The Wandering Mind

Chapter One: The Debt

The creditor came the morning after Ananta’s mother was cremated.

The ashes of the funeral fire had not yet been scattered by the wind. Her water pot stood beside the doorway, where she had left it before the fever confined her to bed. Ananta had not moved it. He had spent the night sitting in the courtyard, listening to the sounds of other households beginning and ending their ordinary business. Somewhere nearby, a woman had called her children to supper. A man had quarrelled with his ox. Life had continued with an indifference Ananta found almost offensive.

Dhanapala arrived shortly after sunrise, accompanied by two men.

He had known Ananta’s father for years. Once, during a harvest festival, he had eaten at their house and praised the quality of their grain. Ananta remembered him laughing with his father. Now he stood at the entrance, examining the courtyard as though he were estimating its value.

“I heard about your mother,” he said.

“You attended the cremation.”

“Yes.”

“Then why have you come?”

Dhanapala adjusted the cloth over his shoulder.

“Your father borrowed grain before the failed harvest. I allowed him another season, then another. Your mother promised payment after the rains.”

“The rains were poor.”

“They were poor for everyone.”

“My father is dead. My mother is dead. What do you expect me to do?”

“Settle what is owed.”

Ananta had heard this demand so often that the words seemed to have acquired a life of their own. His father had borrowed grain to sow the field. When the harvest failed, he borrowed again to feed the household and preserve enough seed for another attempt. Interest accumulated. His father’s illness prevented him from working, and his death left the obligation untouched.

His mother had tried to keep the field productive. She had sold jewellery, reduced their meals and worked beyond her strength. When fever came, she worried less about dying than about what Dhanapala might take after she was gone.

“How much?” Ananta asked.

Dhanapala named the amount.

“That is more than my father borrowed.”

“Time has a cost.”

“So does hunger.”

“I did not cause the drought.”

“Neither did my father.”

Dhanapala’s expression hardened.

“You have the field, the oxen and the house. Sell what you must.”

“If I sell the oxen, how will I cultivate?”

“That is your concern.”

“And if I sell the field?”

“Then you will no longer owe me anything.”

“And what shall I eat?”

“You are young. Find work.”

Ananta looked at the two men standing behind the creditor. Neither spoke. One examined the doorway; the other watched the road.

“Do you remember eating here with my father?” Ananta asked.

“Of course.”

“He fed you from the same harvest you later lent him grain to replace.”

“What has that to do with the debt?”

“Nothing, apparently.”

Dhanapala stepped closer.

“Do not mistake my patience for weakness. I shall return after the next market day.”

When the men had gone, Ananta remained standing until their footsteps disappeared.

Inside the house, he found the small bundle of seed his mother had saved for the next sowing. She had separated the sound grains from those damaged by damp, even during the final days of her illness. The bundle was wrapped in an old piece of cloth and tied with a knot he recognised.

He held it for a long time.

What had his parents done to deserve such lives?

He had asked the question before, though never aloud in precisely those words. The village had answers. Some said suffering was the fruit of actions performed in a previous existence. Others spoke of duties neglected, offerings not made, or debts carried by the soul beyond death. A man who appeared to prosper might have earned his fortune through earlier virtue. A family that suffered might be exhausting the consequences of wrongdoing.

Ananta had never understood how anyone knew these things.

His father had cultivated the land, paid what he could and helped neighbours when their fields needed labour. His mother had fed travellers even in years when the household had little to spare. If their suffering was punishment, what had they done?

And if nobody could tell him, why did so many people speak with certainty?

At the cremation, an elderly neighbour had tried to console him.

“Every life receives the fruit of its actions.”

Ananta had wanted to ask whether his mother’s fever was a fruit she had planted. But he had remained silent. The neighbour meant to be kind.

Now, alone in the house, he found the words unbearable.

He placed the seed bundle beside the water pot and walked out.

---

Beyond the settlement, the road towards Rājagṛha followed a shallow irrigation channel before passing beneath a stand of trees. Travellers often stopped there to rest. Merchants watered their animals, villagers exchanged news, and wandering ascetics sometimes gathered to speak with those willing to listen.

That evening a small crowd had assembled beneath the trees.

At its centre sat an elderly wanderer whose appearance was unremarkable. His hair had begun to grey, and the skin around his eyes was marked by years of exposure to the sun. He wore the simplicity of a man who possessed little and appeared unconcerned by the fact.

