Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

Epilogue

For a storyteller, it would be ideal if Buddha’s life came to a spectacular end. We’re holding our breath for it. First came the fairy-tale beginning as a handsome prince, then a second act with a wandering monk who goes through all manner of trials and suffering, reaching a brilliant climax when enlightenment is achieved in a single night under the bodhi tree. Where did this stunning life finally wind up?

Squarely back on earth, as it turns out. Buddha lived quietly for another forty-five years, traveling throughout northern India as a renowned teacher before dying at the ripe old age of eighty. The cause of death was eating a bad piece of pork, an embarrassingly humble and mundane way to depart.

To satisfy our dramatic longings, we have to turn to the incidental characters in the tale. The ones who were intimates of Siddhartha enjoyed a warm reunion with him. His wife, Yashodhara, and son, Rahula, became devotees of Buddha, which seems fitting enough. They were revered to the end of their days. Other characters had a more curious fate. The ever-widening circle of monks around Buddha, known as the Sangha, came to include two misfits, his archenemy, Devadatta, and the rough-hewn warrior Channa. According to tradition, Devadatta remained proud and resentful; even as a disciple he caused trouble. In one famous episode Devadatta tries to kill Buddha by starting a rockslide; in another he gets an elephant drunk on liquor and sends it on a rampage against the Compassionate One. (Buddha deflects the danger in both cases.) As often happens, the villain of the piece is too much fun to let go, so there are other stories of political intrigue with a neighboring prince named Ajatashatru and more mundane tales of Devadatta objecting to the rules Buddha laid down for his monks. A storyteller has a hard time making much drama out of ashram politics.

Following the rules didn’t sit well with Channa, either. Having given up his role as brave charioteer, Channa chafed at being reduced to the status of a holy monk. His chief sin was pride. He never let anyone forget that he had been Siddhartha’s best friend. He treated Buddha with too much familiarity, causing distress among the other devotees. At a certain point Channa’s misbehavior became too much for even Buddha’s tolerance. The head disciple, Ananda, who historically was Buddha’s cousin, was sent to reprimand him, and from there the road divides. In one version Channa sullenly takes his scolding and reforms. In the other, he sinks into despair and commits suicide.

But we would be wrong to be disappointed in our hero. Enlightenment was just the beginning of Buddha’s spiritual ascent, which was spectacular by any measure. Buddhism caused an earthquake in the spiritual life of India, crushing the privileges of the Brahmin caste and raising even the despised untouchables to spiritual dignity.

Buddha blew through the temples like a strong wind and with the simplicity of genius reduced the human predicament to one key issue: suffering. If suffering is a constant in every life, he said, then until there’s an end to suffering, enlightenment is pointless. Equally pointless is talk of God or the gods, heaven and hell, sin, redemption, the soul, and all the rest. This was reform of the severest kind, and a lot didn’t stick. People wanted God. Buddha refused to speak on the subject of whether God even existed. He adamantly denied that he himself was divine. People wanted the comfort of rituals and ceremonies. Buddha shunned ceremony. He wanted each individual to look inside and find liberation through a personal journey that began in the physical world and ended in Nirvana, a state of pure, eternal consciousness. Nirvana is present in everyone, he taught, but Nirvana is like pure water lying deep beneath the earth. Reaching it requires concentration, devotion, and diligent work.

It’s no wonder that Buddha’s call to awakening proved so enticing and so difficult. The Middle Way, which gained its name because it was neither too harsh nor too easy, proved very appealing, but the journey to Nirvana is solitary and contains little in the way of entertaining scenery. Yet there was no arguing against the teaching. Everything Buddha preached grows logically from the First Noble Truth, which also happens to be the first thing Buddha said to the five monks after he became enlightened: life contains suffering. The next three teachings sound more like modern psychotherapy than conventional religion:

FIRST NOBLE TRUTH: Life contains suffering.

SECOND NOBLE TRUTH: Suffering has a cause, and the cause can be known.

THIRD NOBLE TRUTH: Suffering can be brought to an end.

FOURTH NOBLE TRUTH: The path to end suffering has eight parts.

Now we’ve gone beyond the role of the storyteller, since these four simple statements created an explosion of theology that spread throughout Asia and the rest of the world. Thanks to Buddha’s decades of teaching, a cadre of disciples totally committed to the Buddhist path crossed the Himalayas and journeyed everywhere it was possible for sandals to tread. The list of cultures that these ascetic wanderers revolutionized is staggering: Tibet, Nepal, China, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, and far into Malaysia and Indonesia. In many cases a handful of Buddhist missionaries actually created a new culture. Any outside observer can only stand back in awe.

