Exploring Siddhartha’s transformative journey from a discontented prince to Buddha, and drawing parallels to our modern pursuit of lasting happiness. Discover the lessons of seeking meaning, the illusion of external desires, and the fusion of knowledge and self-realization. Join us on a reflective exploration of the past and its relevance for today.
The Discomfort of Reality: Siddhartha’s Awakening
In ancient times, there lived a young prince. His name was Siddhartha. Shielded from miseries of all kinds he led a very comfortable life. But deep inside he was unhappy inside. One day he witnessed disease, old age and death, in exactly the same order. These sights tormented him to the core. More so, when he asked from his friend, he learned that everyone, lowly or mighty, has mandatorily to undergo these stages, the joy vanished from his life.
He found hollow the life he was leading.
What Siddhartha experienced then, is what we all experience throughout our life. This discomfort towards life’s reality leads us towards a search, the goal of which is to find happiness unfettered by the changing situations.
The Quest for Lasting Happiness: Beyond Half-Baked Premises
For the majority of us, the search ends somewhere, and that’s usually in some half-baked premises. And so often we hear statements like money is everything. For some, it could be power, and for still others it could be the upliftment of the downtrodden, the society or even the nation. We seek a goal that gives our life a meaning, and most of all, we seek a reason not just to exist but to live.
It is not that these goals are in themselves wrong, but what we miss is a holistic framework. At best these expressions are partial truths, which we tend to garb in absolutist phrases. With such a great fondness we cling to these beliefs that we end up creating full stops.
But life, we know, has no such stops. There are only stopovers.
A Glimpse of Hope: The Fourth Sign
Fortunately, at the end, Siddhartha also witnessed a calm faced, shaven-headed ascetic in yellow robes. This fourth sign provided him with a new facet of life.
“Happiness was still possible. Siddhartha reasoned, there still was a way out.”
Happiness, even we know, is possible. Ensconced in this belief, we continue living, carrying with us all our half-baked notions and creating, at the same time, new ones when the circumstance change, fervently hoping that they would not desert us in the changing times.
Chasing Mirages: The Illusion of External Happiness
They don’t. After all, wishes are simply wishful thinking, an idea of a reality that ought to be, but which seldom is.
Even Siddhartha was indulging in a wishful thinking at the sight of the calm ascetic. What followed is an example.
Just like the wandering ascetics, Siddhartha had left home, hoping to attain their state. Initially, he joined a group of five hermits and abandoned their company after he got dissatisfied with their methods and practices.
All alone he practised rigid mortification of his body, deprived himself of food, eating, as it is said, just two morsels of rice. His body had become only skin over bones. Yet his goal alluded him. This was not what he had set out to achieve. His mind was tortured. He called even this path quits.
The Quest’s Evolution: From External to Internal
But Siddhartha was lucky. He was only thirty-five years old and had a future he could look forward to. On the other hand, we spend our entire lifetime seeking happiness in outward things and in controlling our environment. Only at the end of our life we realize that the true happiness lies within, at a time when we are a spent force.
‘O God! Only if we had another lifetime!’
Our entire life is wasted pursuing a mirage, seeking control over something which, to begin with, was beyond our reach.
Has it not been observed that the older a man gets, the wiser he becomes? And is at his wisest best when on the deathbed. Even the desire for happiness that he had so fondly nurtured throughout the life loses its charm. Instead the desire for serenity, peace and harmony takes over.
But even this perspective, conditioned as it is by the imminence of death, is faulty. A truth that is a truth has to hold under all circumstances. It has to be absolute.
The Path to Enlightenment: Siddhartha’s Meditative Journey
It was this absolute that Siddhartha was seeking. In this the techniques of meditation he had learned from the sage Alara Kalama at the beginning of his journey came to his aid.
Dissatisfied with his previous efforts, he vowed not to leave his seat until he had solved the riddle of suffering. On the forty-ninth day the truth dawned. He had found the secret of sorrow and what mankind must do to overcome them. He was called Buddha’ or the enlightened one.
The search for Siddhartha was complete.
Beyond Siddhartha: Humanity’s Search at the Millennium
But the search for man at the end of this millennium is a little different that Siddhartha’s quest. Apart from self-realization, today man wants to know more and is also more capable of asking such seemingly improbable questions than was possible during Siddhartha’s times. The little mysteries of the universe that we have unravelled are far too much to overwhelm us. We are still not sure about our place in nature’s scheme of things. The unity for the scientific mind is lacking. And the quest continues.
However, what is more important is that until self-realization (and the desire), the thirst for knowledge (that led to sciences and philosophy), and the practical necessity of staying alive (the sphere of work) are not completely fused with the right understanding, disharmony will not cease.
Choosing the Path: Siddhartha’s Decision & Legacy
Even though the search for Siddhartha was complete, there a question still lurked in his mind – now what? There were two options before him. First, he continued that he continued with the present state, that is live in isolation. Or, go back to the world and help mankind. After all only one among the teeming millions had attained Nirvana, the life for the multitude remained the same.
Buddha chose the second option. He preached his first sermon to the five ascetics whose company and whose methods he had abandoned during the early days of his journey. It called for new efforts towards a new conscious existence.
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