Someone told Ananta his name was Pūraṇa Kassapa.

Ananta stood at the edge of the gathering.

A villager was asking whether a particular offering would improve the fortunes of his household.

“How do you know it will?” Kassapa asked.

“The priests say it brings merit.”

“Have you seen the merit?”

“No.”

“Have you seen its reward?”

“Not yet.”

“Then what have you seen?”

“The offering.”

“And what happened to it?”

“The priests received it.”

Several listeners laughed. The villager did not.

“My father made such offerings,” he said. “His father did the same.”

“Then you know that your father and grandfather made offerings. You have not told me how you know what the offerings achieved.”

The man withdrew, dissatisfied.

Ananta remained.

When the crowd began to disperse, he approached the teacher.

“May I ask you something?”

“You may.”

“My parents suffered greatly. People tell me they must have done something wrong in another life.”

“Do you believe them?”

“I do not know.”

“Do they remember your parents’ former lives?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then how did they discover what your parents did?”

“They say suffering has a cause.”

“Of course suffering has causes. Hunger may follow a failed harvest. Fever may weaken a body. A creditor may demand payment because grain was borrowed. Why must every cause be a moral offence?”

Ananta sat down.

“My father borrowed because the crops failed. He died before he could repay the debt. My mother worked until she became ill.”

“And someone told you they deserved these things?”

“They said it was karma.”

“Did they know your parents?”

“Yes.”

“Did they know what your parents had done in another life?”

“No.”

“Then they knew their suffering but not the wrongdoing they claimed had caused it.”

Ananta felt something loosen within him.

He had expected another explanation of his family’s misfortunes. Instead, this stranger had questioned whether any explanation of moral guilt was justified.

“But why do good people suffer?” he asked.

Kassapa looked towards the fields.

“Do you believe the rain falls only on the fields of good men?”

“No.”

“Does disease spare those who have never injured another?”

“No.”

“Then why assume that every misfortune is a judgement?”

Ananta looked down at his hands.

“My mother died believing she had failed us.”

Kassapa said nothing.

“She thought she had not done enough.”

“Was she able to prevent her illness?”

“No.”

“Could she command the harvest?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps she was holding herself responsible for what she could not control.”

Ananta could not speak for a while.

When he finally rose, the light was fading.

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

“For another day or two.”

Ananta bowed and returned home.

For the first time since his mother’s death, he had heard an explanation that did not accuse her.

---

He returned the following evening.

All day he had thought about Kassapa’s words. They offered relief, but the relief itself troubled him. He wanted the teacher to be right. That was precisely why he feared accepting the teaching too readily.

Several villagers were already seated beneath the trees.

One had brought a basket of food for the wanderers. He placed it before Kassapa and folded his hands.

“Teacher, I hope this gift will bring merit to my family.”

“Are they hungry?” Kassapa asked.

“The wanderers?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose so.”

“Then your gift may relieve their hunger.”

“And earn merit?”

“No.”

The man looked up.

“Surely generosity is good.”

“You have given food. Others will eat it. Why must an unseen reward follow?”

“Because good actions bear good fruit.”

“Do you mean that feeding a man may strengthen him?”

“More than that. I mean the merit will return to me.”

“Would you refuse to feed him if nothing returned?”

The villager hesitated.

“No. I would still give.”

“Then why make the reward the reason for your gift?”

Ananta remembered his mother placing food before a hungry traveller. She had not asked the man to bless her or promised herself a better existence. She had simply seen that he needed something she could provide.

Perhaps Kassapa was right. Perhaps kindness did not require a reward.

Then another listener spoke.

“If giving brings no merit, does killing bring no evil?”

“No karmic evil,” Kassapa answered.

The words struck Ananta so sharply that he thought he had misheard.

The questioner leaned forward.

“Even if a man kills someone who has done him no harm?”

“Even then.”

A murmur passed through the gathering.

“Then a murderer is innocent?”

“I have not said that those who live under a king’s laws will escape judgement or punishment. I say that killing does not create the invisible burden of karmic evil you imagine.”

“But a man has died!”

“Yes.”

“His family suffers!”

“Yes.”

“Then how can you say no evil has been produced?”

