Buddha

Chapter 1 – Renunciation

one night toward the end of the sixth century b.c.e., a young man called Siddhatta Gotama walked out of his comfortable home in Kapilavatthu in the foothills of the Himalayas and took to the road. We are told that he was twenty-nine years old. His father was one of the leading men of Kapilavatthu and had surrounded Gotama with every pleasure he could desire; he had a wife and a son who was only a few days old, but Gotama had felt no pleasure when the child was born. He had called the little boy Rahula, or “fetter”: the baby, he believed, would shackle him to a way of life that had become abhorrent. He had a yearning for an existence that was “wide open” and as “complete and pure as a polished shell,” but even though his father’s house was elegant and refined, Gotama found it constricting, “crowded” and “dusty.” A miasma of petty tasks and pointless duties sullied everything. Increasingly he had found himself longing for a lifestyle that had nothing to do with domesticity, and which the ascetics of India called “homelessness.” The thick luxuriant forests that fringed the fertile plain of the Ganges river had become the haunt of thousands of men and even a few women who had all shunned their families in order to seek what they called “the holy life” (brahmacariya), and Gotama had made up his mind to join them.

It was a romantic decision, but it caused great pain to the people he loved. Gotama’s parents, he recalled later, wept as they watched their cherished son put on the yellow robe that had become the uniform of the ascetics and shave his head and beard. But we are also told that before he left, Sidhatta stole upstairs, took one last look at his sleeping wife and son, and crept away without saying goodbye. It is almost as though he did not trust himself to hold true to his resolve should his wife beg him to stay. And this was the nub of the problem, since, like many of the forest-monks, he was convinced that it was his attachment to things and people which bound him to an existence that seemed mired in pain and sorrow. Some of the monks used to compare this kind of passion and craving for perishable things to a “dust” which weighed the soul down and prevented it from soaring to the pinnacle of the universe. This may have been what Siddhatta meant when he described his home as “dusty.” His father’s house was not dirty, but it was filled with people who pulled at his heart and with objects that he treasured. If he wanted to live in holiness, he had to cut these fetters and break free. Right from the start, Siddhatta Gotama took it for granted that family life was incompatible with the highest forms of spirituality. It was a perception shared not only by the other ascetics of India, but also by Jesus, who would later tell potential disciples that they must leave their wives and children and abandon their aged relatives if they wanted to follow him.

Gotama would not, therefore, have agreed with our current cult of “family values.” Nor would some of his contemporaries or near-contemporaries in other parts of the world, such as Confucius (551-479) and Socrates (469-399), who were certainly not family-minded men, but who would, like Gotama himself, become key figures in the spiritual and philosophical development of humanity during this period. Why this rejectionism? The later Buddhist scriptures would evolve elaborate mythological accounts of Gotama’s renunciation of domesticity and his “Going Forth” into homelessness, and we shall consider these later in this chapter. But the earlier texts of the Pali Canon give a starker version of the young man’s decision. When he looked at human life, Gotama could see only a grim cycle of suffering, which began with the trauma of birth and proceeded inexorably to “aging, illness, death, sorrow and corruption.” He himself was no exception to this universal rule. At present he was young, healthy and handsome, but whenever he reflected on the suffering that lay ahead, all the joy and confidence of youth drained out of him. His luxurious lifestyle seemed meaningless and trivial. He could not afford to feel “revolted” when he saw a decrepit old man or somebody who was disfigured by a loathsome illness. The same fate-or something even worse-would befall him and everybody he loved. His parents, his wife, his baby son and his friends were equally frail and vulnerable. When he clung to them and yearned tenderly toward them, he was investing emotion in what could only bring him pain. His wife would lose her beauty, and little Rahula could die tomorrow. To seek happiness in mortal, transitory things was not only irrational: the suffering in store for his loved ones as well as for himself cast a dark shadow over the present and took away all his joy in these relationships.

But why did Gotama see the world in such bleak terms? Mortality is a fact of life that is hard to bear. Human beings are the only animals who have to live with the knowledge that they will die one day, and they have always found this vision of extinction difficult to contemplate. But most of us manage to find some solace in the happiness and affection that is also part of the human experience. Some people simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to think about the sorrow of the world, but this is an unwise course, because, if we are entirely unprepared, the tragedy of life can be devastating. From the very earliest times, men and women devised religions to help them cultivate a sense that our existence has some ultimate meaning and value, despite the dispiriting evidence to the contrary. But sometimes the myths and practices of faith seem incredible. People then turn to other methods of transcending the sufferings and frustrations of daily life: to art, music, sex, drugs, sport or philosophy. We are beings who fall very easily into despair, and we have to work very hard to create within ourselves a conviction that life is good, even though all around us we see pain, cruelty, sickness and injustice. When he decided to leave home, Gotama, one might think, appeared to have lost this ability to live with the unpalatable facts of life and to have fallen prey to a profound depression.

Yet that was not the case. Gotama had indeed become disenchanted with domestic life in an ordinary Indian household, but he had not lost hope in life itself. Far from it. He was convinced that there was a solution to the puzzle of existence, and that he could find it. Gotama subscribed to what has been called the “perennial philosophy,” because it was common to all peoples in all cultures in the pre-modern world. Earthly life was obviously fragile and overshadowed by death, but it did not constitute the whole of reality. Everything in the mundane world had, it was thought, its more powerful, positive replica in the divine realm. All that we experienced here below was modeled on an archetype in the celestial sphere; the world of the gods was the original pattern of which human realities were only a pale shadow. This perception informed the mythology, ritual and social organizations of most of the cultures of antiquity and continues to influence more traditional societies in our own day. It is a perspective that is difficult for us to appreciate in the modern world, because it cannot be proved empirically and lacks the rational underpinning which we regard as essential to truth. But the myth does express our inchoate sense that life is incomplete and that this cannot be all there is; there must be something better, fuller and more satisfying elsewhere. After an intense and eagerly awaited occasion, we often feel that we have missed something that remains just outside our grasp. Gotama shared this conviction, but with an important difference. He did not believe that this “something else” was confined to the divine world of the gods; he was convinced that he could make it a demonstrable reality in this mortal world of suffering, grief and pain.

