The Prince and the pain of being
The insights into Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha
 

The suffering of a thirty something

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

In the life of every person the fourth decade has a special meaning. The youthful formative years are definitively completed and decisive steps are made on the path to true adulthood. That pivotal moment is recognizable in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who preached around his thirty-third and in the development of the Prophet Muhammad who received his revelations towards the end of this decade. Zarathustra -ninth century bce- got his first visions at thirty, sitting on the banks of the Himalayan river Amu Darya. Moses -fourteenth century bce- rounded his old life at forty and became the leader of the Jews. Based on their worldly wisdom, many people also nowadays say that life begins at forty - often said in hindsight. Also Siddhartha Gautama's awareness of life changed in that cardinal fourth decade. He attained to the stage of Buddha, full enlightenment, when he was thirty-five. Six years earlier he had secretly left his protected environment for the first time and he was by what he saw in the world, for the first time confronted with old age, sickness and death - he was until then never really been aware of it. He also for the first time came into contact with monks and he understood that they were people looking for spiritual development, living simply and who had given away their possessions. Then Siddhartha left his palace, wife and child, and withdrew into the woods - traditionally the place where a Hindu goes into retreat. After that he went to Benares to study with the renowned Alara Kalama and later with the even more famed Uddaka. Although according to the narrations he equalled and surpassed his teachers in a short period, of them he could not learn how to put an end to old age, sickness and death.
As his most likely year of birth year 566 bce is mentioned, during a full moon -sometimes 563 bce is mentioned in the literature-. According to Theravāda Buddhism his year of birth was 623 bce, and in most of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Mahāyāna and in Tibetan Buddhism the year 448 bce is used as birth of Siddhartha Gautama⁺. Where the different sources agree on is that Siddhartha has become about eighty years old. Siddhartha came from the place Lumbini in North India -alternatively a place in southern Nepal- and was born in the Hindu tribe of the Sakyas during the early Magadhan empire. About the first thirty years of his life little more is known than that he as a prince behaved princely and well in line with his status had a regal and carefree life. At sixteen he married Yaśodharā and they had a son they named Rāhula. A naming from foresight, because Rāhula means obstacle and Siddhartha indeed later considered him as an obstacle in achieving ultimate spiritual happiness. Later in life Rāhula became a bhikkhu, a mendicant, student and servant of the other monks.
After studying at Benares with Alara Kalama and Uddaka, Siddhartha returned to the woods and began a period of severe asceticism, a time in which he emaciated so rigorously that it nearly cost him his life. Thereon Siddhartha decided that asceticism was not the right way to come to insight and he concluded that there should be a middle course. A middle ground between the path of self-flagellation and the way of the sensory and sensual gratification¹⁾. When he was in the place Bodhgaya, in the present Indian state of Bihar, Siddhartha decided to sit under a Bodhi Tree -a mulberry tree or ficus religiosa- and meditate with the aim to either die, or reach nirvana -complete enlightenment-. After forty-nine days of continuous meditation, he achieved Dhamma -true understanding of the natural order of things- and from then on he could be called the Buddha, the enlightened one. The rest of his life, the Buddha was an itinerant preacher and so began a monastic movement, the Sangha. A monastic order which exists to this day. His wisdom and statements the Buddha himself never put in writing - that was the work of his followers. That this has been the cause of the various interpretations and movements within Buddhism is very likely and all too human, yet perhaps not really relevant. Those interested in the wisdom of the Buddha probably do best anyway to study what the Buddha did and created their own way - based on the Buddha's wisdom and statements or otherwise. Whether one wants to have teachers first to match or even surpass, as the Buddha did, each person should decide for himself.

