Beneath a Rose-Apple Tree; Or, I'll Have What The M/Other's Having!

OPWC Ch. 6, Weekly Anniversary Post #1/7: Morning Stretch, Warming Up for “The Sutras, According to Effie White,” which will be today’s culminating point. Since this longer post is emerging from a multipronged inquiry, the anticipatory scaffolding and stretching both become essential elements of the journey. This morning’s study begins with the dream of Siddhartha’s mother/other—that led to his sublime birth—which a nine-year old Siddhartha subsequently restages while sitting “beneath a rose-apple tree.” 

Invoking and integrating an earlier maxim: process > destination. 

And so today’s writing meditation begins, at the precise hour that Drew prepared to die 7 days ago, on December 10, 2025. Less breaks today, more uninterrupted flow. 

11:42 am to 12:42 pm 

Dream of Siddhartha’s Pregnant Mother

What stands out right away is the increasingly convoluted and ambiguous narrator position. Bear with me, because it bears mapping: Svasti at 20 years old is meditating and remembering his early encounters with Siddhartha, which include him as an 11-year-old boy at a picnic with other children, listening to Siddhartha tell his life story. That was where we left off. Now we’re in that life story, hearing about how when Siddhartha was 9, he “was told” (by someone, it’s unclear who) about a dream his mother had while pregnant with him. What might it mean that the chain of storytelling is getting more layered, temporally; and more decentered from a locatable speaker, narratively? Leaving those questions open for now—let’s get into the actual dream, which, of course, comes immediately after the Sujata/milk section. Maternal undertones become overtones. Got it. 

The dream passage (comes right at the beginning of Chapter 6) is one of the more aesthetically rich and thematically evocative sections in the text so far, so I want to break it down piece by piece. (Drew: I’m attending to the gender dynamics in this text, because it’s already something you flagged and tracked, anticipating that it could be a roadblock for me. I know you’ve already prepared for this conversation, so I hope this reaches you and that we’re on a similar page). 

I:

“A magnificent white elephant with six tusks descended from the heavens surrounded by a chorus of beatific praises. The elephant approached her, its skin white as mountain snow. It held a brilliant pink lotus flower in its trunk, and placed the flower within the queen’s body” (41). 

Looking up: “meaning of white elephant with six tusks” in Buddhism. Pause. 

According to texts such as the Karma Sutra (因果经), when Śākyamuni Buddha descended from the Tuṣita Heaven (兜率天宫) to be born into the human world, he rode on a six-tusked white elephant. His mother, Queen Māyā, dreamed of a six-tusked white elephant entering her womb during a midday nap, and this vision heralded the birth of Śākyamuni Buddha. The Abhidharma-mahāvibhāṣā Śāstra (部宗轮论) states, "All bodhisattvas, when entering their mother's womb, take the form of a white elephant."^[1]

The Samantabhadra Contemplation Sutra (普贤观经) further elaborates that the six-tusked white elephant king is the mount of Samantabhadra. It teaches that if one contemplates and repents sincerely, the bodhisattva will manifest riding the six-tusked white elephant. The six tusks of the white elephant symbolize the Six Pāramitās (六度, the six perfections of generosity, morality, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom), while its four legs represent the Four Bases of Spiritual Power (四如意, the four foundations of aspiration, effort, intention, and analysis). Alternatively, the six tusks are said to symbolize the Six Supernatural Powers (六通, the six higher knowledges or abhijñā).^[1]

Mother–divinity/elephant–son here, not-so-immaculate conception vibes, there’s no mention of fatherhood/paternity. It’s all very Irigaray and I’m here for it. Bring on the white elephant. Proceed. 

“Then the elephant, too, entered her effortlessly, and all at once she was filled with deep ease and joy. She had the feeling she would never again know any suffering, worry, or pain, and she awoke uplifted by a sensation of pure bliss. When she got up from her bed, the ethereal music from the dream still echoed in her ears” (41). 

I’ll have what she’s having! Things veer briefly into the NSFW, no more children’s parable: bliss becomes orgasmic, sensual (though not directly sexual)---in other words, the libidinal gets folded in as another essential element of the sacred. And yes, the sacred feminine, but also the sacred masculine, the sacred, period, as we’ll see by the end of the chapter. What seems critical here is that encountering a higher, more blissful state engages not just the mind but the pleasure-feeling-desiring body. Had the white elephant simply left the lotus inside the mother’s womb, that might have been closer match to the Jesus/Mary story. But here we get the lotus AND the elephant entering afterward, in addition, in excess, fulfilling something beyond pure reproductive aim/function. 