Thus, he reasoned to himself, if there was “birth, aging, illness, death, sorrow and corruption” in our lives, these sufferings states must have their positive counterparts; there must be another mode of existence, therefore, and it was up to him to find it. “Suppose,” he said, “I start to look for the unborn, the unaging, unailing, deathless, sorrowless, incorrupt and supreme freedom from this bondage?” He called this wholly satisfactory state Nibbana (“blowing out”). Gotama was convinced that it was possible to “extinguish” the passions, attachments and delusions that cause human beings so much pain, rather as we snuff out a flame. To attain Nibbana would be similar to the “cooling” we experience after we recover from a fever: in Gotama’s time, the related adjective nibbuta was a term in daily use to describe a convalescent. So Gotama was leaving home to find a cure for the sickness that plagues humanity and which fills men and women with unhappiness. This universal suffering which makes life so frustrating and miserable was not something that we were doomed to bear forever. If our experience of life was currently awry, then, according to the law of archetypes, there must be another form of existence that was not contingent, flawed and transient. “There is something that has not come to birth in the usual way, which has neither been created and which remains undamaged,” Gotama would insist in later life. “If it did not exist, it would be impossible to find a way out.”

A modern person may smile at the naivete of this optimism, and find the myth of eternal archetypes wholly incredible. But Gotama would claim that he did find a way out and that Nibbana did, therefore, exist. Unlike many religious people, however, he did not regard this panacea as supernatural. He did not rely on divine aid from another world, but was convinced that Nibbana was a state that was entirely natural to human beings and could be experienced by any genuine seeker. Gotama believed that he could find the freedom he sought right in the midst of this imperfect world. Instead of waiting for a message from the gods, he would search within himself for the answer, explore the furthest reaches of his mind, and exploit all his physical resources. He would teach his disciples to do the same, and insisted that nobody must take his teaching on hearsay. They must validate his solutions empirically, in their own experience, and find for themselves that his method really worked. They could expect no help from the gods. Gotama believed that gods existed, but was not much interested in them. Here again, he was a man of his time and culture. The people of India had worshipped gods in the past: Indra, the god of war; Varuna, the guardian of the divine order; Agni, the fire god. But by the sixth century, these deities had begun to recede from the religious consciousness of the most thoughtful people. They were not exactly regarded as worthless, but they had become unsatisfactory as objects of worship. Increasingly, people were aware that the gods could not provide them with real and substantial help. The sacrifices performed in their honor did not in fact alleviate human misery. More and more men and women decided that they must rely entirely on themselves. They believed that the cosmos was ruled by impersonal laws to which even the gods were subject. Gods could not show Gotama the way to Nibbana; he would have to depend upon his own efforts.

Nibbana was not, therefore, a place like the Christian Heaven to which a believer would repair after death. Very few people in the ancient world at this point hoped for a blissful immortality. Indeed, by Gotama’s day, the people of India felt imprisoned eternally in their present painful mode of existence, as we can see from the doctrine of reincarnation, which had become widely accepted by the sixth century. It was thought that a man or a woman would be reborn after death into a new state that would be determined by the quality of their actions (kamma) in their present life. Bad kamma would mean that you would be reborn as a slave, an animal or a plant; good kamma would ensure a better existence next time: you could be reborn as a king or even as a god. But rebirth in one of the heavens was not a happy ending, because divinity was no more permanent than any other state. Eventually, even a god would exhaust the good kamma which had divinized him; he would then die and be reborn in a less advantageous position on earth. All beings were, therefore, caught up in an endless cycle of samsara (“keeping going”), which propelled them from one life to another. It sounds like a bizarre theory to an outsider, but it was a serious attempt to address the problem of suffering, and can be seen as inherently more satisfactory than attributing human fate to the frequently erratic decisions of a personalized god, who often seems to ensure that the wicked prosper. The law of kamma was a wholly impersonal mechanism that applied fairly and without discrimination to everybody. But the prospect of living one life after another filled Gotama, like most other people in northern India, with horror.

This is perhaps difficult to understand. Today many of us feel that our lives are too short and would love the chance to do it all again. But what preoccupied Gotama and his contemporaries was not so much the possibility of rebirth as the horror of redeath. It was bad enough to have to endure the process of becoming senile or chronically sick and undergoing a frightening, painful death once, but to be forced to go through all this again and again seemed intolerable and utterly pointless. Most of the religious solutions of the day were designed to help people extricate themselves from samsara and achieve a final release. The freedom of Nibbana was inconceivable because it was so far removed from our everyday experience. We have no terms to describe or even to envisage a mode of life in which there is no frustration, sorrow or pain, and which is not conditioned by factors beyond our control. But Indian sages of Gotama’s day were convinced that this liberation was a genuine possibility. Western people often describe Indian thought as negative and nihilistic. Not so. It was breathtakingly optimistic and Gotama shared this hope to the full.