“Because you are speaking of one thing and I of another. You describe a death, grief and the consequences that follow among the living. I deny that the act adds an unseen moral substance which must ripen into punishment in another existence.”

The villager shook his head.

“Without fear of karma, men would kill whenever they pleased.”

“Do men who believe in karma never kill?”

No one answered.

“Do kings who believe in merit never wage war? Do brothers who believe in punishment never quarrel over inheritance? Has fear of another life prevented every cruelty in this one?”

Ananta knew of disputes over land, quarrels between relatives and punishments carried out by royal officials. He had seen men make offerings in the morning and cheat their neighbours before sunset.

Yet the teacher’s argument seemed to remove something essential.

The villager rose.

“I would not leave my children in the company of a man who teaches that murder carries no evil.”

He walked away.

Others followed him.

Ananta stayed.

Kassapa began sharing the food that had been brought to the gathering. He gave a portion to an older wanderer who had arrived late, then placed another beside a man whose hands trembled too badly to hold the basket steadily.

Ananta watched him.

The teacher had just denied that generosity earned merit. Yet he gave away the food without hesitation.

When the others had gone, Ananta approached.

“Teacher, I understood what you told me yesterday about my parents. But tonight you have said something I cannot accept.”

“What is it?”

“That killing brings no karmic evil.”

“Yes.”

“Then my mother’s kindness and a murderer’s cruelty bring the same reward?”

“Neither produces the karmic reward or punishment you describe.”

“Then they are equal?”

“Did I say they were equal?”

“You say neither earns anything.”

“I say there is no invisible account in which their actions are entered as merit and demerit.”

Ananta felt anger rising.

“My mother fed hungry people. If someone had killed her, would you say that the killer had done nothing worse than she had?”

“No. I would say that she fed people and that her killer took her life. Why do you think denying karmic reward means denying what happened?”

“Because one action is good and the other evil.”

“Then tell me what makes them so.”

Ananta was startled.

“Surely you know.”

“I have asked what you know.”

“Killing causes suffering.”

“Sometimes.”

“Feeding the hungry relieves it.”

“Often.”

“Then that is the difference.”

“You have identified consequences. Why must you add an unseen punishment or reward?”

Ananta struggled to answer.

He had never separated the goodness of an action from the merit it supposedly produced. Since childhood, the two had been spoken of together. Now Kassapa was pulling them apart, and Ananta could not tell whether something important had been discovered or something important destroyed.

“Suppose,” he said, “a man kills another merely because he enjoys killing. Suppose he is powerful enough that no one can punish him. What prevents him?”

Kassapa looked at him.

“What do you think should prevent him?”

“The knowledge that killing is wrong.”

“And if he does not believe it?”

“Then he must be taught.”

“What will you teach him?”

“That he will suffer for it.”

“In another life?”

“Yes.”

“And if he asks you to prove it?”

Ananta fell silent.

The teacher waited.

“Then I cannot prove it,” Ananta admitted.

“That is an honest answer.”

“But if I cannot prove it, and he believes no punishment will follow, he may kill.”

“He may.”

“Then your teaching is dangerous.”

“Is a teaching false because someone may use it dangerously?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Is it true because it makes people behave as you wish?”

“No.”

“Then you have two questions, Ananta. Whether a belief is true, and what men may do when they believe it. Do not confuse them.”

Ananta looked at the old ascetic.

He had never heard anyone speak like this.

The village priests argued that good deeds brought good consequences and bad deeds brought suffering. His parents had accepted this, though they sometimes wondered why the results were so difficult to recognise. Even those who disagreed about sacrifices or rituals generally accepted that wrongdoing burdened the person who committed it.

Kassapa was questioning the foundation beneath all of them.

Ananta wanted to reject him. Yet he could not return to the familiar teaching without remembering the accusations made against his dead parents.

“Teacher,” he said quietly, “if you are right, my mother did not deserve her suffering.”

“Her suffering does not establish that she deserved it.”

“But if you are right, the man who killed her would earn no karmic punishment.”

“That is what follows from my teaching.”

Ananta looked towards the darkening road.

He had found a doctrine that could release his mother from guilt, but it seemed equally capable of releasing her murderer.

He had never imagined that one argument could comfort and frighten him so completely.

---

That night he slept little.