Why did people accept this new teaching so readily? Because the First Noble Truth was undeniable. People knew that they were suffering, and instead of showing a way out, their old religions gave them surrogates, in the form of dogma, prayers, rituals, and the like. At its simplest, Buddhism walked into the village square and said, “Here are eight things that will open the way to peace instead of pain.” The Eightfold Path asks for each person to change how the mind works, plucking out what is wrong, inefficient, and superstitious, then exchanging those outworn habits for increasing clarity. In other words, the waking-up process, which Buddha experienced in one night, is laid out as a lifelong program:

Right view or perspective

Right intention

Right speech

Right action

Right livelihood

Right effort

Right mindfulness

Right concentration

Some of these steps sound natural. We all want to believe that our actions and words are virtuous. We don’t want to go wrong in our effort and intentions. Other parts of the path need special guidance. What is right mindfulness? Right concentration? These aspects have their roots in the meditation practices of Yoga, which Buddha also reformed and brought within reach of ordinary people.

As a storyteller, I didn’t feel it was my place to spread Buddhism. That’s best left to the modern equivalents of the wandering missionaries who first preached Buddhism. It would be unseemly for me to step on their toes. But I’d like to speak to you, the reader, who might be coming to Buddha from the cold. I came to Buddha that way, and I asked the obvious question: What can this teaching do for me? Is there something that will open my eyes and make me more awake, right this minute?

Personally, I found three things. They are known as the three Dharma seals, or to put it in plain English, three basic facts about Being. They spoke to me far more than the Middle Way because of their universality, which extends far beyond the boundaries of religion.

1. Dukkha

Life is unsatisfactory. Pleasure in the physical world is transient. Pain inevitably follows. Therefore, nothing we experience can be deeply satisfying. There is no resting place in change.

2. Anicca

Nothing is permanent. All experience is swept away in flux. Cause and effect is endless and confusing. Therefore one can never find clarity or permanence.

3. Anatta

The separate self is unreliable and ultimately unreal. We apply words like soul and personality to something that is fleeting and ghostly. Our attempts to make the self real never end but also never succeed. Therefore, we cling for reassurance to an illusion.

READING THIS, CAN anyone escape being shaken to the core? Buddha wasn’t just a kindly teacher who wanted people to find peace. He was a radical surgeon who examined them and said, “No wonder you feel sick. All this unreal stuff has filled you up, and now we have to get rid of it.” Naturally, a lot of listeners ran back to conventional religion, and just as many ran back into materialism, which promises that body, mind, and the physical world are absolutely real.

Why should we accept Buddha’s word that they aren’t? That, I think, is the crucial question. There’s not much challenge in accepting that one’s life contains suffering, and only a small challenge in accepting that flux and change create dissatisfaction. Both facts seem psychologically self-evident. But to accept that the entire world, and everyone in it, is an illusion? That’s an enormous challenge, and it requires a complete shift in consciousness to meet it.

The word illusion has a host of meanings, and some are very enticing. The illusion, for example, that when you fall in love it will last forever. The illusion that you will never die. The illusion that ignorance is bliss. Buddha saw the danger hidden in these enticements. He rarely spoke harshly, but I can imagine him bursting all these bubbles: love ends, everyone dies, ignorance is folly. But if he had stopped there, Buddha would have wound up a tiresome moralist.

His definition of illusion was so absolute it almost freezes the blood. Whatever can be seen, heard, or touched is unreal. Whatever you cling to as permanent is unreal. Whatever the mind can think of is unreal. Does that leave anything free from the withering grip of illusion?

No.

Yet once we get over our shock, Buddha declares that with a shift in consciousness, reality reveals itself. Not as a thing. Not as a sensation. Not even as a wisp of thought. Reality is purely itself. It is the ground of existence, the source from which everything else is projected. In the most basic terms, Buddhism exchanges a world of infinite projections for the single state of Being. A freedom so complete it doesn’t have to think of freedom or say its name.