When he left his father’s house clad in the yellow robes of a mendicant monk who begged for his food, Gotama believed that he was setting out on an exciting adventure. He felt the lure of the “wide open” road, and the shining, perfect state of “homelessness.” Everybody spoke of the “holy life” at this time as a noble quest. Kings, merchants and wealthy householders alike honored these bhikkhus (“almsmen”) and vied with one another for the privilege of feeding them. Some became their regular patrons and disciples. This was no passing craze. The people of India can be as materialistic as anybody else, but they have a long tradition of venerating those who seek the spiritual, and they continue to support them. Still, there was a special urgency in the Ganges region in the late sixth century b.c.e. People did not regard the renunciants as feeble drop-outs. There was a spiritual crisis in the region. The sort of disillusion and anomie that Gotama had experienced was widespread, and people were desperately aware that they needed a new religious solution. The monk was thus engaged in a quest that would benefit his fellows, often at huge cost to himself. Gotama was often described in heroic imagery, suggesting strength, energy and mastery. He was compared to a lion, a tiger and a fierce elephant. As a young man, he was seen as a “handsome nobleman, capable of leading a crack army or a troop of elephants.” People regarded the ascetics as pioneers: they were exploring the realms of the spirit to bring succor to suffering men and women. As a result of the prevailing unrest, many yearned for a Buddha, a man who was “enlightened,” who had “woken up” to the full potential of humanity and would help others to find peace in a world that had suddenly become alien and desolate.

Why did the people of India feel this dis-ease with life? This malaise was not confined to the subcontinent, but afflicted people in several far-flung regions of the civilized world. An increasing number had come to feel that the spiritual practices of their ancestors no longer worked for them, and an impressive array of prophetic and philosophical geniuses made supreme efforts to find a solution. Some historians call this period (which extended from about 800 to 200 b.c.e.) the ‘Axial Age” because it proved pivotal to humanity. The ethos forged during this era has continued to nourish men and women to the present day. Gotama would become one of the most important and most typical of the luminaries of the Axial Age, alongside the great Hebrew prophets of the eighth, seventh and sixth centuries; Confucius and Lao Tzu, who reformed the religious traditions of China in the sixth and fifth centuries; the sixth-century Iranian sage Zoroaster; and Socrates and Plato (c. 427-327), who urged the Greeks to question even those truths which appeared to be self-evident. People who participated in this great transformation were convinced that they were on the brink of a new era and that nothing would ever be the same again.

The Axial Age marks the beginning of humanity as we now know it. During this period, men and women became conscious of their existence, their own nature and their limitations in an unprecedented way. Their experience of utter impotence in a cruel world impelled them to seek the highest goals and an absolute reality in the depths of their being. The great sages of the time taught human beings how to cope with the misery of life, transcend their weakness, and live in peace in the midst of this flawed world. The new religious systems that emerged during this period-Taoism and Confucianism in China, Buddhism and Hinduism in India, monotheism in Iran and the Middle East, and Greek rationalism in Europe- all shared fundamental characteristics beneath their obvious differences. It was only by participating in this massive transformation that the various peoples of the world were able to progress and join the forward march of history. Yet despite its great importance, the Axial Age remains mysterious. We do not know what caused it, nor why it took root only in three core areas: in China; in India and Iran; and in the eastern Mediterranean. Why was it that only the Chinese, Iranians, Indians, Jews and Greeks experienced these new horizons and embarked on this quest for enlightenment and salvation? The Babylonians and the Egyptians had also created great civilizations, but they did not evolve an Axial ideology at this point, and only participated in the new ethos later: in Islam or Christianity, which were restatements of the original Axial impulse. But in the Axial countries, a few men sensed fresh possibilities and broke away from the old traditions. They sought change in the deepest reaches of their beings, looked for greater inwardness in their spiritual lives, and tried to become one with a reality that transcended normal mundane conditions and categories. After this pivotal era, it was felt that only by reaching beyond their limits could human beings become most fully themselves.

Recorded history only begins in about 3000 b.c.e.; until that time we have little documentary evidence of the way human beings lived and organized their societies. But people always tried to imagine what the 20,000 years of prehistory had been like, and to root their own experience in it. All over the world, in every culture, these ancient days were depicted in mythology, which had no historical foundation but which spoke of lost paradises and primal catastrophes. In the Golden Age, it was said, gods had walked the earth with human beings. The story of the Garden of Eden, recounted in the Book of Genesis, the lost paradise of the West, was typical: once upon a time, there had been no rift between humanity and the divine: God strolled in the garden in the cool of the evening. Nor were human beings divided from one another. Adam and Eve lived in harmony, unaware of their sexual difference or of the distinction between good and evil. It is a unity that is impossible for us to imagine in our more fragmented existence, but in almost every culture, the myth of this primal concord showed that human beings continued to yearn for a peace and wholeness that they felt to be the proper state of humanity. They experienced the dawning of self-consciousness as a painful fall from grace. The Hebrew Bible calls this state of wholeness and completeness shalom; Gotama spoke of Nibbana and left his home in order to find it. Human beings, he believed, had lived in this peace and fulfillment before, but they had forgotten the path that led to it.

As we have seen, Gotama felt that his life had become meaningless. A conviction that the world was awry was fundamental to the spirituality that emerged in the Axial countries. Those who took part in this transformation felt restless-just as Gotama did. They were consumed by a sense of helplessness, were obsessed by their mortality and felt a profound terror of and alienation from the world. They expressed this malaise in different ways. The Greeks saw life as a tragic epic, a drama in which they strove for katharsis and release. Plato spoke of man’s separation from the divine, and yearned to cast off the impurity of our present state and achieve unity with the Good. The Hebrew prophets of the eighth, seventh and sixth centuries felt a similar alienation from God, and saw their political exile as symbolic of their spiritual condition. The Zoroastrians of Iran saw life as a cosmic battle between Good and Evil, while in China, Confucius lamented the darkness of his age, which had fallen away from the ideals of the ancestors. In India, Gotama and the forest monks were convinced that life was dukkha: it was fundamentally “awry,” filled with pain, grief and sorrow. The world had become a frightening place. The Buddhist scriptures speak of the “terror, awe and dread” that people experienced when they ventured outside the city and went into the woods. Nature had become obscurely menacing, rather as it had become inimical to Adam and Eve after their lapse. Gotama did not leave home to commune happily with nature in the woods, but experienced a continuous “fear and horror.” If a deer approached or if the wind rustled in the leaves, he recalled later, his hair stood on end.