He imagined his mother beside the cooking fire, dividing a small meal so that he and his father might eat more. He remembered her giving water to a stranger who had arrived during the hottest part of the day. He remembered the way she had tried to conceal her exhaustion when the harvest failed.

Had she been good?

He had never doubted it.

But what did he mean by good?

If her actions earned no merit, did that diminish them? Perhaps it made them greater. She had helped others without any certainty of reward.

Then he imagined a man killing for pleasure.

If the universe did not punish him, was his cruelty any less cruel?

No. The victim would still suffer.

But why should the murderer care?

Ananta turned over on his sleeping mat.

The question seemed simple until he tried to answer it.

He could threaten the murderer with punishment, but Kassapa would ask whether the threat was true. He could speak of the victim’s suffering, but a cruel man might enjoy that suffering. He could appeal to the customs of the village, but customs differed, and powerful men often ignored them.

He realised that he had never examined the reasons behind his own convictions. He had inherited them as he had inherited the field, the house and his father’s debt.

Now an old wanderer had questioned them, and Ananta did not know which were worth keeping.

---

He returned on the third evening before the villagers arrived.

Kassapa was sitting alone, repairing the cord of his travelling bundle.

“Teacher, may I ask another question?”

“You have returned. I expected that you would.”

Ananta sat opposite him.

“If there is no karmic merit in giving, why do you share your food?”

“Because others need to eat.”

“But you could keep it.”

“Yes.”

“And if you did, no karmic evil would follow?”

“None.”

“Then why do you give it away?”

“Why did your mother feed travellers?”

Ananta looked up.

“Because they were hungry.”

“Did she need another reason?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps you have already answered your question.”

“But not everyone is like my mother.”

“No.”

“Some men would keep everything for themselves.”

“Yes.”

“Some would take from others.”

“Yes.”

“Some would kill for pleasure.”

“Yes.”

“Then what is to stop them?”

Kassapa put down the cord.

“You keep asking what will stop other men. What stops you?”

Ananta considered this.

“I do not want to cause suffering.”

“Why?”

“Because I know what suffering feels like.”

“Then your own experience gives you a reason.”

“But another man may feel differently.”

“He may.”

“Then there is no reason that binds us all?”

“Have you discovered one?”

Ananta shook his head.

“Neither have I shown you that one exists.”

The answer did not satisfy him, but he began to understand that Kassapa was not offering the kind of certainty he had expected.

“Do you believe a man ought to restrain himself?” Ananta asked.

“From what?”

“From unnecessary killing.”

“You have called it unnecessary. Why?”

“Because he does not need to kill.”

“Then you have already judged his purpose.”

“Yes.”

“Now ask whether that judgement requires an invisible punishment to support it.”

Ananta looked towards the road.

“Perhaps it does not.”

“Perhaps.”

“But if it does not, I must find another reason.”

“Then find it.”

Ananta smiled despite himself.

“You answer every question with another.”

“Would you prefer an answer you cannot examine?”

He thought of the priests who had explained his parents’ suffering, of Dhanapala who had insisted that debt must be paid, and of his own certainty that kindness and cruelty were rewarded according to some unseen order.

“No,” he said. “I would not.”

Kassapa returned to repairing his bundle.

After a while Ananta asked, “Are you leaving tomorrow?”

“At sunrise.”

“Where will you go?”

“Towards Rājagṛha.”

Ananta was silent.

He had lived his whole life within reach of his father’s field. He knew the paths between the village, the well, the market and the neighbouring farms. He had imagined travelling farther, but there had always been work to do and someone depending upon him.

Now his parents were dead.

The field was failing.

Dhanapala would return.

He looked at Kassapa’s small bundle. The old man possessed so little that he could depart without asking anyone’s permission.

“May I travel with you?”

Kassapa raised his eyes.

“Why?”

“Because I want to understand your teaching.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Some of it.”

“Which part?”

“That suffering does not prove guilt.”

“And the rest?”

“I think you may be wrong.”

“Then why follow me?”

Ananta hesitated.

He could have said that he wished to escape the creditor. He could have said that the village had become unbearable since his mother’s death. Both would have been true.

But neither explained why he had returned to the trees three evenings in succession.

“Because you have said things I cannot forget,” he answered. “I have spent my life believing that kindness must be rewarded and cruelty punished. Now I cannot explain how I know either is true.”

Kassapa studied him.

