When We Stop Running
Siddhartha, the Buddha-to-be,
was the son of a wealthy king who ruled over a beautiful kingdom in the
foothills of the Himalayas. At his birth, the king’s advisors predicted that he
would either forego the world and become a holy man or he would be a great king
and ruler. Siddhartha’s father was determined to have his son to follow in his
own footsteps. Knowing that seeing the pain of the world would turn the prince
towards spiritual pursuits, he surrounded him with physical beauty, wealth and
continuous entertainment. Only kind and beautiful people were allowed to care
for him.
Of course the king’s project
to protect his son from the suffering of life failed. As the traditional story
tells it, when Siddhartha was twenty-nine, he insisted on taking several
excursions outside the palace walls with his charioteer, Channa. Realizing his
son’s intent, the king ordered his subjects to prepare for the prince by
cleaning and beautifying the streets, and hiding the sick and poor.
But the gods, seeing this as
the opportunity to awaken Siddhartha, had other plans. They appeared to him in
the guise of a sick person, an old person and a corpse. When Siddhartha
realized that such suffering was an intrinsic part of being alive, his
comfortable view of life was shattered. Determined to discover how human beings
could find happiness and freedom in the face of such suffering, he left the
luxurious palaces, his parents, his wife and son. Setting forth in the dark of
the night, Siddhartha began his search for the truths that would liberate his
heart and spirit.
Most of us spend years trying
to cloister ourselves inside the palace walls. We chase after the pleasure and
security we hope will give us lasting happiness. Yet no matter how happy we may
be, life inevitably delivers up a crisis—divorce, death of a loved one, a
critical illness. Seeking to avoid the pain and control our experience, we pull
away from the intensity of our feelings, often ignoring or denying our genuine
physical and emotional needs.
Because Siddhartha had been so
entranced by pleasure, the path of denial at first looked like the way to
freedom. He joined a group of ascetics and began practicing severe austerities,
depriving himself of food and sleep, and following rigorous yogic disciplines.
After several years Siddhartha found himself emaciated and sick, but no closer
to the spiritual liberation he yearned for. He left the ascetics and made his
way to the banks of a nearby river. Lying there nearly dead, Siddhartha cried
out “Surely there must be another way to enlightenment!” As he closed his eyes,
a dreamlike memory arose.
It was the annual celebration
of the spring plowing, and his nurses had left him resting under a rose apple
tree at the edge of the fields. Sitting in the cool shade of the tree, the
child watched the men at work, sweat pouring down their faces; he saw the oxen
straining to pull the plough. In the cut grasses and the freshly overturned
soil, he could see insects dying, their eggs scattered.
Sorrow arose in Siddhartha for
the suffering that all living beings experience. In the tenderness of this
compassion, Siddhartha felt deeply opened. Looking up he was struck by how
brilliantly blue the sky was. Birds were dipping and soaring freely and
gracefully. The air was thick with the sweet fragrance of apple blossoms. In
the flow and sacred mystery of life, there was room for the immensity of joy
and sorrow. He felt completely at peace.
Remembering this experience
gave Siddhartha a profoundly different understanding of the path to liberation.
If a young, untrained child could taste freedom in this effortless and
spontaneous way, then such a state must be a natural part of being human.
Perhaps he could awaken by stopping the struggle and, as he had done as a
child, meeting all of life with a tender and open presence.
What conditions had made this
childhood experience of profound presence possible? If we look at our own life,
we see that such moments of presence often occur in times of stillness or
solitude. We have stepped outside the normal rush and into the openness and
clarity of a “time out of time.”
Had Siddhartha been around the
distracting chatter of the nurses or playing games with the other children, he
would not have been so attentive and open to his deeper experience. In the
moments of pausing and resting under the rose apple tree, he was neither
pursuing pleasure nor was he pushing away the suffering of the world. By
pausing, he had relaxed into a natural wakefulness and inner freedom.
Inspired by his childhood
experience, Siddhartha began his final search for lasting freedom. After
bathing himself in the river, he accepted the sweet rice offered to him by a
village maiden, and then slept a sleep with wondrous dreams. When he awoke,
refreshed and strengthened, he once again sought solitude under a tree—known
now as the Bodhi Tree—and resolved to remain in stillness there until he
experienced full liberation.
The practice of Radical
Acceptance begins with our own pause under the Bodhi Tree. Just as the Buddha
willingly opened himself to all parts of himself, we too can stop running,
pause, and make ourselves available to whatever life is offering us in each
moment—including the unfaced, unfelt parts of our psyche. In this way, as Thich
Nhat Hanh puts it, we “keep our appointment with life.”
From Radical Acceptance (2003)
For more information go to: www.tarabrach.com
From Radical Acceptance (2003)
For more information go to: www.tarabrach.com