What had happened? Nobody has fully explained the sorrow that fueled Axial Age spirituality. Certainly men and women had experienced anguish before. Indeed, tablets have been found in Egypt and Mesopotamia from centuries before this time that express similar disillusion. But why did the experience of suffering reach such a crescendo in the three core Axial regions? Some historians see the invasions of the nomadic Indo-European horsemen as a common factor in all these areas. These Aryan tribesmen came out of Central Asia and reached the Mediterranean by the end of the third millennium, were established in India and Iran by about 1200 b.c.e. and were in China by the end of the second millennium. They brought with them a sense of vast horizons and limitless possibilities, and, as a master race, had developed a tragically epic consciousness. They replaced the old stable and more primitive communities, but only after periods of intense conflict and distress, which might account for the Axial Age malaise. But the Jews and their prophets had no contact with these Aryan horsemen, and these invasions occurred over millennia, whereas the chief Axial transformations were remarkably contemporaneous.

Moreover, the type of culture developed by the Aryans in India, for example, bore no relation to the creativity of the Axial Age. By 1000 b.c.e., the Aryan tribesmen had settled down and established agricultural communities in most regions of the subcontinent. They dominated India society to such an extent that we now know almost nothing about the indigenous, pre-Aryan civilization of the Indus valley. Despite the dynamism of its origins, however, Aryan India was static and conservative, like most pre-Axial cultures. It divided the people into four distinct classes, similar to the four estates which would develop later in feudal Europe. The brahmins were the priestly caste, with responsibility for the cult: they became the most powerful. The warrior ksatriya class was devoted to government and defense; the vaisya were farmers and stockbreeders who kept the economy afloat; and the sudras were slaves or outcastes who were unable to assimilate into the Aryan system. Originally the four classes were not hereditary; native Indians could become ksatriyas or brahmins if they possessed the requisite skills. But by Gotama’s time, the stratification of society had acquired a sacred significance and become immutable, since it was thought to mirror the archetypal order of the cosmos. There was no possibility of changing this order by moving from one caste to another.

Aryan spirituality was typical of the ancient, pre-Axial religions, which were based on acceptance of the status quo, involved little speculative thought about the meaning of life and saw sacred truth as something that was given and unchangeable; not sought but passively received. The Aryans cultivated the drug soma, which put the brahmins into a state of ecstatic trance in which they “heard” (sruti) the inspired Sanskrit texts known as the Vedas. These were not thought to be dictated by the gods but to exist eternally and to reflect the fundamental principles of the cosmos. A universal law, governing the lives of gods and human beings alike, was also a common feature of ancient religion. The Vedas were not written down, since writing was unknown in the subcontinent. It was, therefore, the duty of the brahmins to memorize and preserve these eternal truths from one generation to another, passing down this hereditary lore from father to son, since this sacred knowledge put human beings in touch with brahman, the underlying principle that made the world holy and enabled it to survive. Over the centuries, Sanskrit, the language of the original Aryan tribesmen, was superseded by local dialects and became incomprehensible to everybody but the brahmins-a fact which inevitably enhanced the brahmins’ power and prestige. They alone knew how to perform the sacrificial ritual prescribed in the Vedas, which was thought to keep the whole world in existence.

It was said that at the beginning of time, a mysterious Creator had performed a primal sacrifice that brought gods, humans and the entire cosmos into existence. This primeval sacrifice was the archetype of the animal sacrifices performed by the brahmins, which gave them power over life and death. Even the gods depended upon these sacrifices and would suffer if the ritual was.not performed correctly. The whole of life therefore centered around these rites. The brahmins were clearly crucial to the cult, but the ksatriyas and vaisyas also had important roles. Kings and noblemen paid for the sacrifices, and the vaisyas reared the cattle as victims. Fire was of great importance in Vedic religion. It symbolized humanity’s control over the forces of nature, and the brahmins carefully tended three sacred fires in shrines. Each householder also honored his own domestic hearth with family rites. On the “quarter” (uposatha) days of each lunar month, special offerings were made to the sacred fire. On the eve of the uposatha, brahmins and ordinary householders alike would fast, abstain from sex and work, and keep night vigil at the hearth. It was a holy time, known as the upavasatha, when the gods “dwelt near” the householder and his family beside the fire.

Vedic faith was thus typical of pre-Axial religion. It did not develop or change; it conformed to an archetypal order and did not aspire to anything different. It depended upon external rites, which were magical in effect and intended to control the universe; it was based on arcane, esoteric lore known only to a few. This deeply conservative spirituality sought security in a reality that was timeless and changeless. It was completely different from the new Axial ethos. One need only think of Socrates, who was never content to accept traditional certainties as final, however august they might be. He believed that instead of receiving knowledge from outside, like the sruti Vedas, each person must find the truth within his own being. Socrates questioned everything, infecting his interlocutors with his own perplexity, since confusion was the beginning of the philosophical quest. The Hebrew prophets overturned some of the old mythical certainties of ancient Israel: God was no longer automatically on the side of his people, as he had been at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. He would now use the Gentile nations to punish Jews, each of whom had a personal responsibility to act with justice, equity and fidelity. Salvation and survival no longer depended upon external rites; there would be a new law and covenant written in the heart of each of the people. God demanded mercy and compassion rather than sacrifice. Axial faith put the onus on the individual. Wherever they looked, as we have seen, the Axial sages and prophets saw exile, tragedy and dukkha. But the truth that they sought enabled them to find peace, despite cruelty, injustice and political defeat. We need only recall the luminous calm of Socrates during his execution by a coercive state. The individual would still suffer and die; there was no attempt to avert fate by the old magical means; but he or she could enjoy a calm in the midst of life’s tragedies that gave meaning to existence in such a flawed world.

