Buddha’s Wife

Buddha’s Wife

Buddha’s Wife is a novel about compassion, inspiration and forgiveness. Thousands of books, texts and stories have followed Siddhartha’s teachings and his path to becoming The Buddha, but little has been written about his wife Yasodhara, their child Rahula or their relatives, until now. Yasodhara was the first woman in Siddhartha’s life, but not the last to follow in his footsteps. Why did he call his son “a hindrance” and believe women were a trap of desire and attachment “not fit to follow or understand my teachings”? How did Yasodhara and the nuns fight for equal treatment and rights? How could The Buddha have such compassion for others, yet be so scared of intimacy, emotion and love? What happened to sixteen-year-old Yasodhara and her two-day old son, Rahula, after her husband (Siddhartha) left her sleeping in the middle of the night to seek enlightenment? As Yasodhara lies close to death and shares her experiences as a young girl, a wife, a parent and then a nun, her son Rahula, who has been in self-imposed exile in Sri Lanka, attempts a perilous journey, with his wife and child, to reach his mother before she dies and release the secrets about his father that he’s kept buried inside. Will Rahula and Yasodhara’s dharma sister, reach Yasodhara in time to ask for forgiveness? Can anyone ever forgive the unforgivable? Buddha’s Wife tells a fascinating story, little known in the west, about the woman whom Buddha left behind. -- Chitra Divakaruni, international best-selling author of Mistress of Spices.