Kali

On Sundays when Dan and I go running in the garden I tell him prison stories and he tells me stories of the past lives of the Buddha and the Buddha’s famous teachings. There are hundreds of stories of the past lives of the Buddha called Jataka stories. Some of the Jataka stories illustrate the Buddha’s process of perfecting himself. Some of the stories are the result of the incorporation of regional stories absorbed during the spread of Buddhism. When proselytizing monks encountered a local god they would tell the people that the local god was a previous incarnation of the Buddha and form a Jataka story.

“It’s your turn this week,” I reminded Dan as we got ready to head to the Botanical Gardens last weekend. The previous week I had told him an elaborate story about the first code I led on a suicide attempt. Highlights from that experience included the inmate unconscious in a pool of blood on the top tier and the assistant warden suddenly appearing at 4 AM in full suit, make-up, and hair immaculately coiffured, looming over me and my CNA as we struggled on the floor to dissect the Gordian Knot of the Velcro back board straps. The whole thing was video-taped also. “I told you a good one last week, so I am giving you some time to think about it,” I joked as we got into the three-wheeler.

Dan was quiet on the ride over. After he talked us into the garden on the local 20 Rupee local rate we started our run around the perimeter downhill toward the forest of big bamboo. This was the favored spot for local lovebirds to roost. I had never seen any of the couples kiss; they just sat next to each other and talked quietly. Sometimes they held hands but quickly let go when we passed. “Have I told you about the story of the demoness Kali?” Dan asked as we started up the short hill into the bamboo forest.
“No, that sounds good,” I replied, relieved. “But isn’t she a Hindu Goddess?” I asked.

“No, not that Kali, it’s a pretty common name. To my knowledge there is no connection,” Dan replied thoughtfully, as if carefully reviewing his entire education in his mind.
“Right, right,” I replied, nodding.
“So the story goes like this,” Dan started. “There was a man whose father died and left him to care for his widowed mother. His mom thought he was working too hard around the house and asked him if he wanted a wife to do the work instead. The man didn’t want to complicate things, but his mom wore him down and arranged a marriage. When the wife turned out to be barren the mother got worried about not having any grandkids and pestered him to get another wife.”
“Yeah, probably so she could have more people to control,” I commented sarcastically as we rounded the corner into the section where the green Mahaweli river is visible through the giant bamboo clusters.
“Probably,” Dan answered, snorting a laugh through his slightly labored breathing. “The first wife got wind of this and decided that it’d be best if she picked out the new wife herself,” he continued. “She found some nice young girl from a good family and made the pitch to the family herself, which was not really the norm. The first wife talked them into it though and brought the girl to her husband. No problems with the fertility with this time, Second Wife got pregnant right away. First Wife insisted on preparing all of special pregnancy foods herself…”
“And she totally poisoned the woman causing a miscarriage right?” I cut in excitedly. “I mean, that’s what I’d do. If Second Wife has that kid then it would be all over for me, I’d be like a servant in my own house.” I joked.
“Yup,” Dan agreed, “Then Second Wife got pregnant again and First Wife did the same thing. Second Wife was like ‘hey, wait a minute,’ and confronted First Wife when she got pregnant for the third time. First Wife got desperate and was not able to sneak in the poison until Second Wife was in labor. As both mother and baby were dying Second Wife made a death-wish to come back as a demoness to devour First Wife and any children she might bear. After she died, she was reborn in the same house as a cat.”
“Huh, that’s kind of lame,” I commented slowly, disappointed. We ran out of the big bamboo and past the pond shaped like Sri Lanka. There was a little island in the middle of the pond with a pretty tree on it to represent Kandy.

“No but wait,” Dan reassured me. “The husband beats First Wife, but he doesn’t kill her, he figures what’s the point? She dies eventually and is born in that same house as a hen. You see, they both get born back in the animal womb. So the cat is still around and eats the hen’s eggs three times. Before the cat eats the hen, the hen makes a death-wish to come back and kill the cat and her offspring. So the hen was reborn as a tigress and the cat as a doe. The tigress eats the fawns and the doe. At this point in the story it gets vague as to who is who,” Dan explained as we approached the Great Lawn portion of the Botanical Gardens. This area was frequented by families with picnics. The old cream colored colonial mansion with its red clay tile roof from the coffee plantation days still stood looking down over the Great Lawn.

“I see,” I mused. “So they are locked in this cycle together and it doesn’t even really matter anymore who started it. That’s really interesting.”
“So then the tigress was born in a nobleman’s house and the doe was reborn as the demoness Kali. When the daughter gets married and has a child, the demoness talks her way into the bedroom and eats the newborn. She does this the second time also. When the daughter gets pregnant again she tells her husband that she is going back to her father’s household to have the child. Kali has to do 5 months of water-bearing serving the king of Hell during this time, so she can’t kill the kid right away. When she is done she comes back to earth and tracks the family down. The child is a bit older and the parents are preparing for the name ceremony when the mother spots Kali. She takes off running with the child and runs to the local temple where the Buddha happens to be preaching.”
“Ah, it’s the Buddha angle now,” I commented, picking up the pace as we ran under the bat-rest trees teeming with squeaking bats.
“Yes, this is where the Buddha comes into it,” Dan replied. “So the mother lays the child at the feet of the Buddha and tells him that the demoness is coming to eat the child. The Buddha tells her not to worry and asks the head monk to escort the demoness into the temple. The mother starts freaking out but the Buddha just tells her to settle down,” Dan joked and I started laughing through my heavy breathing. When Dan caught his breath from laughing and the slight hill out of the bat area he continued, “The Buddha asked Kali why she did what she did and told them both they were lucky to run into him. If they didn’t meet the Buddha and hear the Dhamma from him their conflict would have continued indefinitely. Then he gave them both a sermon about justice.”