Which brings me to the subversive reason I decided to write a novel on the life of Buddha. By telling his story from the inside (early on I intended to call the book I, Buddha), I could trace every step that led Siddhartha to stop believing in the world. His tale isn’t really that of a romantic prince, suffering monk, or triumphant saint. It’s a universal soul journey that begins asleep and ends awake. Siddhartha woke up to the truth, which sounds inspiring, but in this case the truth demolished his entire self. It overturned every belief, purified every sense, and brought total clarity to the mind’s confusion. In sum, this book has been a kind of seduction, coaxing the reader step by step toward a vision that none of us was brought up to see. Through the eyes of Buddha, the root of suffering is illusion, and the only way out of illusion is to stop believing in the separate self and the world that supports the separate self. No spiritual message has ever been so radical. None remains so terribly urgent.

The Art of Non-Doing

A Practical Guide to Buddhism

After being inspired by Buddha’s life, the most important thing is not to let him slip through your fingers. This can easily happen. First of all, because he didn’t want anyone to hold on to him. Buddha was like a supernova exploding in the sky, spreading light in all directions. Before the explosion you could locate him in time and space. He was a person like any other, however brilliant and charismatic. But after the explosion known as enlightenment, he turned into something else, something very impersonal. Call it pure spirit, essence, or transcendent wisdom. By any name, he was no longer a person, which makes for special difficulties. How do you follow a teacher who is everywhere at once?

I can imagine sitting down with a reader and being asked that question, which would lead to quite a few more.

How am I supposed to follow someone who constantly insisted that he was no longer a person and didn’t have a self?

Ideally, you follow him by losing your own self. Which seems impossible, since it’s your self that’s fascinated by him. It’s your self that’s suffering and wants to be rid of suffering. The primary message of Buddhism is that this self cannot accomplish anything real. It must find a way to disappear, just as Buddha did.

The self reaches its goal by not being the self? It sounds like a paradox.

Yes, but Buddhists found three ways to live the wisdom their teacher left behind. The first way was social, forming groups of disciples into a Sangha, like the group of monks and nuns that Buddha gathered in his lifetime. The Sangha exists to establish a spiritual lifestyle. People remind themselves of the teaching and keep the Buddhist vision alive. They meditate together and create an atmosphere of peace.

The second way to follow Buddha is ethical, centered on the value of compassion. Buddha was known as The Compassionate One, a being who loved all of humanity without judgment. Buddhist ethics bring the same attitude into everyday life. A Buddhist practices being kind and seeing others without judgment, but in addition displays love and reverence for life itself. Buddhist morality is peaceful, accepting, and joyous.

The third way to follow Buddha is mystical. You take to heart the message of non-self. You do everything possible to break the bonds of attachment that keep you trapped in the illusion that you are a separate self. Here your aim is to tiptoe out of the material world even as your body remains in it. Ordinary people are doing things all day, but in your heart you’ve turned your attention to non-doing, as the Buddhists call it. Non-doing isn’t passivity but a state of openness to all possibilities.

If I practice non-doing, what would I actually do? It still seems like a paradox.

The third way confronts Buddha’s most enigmatic side. How can you shed the separate self when it’s the only thing you’ve known? The process sounds frightening, for one thing, because there’s no guarantee. Once you accomplish “ego death,” as it’s often called, what will be left? You might wind up enlightened, but you also might wind up a blank, a passive non-self with no interests or desires. People find the Buddhist path rigorous because you are asked to re-examine everything you think will get you ahead in life-money, possessions, status, accomplishments-and see them as a source of suffering. For example, having money doesn’t directly cause suffering, but it ties you to the illusion by hiding from sight the fact that there’s another way to live that’s actually real. Money, like possessions and status, creates a treadmill that brings one desire after another.

So enlightenment is the same as having no desires?

You have to understand “no desires” in a positive sense, as fulfillment. At the moment a musician is performing, there’s a state of no-desire because he feels fulfilled. At the moment you’re eating a wonderful meal, hunger is fulfilled. Buddha taught that there is a state, known as Nirvana, where desire is irrelevant. Everything desire is trying to achieve exists in Nirvana already. You don’t have to pursue one desire after another in a futile quest to end suffering. Instead, you go right to the source of Being, which is neither full nor empty. It just is.

Do you still want to live after that?

Nirvana is no longer about life and death, which are opposites. Buddha wanted to free people from all opposites. If you are following his teachings the second way, through morality and ethics, then being good, truthful, nonviolent, and compassionate is important. You don’t want to practice the opposite behavior. But if you follow Buddha the third way, the mystical way of non-doing, duality is the very thing you try to dissolve. You go beyond good and evil, which is scary to many people.

