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The Adventures of Maximus

Buddha Dharma

Dharma Practitioner
Author's Note: I see this section has a few creative works of fiction, so I have been playing with an idea about a work set in Old Greece when Hellenistic Buddhism existed.

I basically drew on both Homer and Journey to the West, the high classic of Chinese Buddhism. This is probably a short story, but we'll see where it goes.

Maximus is a 13 year old Greek boy and follower of Greco-Buddhism, whose town gets destroyed by northern invaders, so he sets out to seek the help of the gods. I'll say nothing else for now.


Maximus coughed a raspy cough, trying to catch his wind in the cloud of debris still hovering about. The air was heavy and stale. The only light came in through the broken roof- the light of Helios in his going down. Soon Nyx would lower her curtain of night on the world.

The rafters of his house were broken, and most of the roof had caved in on the right side. He vaguely recalled what had happened.

"It's the Ustros!"

That had been the cry from the town watch. The people's only warning. Closer and closer the enemy horse hoofs thundered over the plain as the northern invader came on.

"Maximus no," his father had ordered at the door of their house, sword in hand. "Stay here, and ask the Blessed One and gods for help."

Maximus had lit the candles of their little house altar with trembling hands, trying his hardest to hold back tears. He must be brave, like his father...

"P-please help us," Maximus hiccuped, as the tears fell anyway.

The boy reached out shaking hands toward the shrine in supplication. His eyes took in the Blessed Lord Buddha standing in contemplation, clad in the toga worn by philosophers.

He must be brave- must not be mislead by temporal things and emotion...

He tried to recall what the traveling monk from the east had taught them.

The eyes of the thirteen year old fell on Zeus and their meager little images of the Olympians. Powerful Zeus, said to hold the great thunderbolt weapon...

"Please Lord of the Gods," Maximus cried out. "Help us. Help me!"

The horses were outside the house now. The thundering hooves clapped and shrieks of terror rang out.

Maximus restrained his pained gasps as his heart seemed to twist like a rope. His dad was out there...

"Gods of Mount Olympus, help me!" the boy supplicated.

Something hard slammed into the house. There was a mighty shifting of wood- a groan...

He'd only felt the impact when it was too late. Something walloped him hard in the back of the head, making his head spin.

He fell under the weight of something and went under. Darkness spun in his mind as consciousness ebbed away.

Hours later he had woken. Everything was quiet. The front door was torn off the hinges...

He knew with a sinking feeling that everyone was gone. He was the sole survivor of his village.

Silent tears fell, as the shadows of dusk fell with the sense of something sinister.

What would the boy do now? Was the Blessed One still looking over him?

His eyes fell on the little house shrine. The candle had long gone out. He drank in the peaceful, serene expression of the Buddha and their smaller Olympian idols.

Tears fell. Surviving was bitter and painful. His heart was broken in pieces. The gods had saved him. For what? To be alone in the world!?

For what!?

(This will continue)
 
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Buddha Dharma

Dharma Practitioner
This is the standing Buddha in my story that a Greek would have been most familiar with. The Greeks liked to depict the Buddha in standing meditation. Figured you wouldn't mind the mental image.

upload_2018-2-10_23-30-56.png
 

Buddha Dharma

Dharma Practitioner
(Next part...)

Maximus had lost his village, his father, pretty much everything in a blinking...

Still he could not find it in himself to doubt. He'd asked Lord Zeus to save him. Hadn't he? Yet could anyone say the Olympian really paid such attention to a single person's prayers? Maybe the rafter snapping and his getting hit in the back of the head by a beam had been fortune?

He made it a point to thank Lady Luck later. Maybe Fortuna had been looking out for him?

He had no time to make this all about himself. The monk's words came back to him. One of the monks that had passed through, coming from the east...

He recalled the master saying that everyone in this world loses people. That's just the way this state of things is.

Maximus managed to suck down his painful agony. It was like swallowing a stone into a stomach. His throat burned, as more tears fell.

He could not let grief overcome him. It wasn't all about him. The rites for the dead were necessary...