The new religions sought inner depth rather than magical control. The sages were no longer content with external conformity but were aware of the profound psychic inwardness that precedes action. Crucial was the desire to bring unconscious forces and dimly perceived truths into the light of day. For Socrates, men already knew the truth, but only as an obscure memory within; they had to awaken this knowledge and become fully conscious of it by means of his dialectical method of questioning. Confucius studied the ancient customs of his people, which had hitherto been taken for granted and had remained unexamined. Now the values that they enshrined must be consciously fostered in order to be restored to their original radiance. Confucius wanted to make explicit ideas which had previously been merely intuited, and put elusive, half-understood intimations into clear language. Human beings must study themselves, analyze the reasons for their failures and thus find a beauty and order in the world that was not rendered meaningless by the fact of death. The Axial sages scrutinized the old mythology and reinterpreted it, giving the old truths an essentially ethical dimension. Morality had become central to religion. It was by ethics, not magic, that humanity would wake up to itself and its responsibilities, realize its full potential and find release from the darkness that pressed in on all sides. The sages were conscious of the past, and believed that the world had gone awry because men and women had forgotten the fundamentals of existence. All were convinced that there was an absolute reality that transcended the confusions of this world-God, Nibbana, the Tao, brahman-and sought to integrate it within the conditions of daily life.

Finally, instead of hugging a secret truth to themselves as the brahmins had done, the Axial sages sought to publish it abroad. The prophets of Israel spoke to ordinary people in impassioned sermons and eloquent gestures. Socrates questioned everyone he met. Confucius traveled widely in an attempt to transform society, instructing the poor and humble as well as the nobility. These sages were determined to put their theories to the test. Scripture was no longer the private possession of a priestly caste, but became a way of transmitting the new faith to the multitude. Study and debate became important religious activities. There was to be no more blind acceptance of the status quo, and no automatic fealty to received ideas. Truth had to be made a reality in the lives of those who struggled to achieve it. We shall see how closely Gotama mirrored the values of the Axial Age, and how he brought his own special genius to bear on the human dilemma.

The Axial transformation was already well under way in India, however, when he left his home in Kapilavatthu. Historians and scholars note that all these innovative ideologies were created in the setting of the marketplace, which had acquired a new centrality in the sixth century B.C.E. Power was passing from the old partnership of King and Temple to the merchants, who were developing a different kind of economy. These social changes certainly contributed to the spiritual revolution, even if they cannot fully explain it. The market economy also undermined the status quo: merchants could no longer defer obediently to the priests and aristocracy. They had to rely on themselves and be prepared to be ruthless in business. A new urban class was coming into being, and it was powerful, thrusting, ambitious and determined to take its destiny into its own hands. It was clearly in tune with the newly emerging spiritual ethos. The plain around the river Ganges in North India, like the other Axial regions, was undergoing this economic transformation during Gotama’s lifetime. By the sixth century, the essentially rural society that had been established by the Aryan invaders so long ago was being transformed by the new iron-age technology, which enabled farmers to clear the dense forests and thus open up new land for cultivation. Settlers poured into the region, which became densely populated and highly productive. Travelers described the copious fruit, rice, cereal, sesame, millet, wheat, grains and barley that gave the local people produce in excess of their needs, and which they could trade. The Gangetic plain became the center of Indic civilization; we hear little about other parts of the subcontinent during Gotama’s lifetime. Six great cities became centers of trade and industry: Savatthi, Saketa, Kosambi, Varanasi, Rajagaha and Champa, and were linked by new trade routes. The cities were exciting places: their streets were crowded with brilliantly painted carriages, huge elephants carried merchandise to and from distant lands, and there was gambling, theater, dancing, prostitution and a rowdy tavern life, much of which shocked the people of the nearby villages. Merchants from all parts of India and from all castes mingled in the marketplace, and there was lively discussion of the new philosophical ideas in the streets, the city hall and the luxurious parks in the suburbs. The cities were dominated by the new men-merchants, businessmen and bankers-who no longer fit easily into the old caste system and were beginning to challenge the brahmins and ksatriyas. This was all disturbing but invigorating. Urban dwellers felt at the cutting edge of change.

The political life of the region had also been transformed. The Ganges basin had originally been ruled by a number of small kingdoms and by a few so-called republics which were really oligarchies, based on the institutions of the old clans and tribes. Gotama was born in Sakka, the most northerly of these republics, and his father Suddhodana would have been a member of the sangha, the regular Assembly of aristocrats which governed the Sakyan clansmen and their families. The Sakyans were notoriously proud and independent. Their territory was so remote that Aryan culture had never taken root there, and they had no caste system. But times were changing. Kapilavatthu, the capital of Sakka, was now an important trading post on one of the new mercantile routes. The outside world had begun to invade the republic, which was gradually being pulled into the mainstream. Like the other republics of Malla, Koliya, Videha, Naya and Vajji to the east of the region, Sakka felt threatened by the two new monarchies of Kosala and Magadha, which were aggressively and inexorably bringing the weaker and more old-fashioned states of the Gangetic plain under their control.

