Island - Aldous Huxley [115]
“Pinch,” said the class in ragged unison. “Pinch…”
“P-I-N-C-H—pinch. That’s public, that’s something you can look up in the dictionary. But now pinch yourselves. Hard! Harder!”
To an accompaniment of giggles, of aies and ows, the children did as they were told.
“Can anybody feel what the person sitting next to him is feeling?”
There was a chorus of noes.
“So it looks,” said the young man, “as though there were—let’s see, how many are we?” He ran his eyes over the desks before him. “It looks as though there were twenty-three distinct and separate pains. Twenty-three in this one room. Nearly three thousand million of them in the whole world. Plus the pains of all the animals. And each of these pains is strictly private. There’s no way of passing the experience from one center of pain to another center of pain. No communication except indirectly through S.” He pointed to the square at the left of the board, then to the circles at the center. “Private pains here in 1, 2, 3, 4, and n. News about private pains out here at S, where you can say ‘pinch,’ which is a public word listed in a dictionary. And notice this: there’s only one public word, ‘pain,’ for three thousand million private experiences, each of which is probably about as different from all the others as my nose is different from your noses and your noses are different from one another. A word only stands for the ways in which things or happenings of the same general kind are like one another. That’s why the word is public. And, being public, it can’t possibly stand for the ways in which happenings of the same general kind are unlike one another.”
There was a silence. Then the teacher looked up and asked a question.
“Does anyone here know about Mahakasyapa?”
Several hands were raised. He pointed his finger at a little girl in a blue skirt and a necklace of shells sitting in the front row.
“You tell us, Amiya.”
Breathlessly and with a lisp, Amiya began.
“Mahakathyapa,” she said, “wath the only one of the dithipleth that underthtood what the Buddha wath talking about.”
“And what was he talking about?”
“He wathn’t talking. That’th why they didn’t underthtand.”
“But Mahakasyapa understood what he was talking about even though he wasn’t talking—is that it?”
The little girl nodded. That was it exactly. “They thought he wath going to preatth a thermon,” she said, “but he didn’t. He jutht picked a flower and held it up for everybody to look at.”
“And that was the sermon,” shouted a small boy in a yellow loincloth, who had been wriggling in his seat, hardly able to contain his desire to impart what he knew. “But nobody could underthand that kind of a thermon. Nobody but Mahakathyapa.”
“So what did Mahakasyapa say when the Buddha held up that flower?”
“Nothing!” the yellow loincloth shouted triumphantly.
“He jutht thmiled,” Amiya elaborated. “And that thowed the Buddha that he underthtood what it wath all about. So he thmiled back, and they jutht that there, thmiling and thmiling.”
“Very good,” said the teacher. “And now,” he turned to the yellow loincloth, “let’s hear what you think it was that Mahakasyapa understood.”
There was a silence. Then, crestfallen, the child shook his head. “I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“Does anyone else know?”
There were several conjectures. Perhaps he’d understood that people get bored with sermons—even the Buddha’s sermons. Perhaps he liked flowers as much as the Compassionate One did. Perhaps it was a white flower, and that made him think of the Clear Light. Or perhaps it was blue, and that was Shiva’s color.
“Good answers,” said the teacher. “Especially the first one. Sermons are pretty boring—especially for the preacher. But here’s a question. If any of your answers had been what Mahakasyapa understood when Buddha held up the flower, why didn’t he come out with it in so many words?”
“Perhapth he wathn’t a good thpeaker.”
“He was an excellent speaker.”
“Maybe he had a sore throat.”
“If he’d had a sore throat, he