Maximus spent a long night, curled up in front of the altar. His sleep was fitful and constantly waking. He finally gave up at dawn's first light, before Helios shines his radiance upon the world again.

He had to put his grief aside and think about what he could do for those he cared about. This last thing he could do...

Most of the morning was spent hauling wood away from ruined houses and various other structures. The sun had risen on his village, but everything seemed deadly silent. Everything seemed desolate.

He piled the wood into a poorly thrown together funeral pyre and began the heart-wrenching task of dragging the bodies to their final destination in this world. He tried to pull comfort from everything he believed in. He must believe this was the one final good he could do for all these people. He had to believe that!

Otherwise, he wasn't sure he could go on. What did he have left to hold on to? His duty was all he had. His faith, that he was about to do a blessed and beneficial act for all of them.

Some of their countrymen still believed the old superstition- that if a body wasn't burned and the ashes scattered, the departed would never want to leave it. They would become earthbound shades, forever attached to the empty hope of getting back inside their bodies.

The monks and teachers of the Sangha offered a different view. That caring for the dead was a meritorious act. One of good karma. That the merits of the funeral rites could themselves be conveyed to those being reborn, so they wouldn't become ghosts.

Whatever the case, Maximus owed this to all of them. He must not let grief swallow him...

It killed him on the inside, having to bring the corpses of his former loved ones and friends to their final place. Was this the way of the world? The suffering of this realm of things that the teachers of the Sangha spoke of?

'Blessed One, thank you for teaching we that remain here in ignorance' the boy thought, with gratitude to the Buddha in his heart, even with all his grief.

Moving his dad was the hardest. When he found his dad- mouth open and eyes closed like he might be sleeping. There was dried blood congealed around the open wound...

Maximus fell on the body, unable to hold grief back. The tears fell until they would no longer come. Night began to fall...

The boy managed to hoist his dad's body over his shoulders. He couldn't bear to drag him like the others. He must do this final thing for him...

All the love remaining in his heart pushed him on. He struggled with the weight on his shoulders. Yet the thought that this was his dad kept him walking. Slow paces...

He finally fell down by the pyre and let his dad's body go. Tears he didn't realize he had fell again. What was the meaning of all this? What was this world, where such terrible things happen to the innocent?

What if he went to find out? What if he tried to make a great journey- like Odysseus? Were the things the myths said really real?

It was a faint spark. A brief glimmer of hope in an ocean of grief. It was all the hope he had to reach for at present...

Hope is funny in that when it appears, it grows. It grows even when terrible things have happened.

"Gods," Maximus whispered in prayer. "If you saved me, I want to know why. I'm going to find answers. Will you guide me?"

Maximus said the traditional last rites on behalf of all the dead. To Hades, Persephone, and Demeter he prayed with all his heart. That they show mercy and give favor to the departed. That they pity him, and favor his dad in the afterlife.

He also offered the most precious things he could find in all the rubble, to be the ancestral gifts in place of coins. He hoped to all the Buddhas that the departed would be given merits from the storehouse of the teaching.

"Be merciful Blessed One," Maximus whispered. "Though you have entered Nirvana, accept these meager offerings on behalf of us still here. Convey your infinite merits. Show them they're cared about, and don't let them become ghosts."

Then he struck a stick with his dad's flint- hitting the bark again and again like sanding wood until sparks started to come. The emptiness was still there when the pyre went up in a blaze. He clutched his dad's sword close, having cleaned and placed it back in it's sheath. He hoped he wouldn't have to use it...

Something else burned with the grief inside of him. The joy of doing this good deed for the departed- the last thing he could do.

He found himself wondering how he could possibly think to journey out into the world. Wasn't that crazy?

(This was not an easy chapter for me to write, for so many reasons. I didn't want to make it too drawn out by conveying all the intense emotions Maximus felt, but I did want to convey them enough. I wanted to be accurate to both Buddhism and the Hellenic religion, as it is very likely the Greco-Buddhists didn't divide the two. They probably would have done both Hellenic and Buddhist rites for the dead. That involved a lot of guesswork on my part, so I didn't feel qualified to get too descriptive. Greek Buddhism is something we today know virtually nothing about.)
 
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