Kosala and Magadha were far more efficiently run than the old republics, where there was constant infighting and civil strife. These modern kingdoms had streamlined bureaucracies and armies which professed allegiance to the king alone, instead of to the tribe as a whole. This meant that each king had a personal fighting machine at his disposal, which gave him the power to impose order on his domains and to conquer neighboring territory. These modern monarchs were also able to police the new trade routes efficiently, and this pleased the merchants on whom the economy of the kingdoms depended. The region enjoyed a new stability, but at a cost. Many were disturbed by the violence and ruthlessness of the new society, where kings could force their will upon the people, where the economy was fueled by greed, and where bankers and merchants, locked in aggressive competition, preyed upon one another. The traditional values seemed to be crumbling, a familiar way of life was disappearing, and the order that was taking its place was frightening and alien. It was no wonder that so many people felt life was dukkha, a word usually translated as “suffering,” but whose meaning is better conveyed by such terms as “unsatisfactory,” “flawed,” and “awry.”

In this changing society, the ancient Aryan religion of the brahmins seemed increasingly out of place. The old rituals had suited a settled rural community, but were beginning to seem cumbersome and archaic in the more mobile world of the cities. Merchants were constantly on the road and could not keep the fires burning, nor could they observe the uposatha days. Since these new men fit less and less easily into the caste system, many of them felt that they had been pushed into a spiritual vacuum. Animal sacrifice had made sense when stockbreeding had been the basis of the economy, but the new kingdoms depended upon agricultural crops. Cattle were becoming scarce and sacrifice seemed wasteful and cruel-too reminiscent of the violence that now characterized so much of public life. At a time when the urban communities were dominated by self-made men who had to rely on themselves, people increasingly resented the dominance of the brahmins and wanted to control their own spiritual destiny. Moreover, the sacrifices did not work. The brahmins alleged that these ritual actions (kamma) would bring the people riches and material success in this world, but these promised benefits usually failed to materialize. In the new economic climate, people in the cities wanted to concentrate on kamma which would yield a sounder investment.

The modern monarchies and the cities, dominated by a market economy, had made the peoples of the Gangetic region highly conscious of the rate of change. Urban dwellers could see for themselves that their society was being rapidly transformed; they could measure its progress and were experiencing a lifestyle that was very different from the repetitive rhythms of a rural community, which was based on the seasons and where everybody did the same things year after year. In the towns, people were beginning to realize that their actions (kamma) had long-term consequences, which they themselves might not experience but which they could see would affect future generations. The doctrine of reincarnation, which was of quite recent origin, suited this world much better than did the old Vedic faith. The theory of kamma stated that we had nobody to blame for our fate but ourselves and that our actions would reverberate in the very distant future. True, kamma could not release human beings from the wearisome round of samsara, but good kamma would yield a valuable return since it ensured a more enjoyable existence next time. A few generations earlier, the doctrine of reincarnation had been a highly controversial one, known only to an elite few. But by Gotama’s time, when people had become conscious of cause and effect in an entirely new way, everybody believed in it-even the brahmins themselves.

But as in the other Axial countries, the people of northern India had begun to experiment with other religious ideas and practices which seemed to speak more directly to their altered conditions. Shortly before Gotama’s birth, a circle of sages in the regions to the west of the Gangetic plain staged a secret rebellion against the old Vedic faith. They began to create a series of texts which were passed secretly from master to pupil. These new scriptures were called the Upanisads, a title which stressed the esoteric nature of this revolutionary lore, since it derived from the Sanskrit apa-ni-sad (to sit near). The Upanisads ostensibly relied upon the old Vedas, but reinterpreted them, giving them a more spiritual and interiorized significance; this marked the beginning of the tradition now known as Hinduism, another of the great religions formed during the Axial Age. The goal of the sages’ spiritual quest was the absolute reality of brahman, the impersonal essence of the universe and the source of everything that exists. But brahman was not simply a remote and transcendent reality; it was also an immanent presence which pervaded everything that lived and breathed. In fact, by dint of the Upanisadic disciplines, a practitioner would find that brahman was present in the core of his own being. Salvation lay not in animal sacrifice, as the brahmins had taught, but in the spiritual realization that brahman, the absolute, eternal reality that is higher even than the gods, was identical to one’s own deepest Self (atman).

The idea of an eternal and absolute Self would greatly exercise Gotama, as we shall see. It was a remarkable insight. To believe that one’s innermost Self was identical with brahman, the supreme reality, was a startling act of faith in the sacred potential of humanity. The classic expression of this doctrine is found in the early Chandogya Upanisad. The brahmin Uddalaka wanted to show his son Svetaketu, who prided himself on his knowledge of the Vedas, the limitations of the old religion. He asked Svetaketu to dissolve a lump of salt in a beaker of water. The next morning, the salt had apparently vanished, but, of course, when Svetaketu sipped the water he found that the salt permeated the whole beakerful of liquid, even though it could not be seen. This was just like brahman, Uddalaka explained; you could not see It but nevertheless It was there. “The whole universe has this first essence (brahman) as its Self (atman). That is what the Self is; that is what you are, Svetaketu!” This was rebellious indeed; once you understood that the Absolute was in everything, including yourself, there was no need for a priestly elite. People could find the ultimate for themselves, without cruel, pointless sacrifices, within their own being.

