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GOTAMA RETURNS
Miss Buddha
Chapter Eighteen — Tusita Heaven
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I had meant to wait.
I had meant to let a full five thousand terrestrial years go by before returning. I had meant to leave the Dhamma time to take root and sprout and grow exponentially to touch all beings on Earth before returning. But even through the bliss of Tusita Heaven, I could sense that all was not well. The Dhamma had not taken proper root, and it was not spreading as I had planned and hoped, especially not into the West.
One man, a carpenter’s son from Nazareth in Judea, had ventured East seeking the Dhamma, and although he found much of it, what he brought back was only a fraction, only its surface. The still and fruitful waters beneath he left behind in India and Tibet, thinking them perhaps too profound for his fellow countrymen. As a result, what he did teach — and how those teachings were interpreted: often to suit political rather than religious ends — seems to have brought about more misery and violence than any treatise on the virtues of war could ever have done.
Another man, Mohammed of Mecca, further shallowed the Dhamma to a point where his followers finally invaded India to destroy any trace of it.