Nothing human is alien to any of us, because despite differences in talents and in comprehension, we all remain in varying degrees clumsy creatures with a limited view. While one person is perfectly happy with making do with what he has, the other strives for ever making more because he feels space to contain more. There are also anecdotes of brilliant scholars for whom managing an orderly housekeeping book simultaneously was impossible, or in another case, for whom maintaining normal marital relationships was almost impossible. One cannot form an opinion on the whole human being based on his genius - it is not advisable. It is not recommended either to regard the deeds and ideas from other cultures or times past through the lens of the own righteousness and the own time. To form an opinion -simple or elaborate- about the person of Siddhartha Gautama is not really possible. On the other hand the father son relationship is one of all ages and cultures and the way of dealing with this social standard situation exemplifies a culture and especially the people who make this culture. Sons tend to look for the competition by trying to surpass their father and simultaneously they need the recognition of the father. This is strikingly illustrated in the following anecdote. When Yaśodharā sent her son Rāhula to Siddhartha to lay claim to his inheritance from his father -apparently he had reached the age of manhood-, he then did not return to his mother, but became a monk with the followers of his father the Buddha. This was also very much against the intentions of Siddhartha's father and Rāhula's grandfather, King Suddhodana. After having sought the confrontation with his father, Rāhula then wanted his recognition.
Yet, in this story also the notion of inheritance is enfolded. From the story it is not immediately clear of what that inheritance consists. Was it land or the palaces -Siddhartha had three- or otherwise still some amount of money? Or perhaps it needs to be interpreted more abstract, the right to inherit. In that case, it was possibly Yaśodharā's intent to let appoint her son directly as the heir of Siddhartha's father Suddhodana - and thus to skip Siddhartha in the succession. That Rāhula was sent by his mother to claim his inheritance signifies that Siddhartha had apparently not relinquished himself of his possessions and probably also -assessing the nature of human relationships- that Yaśodharā and Siddhartha at that time were not great friends, and in any case that this action had the approval of Siddhartha's father Suddhodana. Suddhodana also probably feared the possible influence of the Sangha -the Buddha's monastic order- on the country's government, should he pass away while Siddhartha was still officially heir. A notion that is highly probable when one considers that King Suddhodana was enraged when he heard that Rāhula had joined the Buddha's Sangha as a novice. That the Buddha was not immune to the anger of his father was revealed by the fact that after this incident Siddhartha determined that from then on a novice could only join the Sangha with the consent of the parents of the novice - despite everything Siddhartha had to give way in the rivalry between father and son. Later Yaśodharā and Siddhartha came back closer together when she also entered the Buddha's Sangha and eventually reached the highest degree of illumination. Nothing human is alien to any of us.

Siddhartha is initially dismayed when he finds that the world, or at least human life is governed by disintegration, disease and death. He grew up too protected or his perception of the world around him failed him - his servants and family after all were also subjected to the ravages of time, or rather entropy. It was probably usage for the common people to imagine life inside the palace walls as ideal, as in a heavenly garden in which no person misses out on anything - the image customarily associated with the ultimate ruler. Simultaneously Siddhartha needs to be characterized as naive, because he had not noticed the constant decay proper to the material aspect of incarnation. He must have noticed something on his travels between his palaces. Yet then again, have we not all believed in our twenties that life here would last nigh forever - oceans of time. The story about the old age, sickness, death and the monks can perhaps best be understood as a simplified view of the fact that Siddhartha around thirty -the age at which most people in his time and culture were well over half their life- became aware of his own mortality. Added to this it may be that the effect of the outside world to a person, simultaneously in fact was a critique on that outer world -with even political dimensions- and that Siddhartha in this way could be presented as someone who was concerned about the fate of the world - while this hardly needed to have been the case. Whether Siddhartha was really unworldly and naive, or that in this implicit way he actually criticizes in particular the Hindu caste system - the latter is quite possible. Fact is that his awareness of his mortality and therefore that of the world led to the abandonment of secular power -he would never succeed his father- and attempting to achieve spiritual insight.
The story about old age, sickness and death, and the meeting with the monks can also be read in a different way. It then becomes the story of the encounter with the monks causing Siddhartha's awareness of old age, sickness and death. In this interpretation, the monks try -and succeed eventually- to influence Siddhartha to make other choices than his father King Suddhodana. Thus the influence of the world beyond the palace walls is not only a critique of the Hindu caste system, but a broader political criticism and a direct attack on authority. From this interpretation, it is more natural to imagine why king Suddhodana was infuriated when his grandson Rāhula also came 'under the spell' of the monks of the Buddha's Sangha. Also, it then becomes more conceivable why, despite Siddhartha saw his son as an obstacle on his own path to enlightenment, Rāhula was adopted as a novice nevertheless. Yaśodharā was later convinced also that the policy of King Suddhodana was reprehensible and she too entered as a novice with the monks. This was conceivably also to protect the family of the Buddha, as King Suddhodana was an emphatic cruel warlord who saw himself as a deity - the stories about him are numerous⁺. King Suddhodana eventually appointed as his successor Devadatta -nicknamed the deceiver and the pig- the son of king Suppabuddha and brother of Yaśodharā, but in everything the reverse and declared political and spiritual opponent of Siddhartha.