But the sages of the Upanisads were not alone in the rejection of the old faith of the brahmins. In the eastern part of the Gangetic region, most of the monks and ascetics who lived in the forest were unfamiliar with the spirituality of the Upanisads, which was still an underground, esoteric faith centered in the western plains. Some of the new ideas had leaked through on a popular level, however. There was no talk in the eastern Ganges of brahman, which is never mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures, but a folk version of this supreme principle had become popular in the cult of the new god Brahma, who, it was said, dwelt in the highest heaven of all. Gotama does not seem to have heard of brahman, but he was aware of Brahma, who, as we shall see, played a role in Gotama’s own personal drama. When Gotama left Kapilavatthu, he headed for this eastern region, traveling throughout the rest of his life in the new kingdoms of Kosala and Magadha and in the old adjacent republics. Here the spiritual rejection of the ancient Aryan traditions took a more practical turn. People were less interested in metaphysical speculation about the nature of ultimate reality and more concerned with personal liberation. The forest-monks may not have been conversant with the transcendent brahman, but they longed to know atman, the absolute Self within, and were devising various ways of accessing this eternal, immanent principle. The doctrine of the Self was attractive because it meant that liberation from the suffering of life was clearly within reach and required no priestly intermediaries. It also suited the individualism of the new society and its cult of self-reliance. Once a monk had found his real Self, he would understand at a profound level that pain and death were not the last words about the human condition. But how could a monk find this Self and thus gain release from the endless cycle of samsara? Even though the Self was said to be within each person, the monks had discovered that it was very difficult to find it.

The spirituality of the eastern Gangetic region was much more populist. In the west, the Upanisadic sages guarded their doctrines from the masses; in the east, these questions were eagerly debated by the people. As we have seen, they did not see the mendicant monks as useless parasites but as heroic pioneers. They were also honored as rebels. Like the Upanisadic sages, the monks defiantly rejected the old Vedic faith. At the start of his quest, an aspirant went through a ceremony known as the Pabbajja (“Going Forth”): he had become a person who had literally walked out of Aryan society. The ritual required that the renunciant remove all the external signs of his caste and throw the utensils used in sacrifice into the fire. Henceforth, he would be called a Sannyasin (“Caster-Off”), and his yellow robe became the insignia of his rebellion. Finally, the new monk ritually and symbolically swallowed the sacred fire, as a way, perhaps, of declaring his choice of a more interior religion. He had deliberately rejected his place in the old world by repudiating the life of the householder, which was the backbone of the system: the married man kept the economy going, produced the next generation, paid for the all-important sacrifices and took care of the political life of society. The monks, however, cast aside these duties and pursued a radical freedom. They had left behind the structured space of the home for the untamed forests; they were no longer subject to the constraints of caste, no longer debarred from any activity by the accident of their birth. Like the merchant, they were mobile and could roam the world at will, responsible to nobody but themselves. Like the merchants, therefore, they were the new men of the era, whose whole lifestyle expressed the heightened sense of individualism that characterized the period.

In leaving home, therefore, Gotama was not abjuring the modern world for a more traditional or even archaic lifestyle (as monks are often perceived to be doing today), but was in the vanguard of change. His family, however, could scarcely be expected to share this view. The republic of Sakka was so isolated that it was cut off from the developing society that was growing up in the Ganges plain below and, as we have seen, had not even assimilated the Vedic ethos. The new ideas would have seemed foreign to most of the Sakyan people. Nevertheless, news of the rebellion of the forest-monks had obviously reached the republic and stirred the young Gotama. As we have seen, the Pali texts give us a very brief account of his decision to leave home, but there is another more detailed story of Gotama’s Going Forth, which brings out the deeper significance of the Pabbajja. It is found only in the later extended biographies and commentaries, such as the Nidana Katha, which was probably written in the fifth century c.e. But even though we only find this tale in the later Buddhist writings, it could be just as old as the Pali legends. Some scholars believe that these late, consecutive biographies were based on an old narrative that was composed at about the same time that the Pali Canon took its final shape, some one hundred years after Gotama’s death. The Pali legends were certainly familiar with this story, but they attribute it not to Gotama but to his predecessor, the Buddha Vipassi, who had achieved enlightenment in a previous age. So the tale is an archetype, applicable to all Buddhas. It does not attempt to challenge the Pali version of Gotama’s Going Forth, nor does it purport to be historically sound, in our sense. Instead, this overtly mythological story, with its divine interventions and magical occurrences, represents an alternative interpretation of the crucial event of the Pabbajja. This is what all Buddhas-Gotama no less than Vipassi-have to do at the beginning of their quest; indeed, everybody who seeks enlightenment must go through this transformative experience when he or she embarks on the spiritual life. The story is almost a paradigm of Axial Age spirituality. It shows how a human being becomes fully conscious, in the way that the Axial sages demanded, of his or her predicament. It is only when people become aware of the inescapable reality of pain that they can begin to become fully human. The story in the Nidana Katha is symbolic and has universal impact, because unawakened men and women all try to deny the suffering of life and pretend that it has nothing to do with them. Such denial is not only futile (because nobody is immune to pain and these facts of life will always break in), but also dangerous, because it imprisons people in a delusion that precludes spiritual development.

Thus the Nidana Katha tells us that when little Siddhattha was five days old, his father Suddhodana invited a hundred brahmins to a feast, so that they could examine the baby’s body for marks which would foretell his future. Eight of the brahmins concluded that the child had a glorious future: he would either become a Buddha, who achieved the supreme spiritual enlightenment, or a Universal King, a hero of popular legend, who, it was said, would rule the whole world. He would possess a special divine chariot; each one of its four wheels rolled in the direction of one of the four quarters of the earth. This World Emperor would walk through the heavens with a massive retinue of soldiers, and would “turn the Wheel of Righteousness,” establishing justice and right-living throughout the cosmos. This myth was clearly influenced by the new cult of kingship in the monarchies of Kosala and Magadha. Throughout Gotama’s life, he had to confront this alternative destiny. The image of the Universal Monarch (cakkavatti) would become his symbolic alter ego, the opposite of everything that he did finally achieve. The cakkavatti might be powerful and his feign could even be beneficial to the world, but he is not a spiritually enlightened man, since his career depends entirely upon force. One of the brahmins, whose name was Kondanna, was convinced that little Siddhatta would never become a cakkavatti. Instead, he would renounce the comfortable life of the householder and become a Buddha who would overcome the ignorance and folly of the world.

