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Mara’s final strategy was argument. He challenged Siddhartha, asking, “By what right do you claim the seat on which you sit?” 

For Siddhartha, something unstoppable was unfolding. He didn’t really care what questions were being asked. Mara continued, “I have my armies to bear witness for me, but who will speak for you?” 

Siddhartha’s hand answered—almost out of courtesy, he reached down and touched the ground. The voice of the earth goddess, Bhumidevi, rose from below: “I can bear witness.” 

The sun and the moon paused, the animals bowed. Mara howled, and his howl diminished as he fled.

—From The Story of the Buddha by John Tarrant

In the above segment, one of the most important in Siddhartha’s long journey to awakening, he affirms his foundational right to exist on this earth and find a way to fulfillment. Siddhartha also shows us, and all things, how to claim the same right—to realize the light that shines both in Mara’s arrows and Bumidevi’s rich soil.

The earth goddess as source of support has been a tenet of Buddhism from its earliest days. Later, the enlightened Tathagata, or “the one who is thus gone,” instructs his son Rahula on how to meditate:

…for when you develop meditation that is like the earth, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and remain. Just as people throw clean and dirty things… on the earth, and the earth is not repelled, humiliated, and disgusted because of that, so too, Rahula—develop meditation that is like the earth.

The translator and poet David Hinton, in his new book, Orient, writes about his experience with the earth goddess as a young man, an encounter that fundamentally changed his life:

It was sometime in my twentieth year when I saw it: rain on pooled water, a few scattered drops, circles of light igniting on the dark surface, occurring, originating, then expanding and disappearing back into empty darkness. 

Darkness of the pool, but also darkness of mind’s mirrored depths… It felt like returning to home-ground I’ve never known, like orienting… 

Dark pool, dry leaves—each raindrop orienting, opening this home-ground, this mirror deep sincerity. It was from this magic of the rain that the word first appeared: from nowhere else, occurrence.

The earth can and will heal herself. If we ask her, she may heal us as well.

—Jon Joseph

COME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome.

Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community