama to actually get angry. So instead of Indra having sex with Ahalya while Gautama is away and Gautama getting angry and cursing Indra, I had Indra trying to attack Gautama and Ahalya. I preferred to have the Gods resorting to violence instead of Gautama.




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Bibliography Info
Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way.
Narayan, R. K. (1972) The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic.
"Alexander the Great." Wikipedia: Alexander the Great.

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