Suddhodana was not happy about this prophecy. He was determined that his son become a cakkavatti, which seemed to him a much more desirable option than the life of a world-renouncing ascetic. Kondanna had told him that one day Siddhatta would see four things-an old man, a sick person, a corpse and a monk-which would convince him to leave home and “Go Forth.” Suddhodana, therefore, decided to shield his son from these disturbing sights: guards were posted around the palace to keep all upsetting reality at bay, and the boy became a virtual prisoner, even though he lived in luxury and had an apparently happy life. Gotama’s pleasure-palace is a striking image of a mind in denial. As long as we persist in closing our minds and hearts to the universal pain, which surrounds us on all sides, we remain locked in an undeveloped version of ourselves, incapable of growth and spiritual insight. The young Siddhatta was living in a delusion, since his vision of the world did not coincide with the way things really were. Suddhodana is an example of exactly the kind of authority figure that later Buddhist tradition would condemn. He forced his own view upon his son and refused to let him make up his own mind. This type of coercion could only impede enlightenment, since it traps a person in a self which is inauthentic and in an infantile, unawakened state.

The gods, however, decided to intervene. They knew that even though his father refused to accept it, Gotama was a Bodhisatta, a man who was destined to become a Buddha. The gods could not themselves lead Gotama to enlightenment, of course, since they were also caught up in samsara and needed a Buddha to teach them the way to find release as acutely as any human being. But the gods could give the Bodhisatta a much-needed nudge. When he had reached the age of twenty-nine, they decided that he had lived in this fool’s paradise long enough, so they sent into the pleasure-park one of their own number, disguised as a senile old man, who was able to use his divine powers to elude Suddhodana’s guards. When Gotama saw this old man, while driving in the park, he was horrified and had to ask Channa, the charioteer, what had happened to the man. Channa explained that he was simply old: everybody who lived long enough went into a similar decline. Gotama returned to the palace in a state of deep distress.

When he heard what had happened, Suddhodana redoubled the guard and tried to distract his son with new pleasures-but to no avail. On two further occasions, gods appeared to Gotama in the guise of a sick man and a corpse. Finally, Gotama and Channa drove past a god dressed in the yellow robe of a monk. Inspired by the gods, Channa told Gotama that this was a man who had renounced the world, and he praised the ascetic life so passionately that Gotama returned home in a very thoughtful mood. That night, he woke to find that the minstrels and dancers who had been entertaining him that evening had fallen asleep. All around his couch, beautiful women lay in disarray: “Some with their bodies slick with phlegm and spittle; others were grinding their teeth, and muttering and talking incoherently in their sleep; others lay with their mouths wide open.” A shift had occurred in Gotama’s view of the world. Now that he was aware of the suffering that lay in wait for every single being without exception, everything seemed ugly-even repellent. The veil that had concealed life’s pain had been torn aside and the universe seemed a prison of pain and pointlessness. “How oppressive and stifling it is!” Gotama exclaimed. He leapt out of bed and resolved to “Go Forth” that very night.

It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the ‘cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can never see the world in the same way again. Life seems meaningless, and an Axial Age pioneer will feel compelled to break out of the old accepted patterns and try to find a new way of coping with this pain. Only when he had found an inner haven of peace would life seem meaningful and valuable once more. Gotama had permitted the spectacle of dukkha to invade his life and to tear his world apart. He had smashed the hard carapace in which so many of us encase ourselves in order to keep sorrow at a distance. But once he had let suffering in, his quest could begin. Before leaving home, he crept upstairs to take one last look at his sleeping wife and their baby, but could not bring himself to say goodbye. Then he stole out of the palace. He saddled his horse Kanthaka and rode through the city, with Channa clinging to the horse’s tail in a desperate attempt to prevent his departure. The gods opened the city gates to let him out, and once he was outside Kapilavatthu, Gotama shaved his head and put on the yellow robe. Then he sent Channa and Kanthaka back to his father’s house, and, we are told in another Buddhist legend, the horse died of a broken heart, but was reborn in one of the heavens of the cosmos as a god, as a reward for his part in the Buddha’s enlightenment.

Before he could begin his quest in earnest, Gotama had to undergo one last temptation. Suddenly, Mara, the Lord of this world, the god of sin, greed and death, erupted threateningly before him. “Don’t become a monk! Don’t renounce the world!” Mara begged. If Gotama would stay at home for just one more week, he would become a cakkavatti and rule the whole world. Think what good he could do! He could end life’s suffering with his benevolent government. This was, however, the easy option and a delusion, because pain can never be conquered by force. It was the suggestion of an unenlightened being, and throughout Gotama’s life, Mara would try to impede his progress and tempt him to lower his standards. That night, Gotama was easily able to ignore Mara’s suggestion, but the angry god refused to give up. “I will catch you,” he whispered to himself, “the very first time you have a greedy, spiteful or unkind thought.” He followed Gotama around “like an ever-present shadow,” to trap him in a moment of weakness. Long after Gotama had attained the supreme enlightenment, he still had to be on his guard against Mara, who represents what Jungian psychologists would, perhaps, call his shadow-side, all the unconscious elements within the psyche which fight against our liberation. Enlightenment is never easy. It is frightening to leave our old selves behind, because they are the only way we know how to live. Even if the familiar is unsatisfactory, we tend to cling to it because we are afraid of the unknown. But the holy life that Gotama had undertaken demanded that he leave behind everything he loved and everything that made up his unregenerate personality. At every turn, he had to contend with that part of himself (symbolized by Mara) which shrank from this total self-abandonment. Gotama was looking for a wholly different way of living as a human being, and to bring this new self to birth would demand a long, difficult labor. It would also demand skill, and Gotama set off to find a teacher who could instruct him in the path to Enlightenment.