We’ve talked before about how the Gautama Buddha attained his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree several times.
Most storytellers and holy men like to end the story there.
Oh, sure, they might tell you that he came back and continued to preach for many years, sharing the wisdom of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path with all who would listen.
They might even tell you of how the poor and rich alike found solace in his message (with a subtle emphasis from the priests on how generous donations helped Gautama construct a great many temples and cleanse the bad karma of the donors). How he performed miracles. How he converted murderers.
What doesn’t get talked about as much are the Buddha’s moments of doubt and struggle. Think it’s easy starting one of the world’s oldest religious movements? We know of at least one instance in which the Buddha retreated from his followers, spending weeks alone in silent meditation. He was trying to puzzle out what to do about his squabbling monks’ interpersonal problems.
By delivering a message challenging the common traditions of his time, the Buddha also opened himself up to criticism, ridicule, and even persecution. Religious leaders who could not out-debate him cast aspersions behind his back. Some say they even went so far as to hire a woman to sully his reputation as a celibate monk.
And then there was his worst enemy, his own cousin Devadatta. Resentful at not being named the Buddha’s successor, he plotted to kill the Buddha and slandered him to all who would listen.
Is this really the life of an enlightened person? How does one get involved in all this drama after enlightenment? Didn’t he go on his quest to disentangle himself from all that suffering?
The answer is yes.
Meditation. Cultivating awareness. Walking the Eightfold Path with the Four Noble Truths in your heart. All of it isn’t so we can escape life, it’s so we can handle life skillfully. Something our “no bad vibes” American Self-Help culture struggles to accept, is the fact that you can’t “manifest” a life without struggle. Such a destiny would actually drive us mad. Rich boy Siddartha Gautama came closest to it when his dad put him in a palace free from poverty, sickness, or death, and all it did was make him abandon his kingdom in exchange for the pain and misery of the ascetic life. The moment we end all of our problems, we go out and seek new ones. This is probably why so many retired folks buy boats.
The projects we undertake and the themes we contend with throughout our lives do not end like a tightly scripted movie. After the curtain descends on your latest achievement or epiphany, something else comes up. Jealous family members, moronic bosses, slighted colleagues… it’s almost as if the line of trouble that awaits the new you is the test to see if you’ve truly internalized the lessons of your last adventure.
So if there’s no way to master your universe and become a god, then the best we can hope for is to be God’s most effective instrument. It is said that the Buddha could have left existence behind at the moment of his enlightenment, but he couldn’t do it when so many didn’t know the truth: that liberation from our love/hate relationship with life can be attained through personal effort.
He would teach not only with words and deeds but through his personal example. Despite all the difficulties and frustrations which stood in his way, he persevered in adhering to his principles and was the best possible version of himself that he could be. He set such a good example that people are still trying to emulate it to this day.
Instead of trying to remake the world so that they no longer lacked the money, sex, power, respect, etc. that cause others to worry, Buddha and his followers trained themselves to become the kind of people who recognized the pointlessness of worrying so they could focus on more important things.
It won’t make the problems stop. In the Buddha’s case, those problems became much bigger. People today are dumb enough to think they want the lives of movie stars and Top-40 musicians, but nobody’s dumb enough to want Buddha’s life. No money, all problems. But they were the problems of a good person, and that’s what made his life—and his problems—worthwhile.
"All of it isn’t so we can escape life, it’s so we can handle life skillfully." Yes. The means to our enlightenment hides in adversity.