What is the non-self?

It’s who you are when there are no personal attachments. This sounds mystical, but we shouldn’t be distracted by semantics. The non-self is natural; it’s rooted in everyday experience. When you wake up in the morning there’s a moment before your mind gets filled with all the things you have to do today. In that moment you exist without a self. You don’t think about your name or your bank account; you don’t even think about your spouse and children. You just are. Enlightenment extends that state and deepens it. You aren’t burdened by having to remember who you are, ever again.

When I wake up in the morning I remember who I am almost immediately. How does that change?

By gradually shifting your allegiance. Consider how you relate to your body. You mostly forget about it. Heartbeat, metabolism, body temperature, electrolyte balance-literally dozens of processes go on automatically, and your nervous system coordinates them perfectly without interference from the conscious mind. Buddha suggests that you can let go of many things that you’re certain you must control. Instead of devoting so much effort and struggle to thinking, planning, running after pleasure, and avoiding pain, you can surrender and put those functions on automatic, also. This is accomplished gradually by a practice called mindfulness.

You mean, I simply stop thinking?

You stop investing yourself in thinking, because Buddha teaches that you haven’t been in control of your mind anyway. The mind is a series of fleeting, impermanent events, and trying to ground yourself in impermanence is an illusion. Time is exactly the same, a sequence of fleeting events that has no solid basis. Once you hear this teaching, you put it into practice through mindfulness. Whenever you are tempted by the illusion, you remind yourself that it’s not real. In a way, a better term might be re-mindfulness.

The process of shifting your consciousness takes time. This is an evolution, not a revolution. We’re all pulled in by the temptation to choose between A and B. Duality makes us believe that making good decisions and avoiding bad ones is all-important. Buddha disagrees-he says that getting out of duality is all-important, and you’ll never escape as long as you keep burying yourself deeper into the game of “A-or-B?” Reality isn’t A or B. It’s both and it’s neither. Mindfulness keeps you aware of that fact.

How am I to understand “both and neither”?

You can’t, not with the mind. The mind is basically a machine that processes the world only in terms of “I want this” and “I don’t want that.” Buddha taught that you can step outside the machinery and simply watch it working. You witness the whole fantastic jumble of desires, fears, wishes, and memories that is the mind. When you gain practice doing that in meditation, things change. You begin to be aware of yourself in a simpler way, without so much mental jumble. In time your allegiance shifts, and the space between thoughts-the silent gap-dominates instead of thoughts.

Is that Nirvana?

No, it’s just a sign that you are successfully practicing mindfulness. The silent gap between thoughts goes by too fast for anyone to live there. You have to give the gap a chance to expand, and at the same time silence deepens. It may sound strange, but your mind can be silent the whole time it’s also thinking. Ordinarily, silence and thought are considered opposites, but when you go beyond opposites, they merge. You identify with the timeless source of thought rather than the thoughts emerging from it.

What advantage does this bring? Assuming I take the time and effort to achieve such a state.

One can speak of the advantages in glowing terms that sound very alluring. You gain peace; you no longer suffer. Death no longer holds any fear. You stand unshakably on your own Being. In reality the gains are highly individual and proceed at their own pace. Everyone is in a different state of unreality that’s highly personal. I may be obsessive, while the person next to me may be anxious and the person next to him depressed. In meditation these knots of discord and conflict begin to unravel of their own accord. Yet there’s always an evolutionary unfolding. In your own way you walk the path to peace, non-suffering, fearlessness, and everything else Buddha exemplified.

From the outside this third way of following Buddha looks mystical, but over time it becomes as natural as breathing. Buddhism survives today and thrives all around the world because it is so open-ended. You don’t have to obey a set of rules or worship God or the gods. You don’t even have to be spiritual. All you have to do is look into yourself and yearn to become clear, to wake up and be complete. Buddhism counts on the fact that everyone possesses at least a bit of these motivations. Mindfulness and meditation form the basis of Buddhist practice-although every sect and teacher has a particular slant on them. Za-zen, the style of Buddhist meditation practiced in Japan, isn’t the same as Vipasana meditation in South Asia. In the end, however, Buddhism is a do-it-yourself project, and that’s the secret of its appeal in the modern world. Don’t we all ultimately concentrate on personal suffering and what our individual fate will be? Buddha asked for nothing else as a starting point, and yet he promised that the end point would be eternity.