Religion, philosophy and the road between

Ask an insider and he will confirm that Buddhism is not a religion. Consider the mindset of the average Buddhist -India, Nepal, Tibet, Japan- and one might come to the conclusion that it is a religion. A 'normal' Buddhist worships a Buddha statue, lights incense and takes up a revering posture. He says prayers and turns a prayer wheel, or walks around a stupa where the relics of deceased monks are kept. However, it is true, Buddhism knows no gods and it assumes that this is not at all possible in a world of evil and suffering. Buddhism knows no mechanism by which the atman -the self, the soul, the consciousness- through reincarnation can come to a higher level and after dying in a higher form of existence - in an increasingly higher heaven as in Hindu mythology. Working on an ever-improved form of being in Buddhism knows its reward not in an afterlife, but in achieving a state of nirvana in physical existence - reaching that form of being is generally achieved in several incarnations and decided upon by the form of being of the person self. At the end of the last life a person needs to achieve nirvana, enlightenment, when dying he reaches the state of Parinibbana, the perfected nirvana, and the being will fall apart not longing for a new life - samsara is brought to completion. The five khandhas of being -body, feelings, imagination, intentions and consciousness- will disintegrate and not return together, says the Buddha. He has always declined to give an answer to the question, what is after the last death. He presumed this query to come forth from metaphysical speculation by the questioner. 
That the universe of the Buddha knows no god is quite conceivable when one envisions his horror about decay, sickness and death - how can a god preside over that. His abjuring that priests as in Hinduism through their rituals make a positive or enlightening contribution to everyone’s samsara -the sufferance cycle of life- is likely due to his disillusionment regarding the religion in which he grew up. That he never wanted to make statements about the state of being after the last death is for his vision a necessity. Had he made a statement in this matter, Buddhism instantly and on the spot would have become a religion. Siddhartha was completely right, because it is, after all, not about Brahma, God or the FirstOne, it is all about the soul, the essence of man. The Buddha fits best within the tradition of Hinduism in the idea of the abstract Brahman, the idea of God without a specific wording, let alone a personification and a fixed imagination - the bearded old man in the sky. Hinduism, however, moved away from the abstract Brahman and eventually came up with Krishna as the ultimate Being, the God one was obliged to love. This development within Hinduism -culminating in the Bhagavad Gita-²⁾ and the developments that the Buddha set in motion, took place within the same era - around 400 bce. That the Buddha still believed that reincarnation was necessary to achieve nirvana and parinibbana, is essentially an underestimation of man, the soul of man. Not everything a person needs to learn he learns in physical existence. He only learns there what can be learned only in physical existence. After that he continues to learn forever, says this book. One might even call it presumptuous of the Buddha, however enlightened he may be, to adjudge as directive that a person repeatedly has to return until he is accomplished - even so if that person in Buddhism chooses himself a form of existence in his next incarnation, unlike in Hinduism in which it is dependent on the life lived -karma-. Man in his essence always learns in whatever form of beingness -the physical existence is 'only' one form of learning- and there are no exams or sanctions.