“So you have to have to right teaching from the right person or being,” I replied. “That makes sense. It reminds me of what my old violin teacher explained about the learning process. ‘Most learning takes place repeating the same things over and over again, like practicing your scales every day’ he told me. ‘But sometimes you have sudden, cataclysmic learning. This does not happen very often, especially in music,’ he used to joke. I guess those women could have heard the same lesson about justice, but it could only reach them when it came through the Buddha because they could see it with his clarity. That violin teacher was actually like that. He could take a musical concept that tons of other teachers had tried to pound into my head and put it in such a way that I could suddenly see it or hear it.”
“Teachers like that are great,” Dan replied nodding. “Kali became a stream-enterer, meaning she was put on the path to enlightenment. The Buddha tells the mother to let the demoness hold she child and Kali snuggles it like it was her own, then everyone is shiny and happy. Kali ends up living in the forest and the villagers bring her alms because she gives them good advice about their crops,” he finished.

“I really like that story,” I commented as we started on the less populated and more overgrown back stretch along the river heading back toward the front gate. “It really shows the complexity of karma, not just simple poetic justice. It reminds me of that cancer patient I had, the one down for murder. There was no way she was getting clemency because of her crime, and she hung on forever. I started a Super Bowl style betting pool on when she would die and we all lost because she so far exceeded everyone’s expectations. That’s how bad it was. Security and nursing both often commented that her prolonged suffering was her debt for taking a life...”
“I thought you said that everyone you worked with was Christian?” Dan interjected.
“Yeah, that’s what was weird about it,” I replied. It was like this simplistic idea of karma had filtered its way into American culture outside of religious affiliation. Anyway, since I had done Hospice on the outside I argued that perfectly decent people died in all sorts of horrible ways, and furthermore, there were inmates who had committed much more heinous crimes living healthy lives on the inside. I just felt like it was all so much more complex you know? Nothing’s that simple, like in the Kali story. There is all this cause and effect that we don’t know about. Eventually you lose track of who caused what. The fact that she had taken a life didn’t allow me to feel any better about her suffering. I didn’t want the other nursing staff to ease their minds with this explanation and have an excuse to not give her their best possible care. I didn’t want them to not turn her or spend the extra time to position her just right because she had killed someone.”
“Do you think people did that?” Dan asked.
“Maybe,” I replied. “I’m sure that the cancer spread to her hip, so she could be really tough to position, especially once she started to break down and develop pressure ulcers. You had to really take your time with her and get it right. One time toward the end when I was working with her she asked me about her dying process, “Why is this taking so long?” and I replied, “I don’t know, what’s holding you here?” She just shook her head, wincing in pain, and told me that she didn’t know. People said all the time that she was afraid to die because she knew she was going to hell. I used to tell them that she was already in hell. I just hoped for her that the suffering served some sort of purpose to burn away some of that sin she had acquired as a murder. I don’t even really know if it works that way. That’s just what I hoped for her.”
“That’s your yogic mind talking about heat and purification and all that. That’s not really correct according to Buddhist psychology,” Dan replied, almost apologetically. “The Buddhists believe that the rebirth is determined by the last thought. When you said that she was already in hell, that was more in line with Buddhist psychology. If her mind was a really chaotic place of anger and suffering she was probably building up the habit of being someone who kills and then dies painfully.”
“Man, that’s depressing.” I replied, pushing myself extra hard to run up the hill. “So all that suffering isn’t really serving any purpose. It’s not like credit then is it? Once you’ve paid off all your plastic you can get a better interest rate,” I replied, mulling it over.”
“No, it’s more like this run,” Dan replied. “When you push yourself up this hill you get stronger physically to run farther, but you also learn how to cope with pain. You train yourself to be a better runner. She’s becoming trained also,” Dan explained. “How did your patient die again?” he asked as we topped out on the hill and passed the modern orchid house with its concave roof hollowed out to the sky. We continued on the path running into the fruit tree grove at the top.
“I used to literally pray every day that she would die and be released into whatever was next,” I began. “Seriously. That was my wish for her. When she stopped eating and drinking we knew it was getting close. I came into work one night and the Watch Commander told me she was going to die that night. I think she must have had some sort of stroke that day or something, she was totally unconscious. The whites of her eyes were black. It was in the middle of a flu epidemic and I couldn’t spend a lot of time with her. I knew that she didn’t want to be alone from conversations we had before, but the infirmary was a freakin’ crisis. I wanted to sit next to her all night, but it just wasn’t possible. I tried to be with her as much as I could, watching her take little sips of breath. I prayed over her myself and said some mantras. I don’t know if she would have wanted all that weird Sanskrit crap but that’s what she got. We never really talked about it beforehand, I just knew that she didn’t want to be alone so I would put a hand on her. When she looked really still my CNA and I put the 12 leads on her for an EKG. I wanted 12 leads of flat-line, but her heart would beat every now and then, so we had to wait. Once we got the flat line, I pronounced her dead myself at 2 AM. Most nurses never pronounce anyone dead because most of the time there are docs around to do it. There was a 2 AM count, so they counted her dead body and then we bagged her. I called the family myself. That was basically it,” I finished as we reached the front gate, our stopping point after about 25 minutes of running.