“Will you remain if you discover that I am mistaken?”

“I do not know.”

“Will you remain if you discover that I am right?”

Ananta looked surprised.

“Why would I leave if you were right?”

“Because you may dislike what follows.”

Ananta remembered the murderer who feared no punishment.

“I already dislike some of it.”

“Then you have begun to listen.”

Kassapa rose.

“We leave at sunrise. Bring only what you can carry.”

---

That afternoon, Ananta returned to his mother’s house. He had until sunrise to settle what he could before leaving with Kassapa

He stood in the doorway and looked at the familiar objects. The grinding stone, the clay vessels, the wooden stool his father had repaired many times. Everything remained where it had been, but the people who had given those objects meaning were gone.

In the shelter beside the house stood the two oxen. His father had raised them from young animals, and Ananta had worked alongside them since childhood. They knew his voice and would turn towards him whenever he entered the yard.

He brought them water and placed the remaining fodder before them.

For a while he stood watching them eat.

Without the oxen, the field could not be cultivated as it had been. But he was leaving, and there was no one in the household to care for them.

Later that morning, he led them to Dhanapala’s house.

The creditor came outside and looked at the animals.

“What is this?”

“I am leaving the village. Take them towards what my father owed.”

Dhanapala examined the older ox, then the younger.

“They will not settle the debt.”

“I know.”

“Not even half of it.”

“Then tell me what you will allow against the account.”

Dhanapala named a sum.

Ananta knew the animals were worth more, but he had neither the time nor the heart to bargain for long.

“Then have it witnessed,” he said. “I want it known how much you have received.”

Dhanapala called two neighbours. In their presence, he acknowledged taking the oxen at the agreed value and reducing the outstanding debt accordingly.

Ananta handed over the ropes.

The younger ox resisted when Dhanapala’s servant tried to lead it away. Ananta took the rope once more, stroked the animal’s neck and walked beside it until it settled.

Then he gave the rope back.

He had watched his father guide those animals through the fields for years. Now they were disappearing into another man’s courtyard in payment of a debt his father had never lived to repay.

Ananta returned home and gathered a change of cloth, a drinking vessel and a little food.

The seed bundle lay beside his mother’s water pot.

He took it to the elderly neighbour who had known his family for years.

“I have given the oxen to Dhanapala,” he told her. “He has reduced the debt, but some remains.”

“And the field?”

“I cannot cultivate it now. If someone is willing to tend it, let them use these seeds. I will not have my mother’s work wasted.”

“And the house?”

“Please keep an eye on it until I return, if I return.”

The woman looked at him sadly.

“Your father would have wanted you to keep the land.”

“Perhaps. But he would not have wanted the oxen to starve while I wandered.”

“Where will you go?”

“With a wandering teacher.”

“What will you find on the road?”

“I do not know.”

“Then why go?”

Ananta thought of Kassapa’s questions.

“Because there are things I believed I knew, and now I am no longer certain.”

She shook her head.

“Uncertainty is a poor thing to carry into the world.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I have been carrying other people’s certainties for long enough.”

He bowed to the elderly woman and returned to his parents’ house.

That night, Ananta slept for the last time in his parents’ house. The shelter where the oxen had stood was empty. Their absence troubled him more than he had expected. He had surrendered the animals to reduce a debt he had not incurred, yet the debt remained. He wondered whether he had acted from duty, affection for his father’s memory, or simply a desire to leave without being accused of running away.

He could not decide.

Before sunrise, he gathered his few belongings and stepped outside.

At the edge of the village, he looked back once.

Smoke was rising from the morning fires. Somewhere a child was crying. An ox stood beside a field waiting to be harnessed. Nothing in the settlement appeared changed by his departure.

He thought of Dhanapala and the debt that would remain behind him.

Then he thought of his mother.

He had wanted to believe that the universe would reward her kindness. Kassapa had given him no such assurance. Instead, the old man had suggested that her kindness might need no reward to be what it was.

Ananta did not yet know whether that was wisdom or a terrible mistake.

He only knew that the question would not leave him.

The wanderers were waiting beneath the trees.

Kassapa saw him approaching but said nothing.

Ananta joined the others, and together they took the road towards Rājagṛha.

He had left behind a debt he could not repay.

He did not yet understand that he was carrying a question far more difficult to settle.