The time of the Buddha was a time when man had not left behind the Neolithic that long ago -as the Middle Ages to today- with the Bronze Age even more recent⁺. The Aryan migrations were just past their peak and the Indian society -post Indus culture- had not or hardly stepped into the modern time. It was a time when learning and education was reserved for a select group, a time when global exploitation and slavery were included in the normal course of events, a time in which power relations were strict and wars brutal and gory. In the -rural areas of- hardly developed countries, this is still the case - thirty-six million people in slavery was the last published figure. Especially education for girls and young women is unsatisfactory or is non existent. Since the time of the Buddha humanity as a whole made many giant steps through improved training and education - though still far from ideal. Man usually no longer beats his fellow man with a mace on the skull, or drives him a sword through the heart. Yet now he sends drones and smart bombs and as a last resort a nuclear weapon could be detonated. The giant leaps in education have not focussed man less on the material. The essential difference between the time of the Buddha and the present day is that man is no longer vulnerable to the pedantic and will make great strides, is even creating them right now, towards a global awareness of what a person can and cannot inflict upon the other - less dependency on and attachment to the leader also means less war. In a time when people through education become more aware of their capabilities and thus their responsibilities patriarchs who speak wise words no longer fit. The wise words generally still deserve to be studied, yet the patriarchs are obsolete. The daily consequences of all that old wisdom are irrelevant to the present age, because the world that was their reference represents a bygone age - as a mandatory same day burial in an age of refrigerated morgues. What one observes today is that only a certain elite takes in the words of the Buddha - Hollywood stars, academics, and people who have lost their faith and now look for another place to hide, those who seek an excuse to turn their back to the world anyway. What one still does not observe is the general conviction of humanity that Buddhism represents the right way of seeing. Already in the day and age of the Buddha his teaching was in a sense a doctrine for the elite, a doctrine where people who had to toil for their daily bread had no time for.
Buddhism nevertheless deserves to be carefully studied and not only by highly educated people. When this religious philosophy could be disembarrassed of its main drawbacks -being time and culture-bound as well as hierarchical- thoughts and considerations that are accessible to all and can be pondered by all may remain. That only would enrich the human collective global mind. That a person must conform to a template, a grid that each must be squeezed through, arouses not only aversion in the modern era, but all things considered also in ancient time. Every person learns in life and is aware of that at a certain moment in life -usually during the fourth decade- and then spends the time in the rest of life to grow into adulthood never attained when one submits to a specific doctrine or teacher - Buddhism so regarded even is counterproductive. Every person is quite capable to step in at some point on his inner road and from that point onward in an almost Gaudían way -as organic- become one with himself and grow forth. No one is served by 'obtained' wisdom because this demonstrates a still dependent mental bearing, a commitment to the Luciwher paradigm. Every person without exception is in his own way, at his own level and at his own pace very well capable to live his life with integrity - the bridge has been built a long time ago, but man has not yet a natural urge to cross. The wise elders may still have an important say as referent in what an honourable way of life is, but no longer as compelling authority. A modern person cannot allow anymore a 'saint' to prescribe anything from the outside, but develops from within his vision on how to live here with all the others. Or perhaps something like what the Buddha would say, "Religion does not consist in knowing the truth, but living it." The human is his own midpoint, and that does not need to be proven and that cannot be denied. The road for humankind is long, but not without end.

Notes to "The Prince and the pain of being"

¹⁾ The "Majjhima patipada" is the term by which the Buddha denoted the Middle way, the "magga" for short. The Buddha called magga the road that had brought his suffering to an end, the way that involves a person to end his suffering should avoid the extremes. One of the extremes relates to material gratification. The Buddha called it sensual gratification, the gratification of the senses. A path or attitude to life that he gave the term Kamasukhalikanuyoga. The suffix in this term is yoga -a word directly related to the word yoke- which means that immediate gratification of material need requires effort. One can refrain from this specific effort. The pursuit of material wealth in the time of Buddha was no different than in the present time - only the products have changed.
The other extreme is the opposite, the disregard of the senses, asceticism driven to the extreme limit. This he referred to as Attakilamatanuyoga. Here too a human, the ascetic in this case, makes an effort - the mortifying of the senses. Some religious movements recommend this as the correct way to purify the mind and attaining enlightenment. The Buddha believed that purification in an extreme way adversely affected the body's spiritual growth. Back to the text =

²⁾ See Book 5, chapter 2.1 and further, “The Heirs to the Veda” (right click). Back to the text =

³⁾ Also in this variant of reincarnation an elitist judgment is hidden - still a princely character. The Buddha could clearly not imagine that the life of a simple farm labourer could end with what he called Parinibbana - that demonstrates little understanding of the inner life of the common man. Back to the text =

⁴⁾ The three characteristics refer to the method by which the goods and objects in the world are present, the way one is conditioned, attached to the material world. The first characteristic is Annica, the impermanent, inconstant and changeable nature of material reality. The second characteristic of material reality is Dukkha, the fact that reality is painful, causes stress and discomfort and is uncomfortable. These two properties lead to the third characteristic, the Anatta, the fact that the characteristics by the manner in which they are experienced are not native to the human being and cannot therefore be considered as part of the self. Back to the text =

⁵⁾ The Four Noble Truths are: there is suffering, suffering has a cause, the cause of suffering can be eliminated, by following the Eightfold Path the suffering is ended. Suffering is caused by three types of craving: sensual desire, desire for something that exists or should exist, desire for the end of something that exists or will exist. Suffering is eliminated by the Eightfold Path: the right views, the right intention, the right speech, the right action, the right way of living, the right effort, the right mindfulness, and the right concentration. Back to the text =

⁶⁾ Kāma Rāga is also a natural herbal formula for penis enhancement that works on the body and mind to improve overall sexual health, increases libido, strengthens erections, improves ejaculation control, increases seminal output, and intensifies sexual pleasure and orgasms.  Back to the text =

⁷⁾ By Rupa Rāga is meant the desire for the high stages of meditation according to the four lower jhanas and with Arupa Rāga the desire for the high stages of meditation according to the four higher jhanas. With jhana the state is meant in which one resides when one meditates. Back to the text =