If the Buddha Got Stuck_ A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path - Charlotte Sophia Kasl [5]
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
—MAHATAMA GANDHI
The changes we make for ourselves are outwardly reflected in our world. Becoming unstuck in life and being a force for good in the world are inseparable. Our friendliness, concern for others, welcoming smiles, and ability to listen and embrace others without judgment contribute to a peaceful world. As we become more at ease with ourselves and more passionately involved with whatever fulfills us, our focus naturally expands to our families, friends, communities, and our world. Becoming unstuck becomes both an individual and community effort with each affecting the other. In Buddhist terms, as we recognize our own suffering, we recognize the suffering of the world we live in. We come to see our lives as part of the larger whole.
Siddhartha Gautama, who later became known as the Buddha, embarked on a quest to understand the cause of suffering. Was Siddhartha ever stuck? To the extent that he kept focused on his overriding desire to find the cause of suffering, he was not stuck. He did, however, take some dead-end turns and was temporarily stuck many times. But in every situation he acknowledged something wasn’t working and tried another path. The steps to change found in this book echo his journey.
Siddhartha was born around 563 B.C. in Nepal, of wealthy parents who ruled a small kingdom. He married at the age of sixteen to a neighboring princess, Yasodhara, and they had one son, Rahula. Houston Smith, in World Religions, describes the legend of The Four Passing Sights that stirred Siddhartha to renounce his luxurious life in search of a spiritual path:
“When Siddhartha was born his father summoned fortune tellers to discern his future. All agreed this was no usual child, but his career was crossed with an ambiguity. If he succeeded his father, he would unify India and become a world conqueror, but if he forsook the world he would become a world redeemer. His father wanted the former destiny, so he spared no effort to keep his son on course. Palaces and dancing girls were placed at his disposal, and orders were given that no unpleasantness be allowed into his courtly life. When he left the palace, runners were stationed to clear the roads of the old, the diseased, and the dead.”
One day, however, curious and intrigued by the outside world, Siddhartha slipped past his father’s control, left the palace, and roamed the nearby streets. On successive occasions he saw an old man, gaunt and trembling as he leaned on his staff, a man riddled with disease, a dead man lying by the road, and then a monk with a shaven head, orange robe and begging bowl who told Siddhartha of a path of renouncing the world.
Siddhartha, stirred by these images of illness, poverty, and abstinence from earthly gains, was increasingly drawn to understand the causes of suffering. As Houston Smith writes, “The abundance of his palace life ceased to satisfy, and he decided to leave to become a truth-seeker. He left his sleeping wife and child during the night, rode away, left his horse, shaved his head and put on the ochre robe.”
In the following six years he studied with Hindu masters, then joined a group of ascetics who sought enlightenment through self-deprecation and renunciation. After nearly dying of starvation from these extreme practices, Siddhartha became aware that they were not taking him closer to the truth he sought. He realized that one could become as attached to austerity as to material wealth or the pleasures of the senses. From that point on he espoused the middle way—living simply, without leaning toward material, emotional, or mental extremes.
In the last phase of his search, Siddhartha Gautama concentrated on forms of meditation and yogic practices,