This is not a vision of pleasure, let alone conception, that transcends the body or escapes it; this is a communion with ex-stasis, moving outside oneself, ecstasy, pleasure that takes one beyond desire and into something more purely generative. It’s all very IRIGARAY, with echoes of Cixous. No Kristeva yet. 

“She told her husband, the king, of the dream, and he, too, marvelled at it. That morning, the king summoned all the holy men in the capital to come and divine the meaning of the queen’s dream” (41). 

BOO. Sacred-feminine mysticism energy, most revolutionary momentum, KILLED by the biopolitical ghouls thirsty for meaning, prediction, projection, categories, blah blah blah. I only included this line to index my displeasure. Moving on. 

Siddhartha’s Maternal Lineage, Etymology of His Name

“Siddhartha’s mother was named Mahamaya. A woman of great virtue, her love extended to all beings—people, animals, and plants” (42). 

Mother Mahamaya, that’s lovely and has such a semiotic-chora ring to it. Already Mahamaya is being positioned as more than a human mother, a Gaia-figure, memorialized… eulogized? 

“Admiring an ashok tree in full bloom, the queen walked towards it, when suddenly, feeling unsteady, she grabbed a branch of the ashok tree to support her. Just a moment later, still holding the branch, Queen Mahamaya gave birth to a radiant son” (42). 

Again, I’ll have what she’s having. 

“After having attained sublime joy giving birth to Siddhartha, Queen Mahamaya died eight days later” (44). 

RETRACTION. 

“The king summoned her sister… and asked her to become the new queen” (44). 

I don’t love this at all. Replace the dead sister with the living sister and turn the dead sister into Mother Earth Goddess Saint? Frown. Is there a more generous read? Maybe this is an invitation to expand our conception of motherhood, to extend, bifurcate it across different planes/functions/registers? Sujata, Mahamaya, Gotami, all as coexisting, simultaneous, equally necessary maternal figure-forces? Filing that away for later; need more evidence. 

Fast Forward: Siddhartha at 9 Years Old, Ritual First Plowing of the Fields Ceremony

In the last section of the chapter, we get a pivotal scene embedded with a teaching. Siddhartha is 9 years old, expected to attend the Ritual First Plowing of the Fields ceremony with his father the king, staged before large, cheering crowds. The feeling of it is: 

“Holy men chanted with the utmost solemnity as Siddhartha’s father and all the dignitaries of the court stood facing the unfolding ritual” (45). 

Solemnity, ritual, crowds, pageantry, and the glorification of plowing fields, tilling soil, preparing the land for seasonal extraction. Cultivation as distinct from stewardship feels relevant. Siddhartha doesn’t feel inspired by the ceremonies, he’s “restless,” and he wanders off to stand at the edge of the forest, watching water buffaloes graze and some distant farmers working in the fields. Then: 

“Utterly absorbed in these events, standing beneath the burning sun, Siddhartha, too, became drenched in sweat. He ran back to the shade of the rose-apple-tree. He had just witnessed so many things strange and unknown to him. He sat cross-legged and closed his eyes to reflect on all he had seen… absorbed by the images” (47). 

Siddhartha’s first encounter with meditation, the path toward spiritual enlightenment, approximates the physicality, the sensual immediacy, and the outdoor/tree setting of his mother’s pregnancy dream (not to mention the future meditation scenes with Svasti and Sujata). Contact with the tree, with relative solitude and quiet, pure presence, regulated breath, invites the contemplative state where becoming-awake becomes possible. Siddhartha’s second mother, Gotami (?), approaches and he explains his decision to skip the plow ceremony by saying:

“Mother, reciting the scriptures does nothing to help the worms and the birds’” (48). 

Initial translation: if the aim of the plow ceremony is to honor (or “help”) the earth/ecosystem, then why glorify segmentation, extraction, capitalization, the violence of primitive accumulation? Why not sit peacefully in the forest and meditate instead? Process over destination re-emerges (again). But also: walking just to walk. And the sacredness of sitting, or, as I’ll explore next, singing, in an empty theater, without the possibility of widespread affirmation or public recognition. 

Stay tuned. More to come.