A NEW BEGINNING

Renouncing worldly pleasures for a life of austerity, Siddhartha discovers the joy of being.
Experts from on the path to Nirvana Buddhism

When he was sixteen, Siddhartha was married to Yashodhara, a princess of great beauty. It is said that he lived a life of indulgence: nights of revelry flowed into days filled with all kinds of pleasures. Perfumed, oiled, clothed, in the most expensive silks, Siddhartha sported and hunted, patronized musicians and made love. By material standards, ancient or modern, young Siddhartha had it all.

AND THEN … WHAT?
By the time he was twenty-nine, the Sakya prince probably began to wonder whether this was all there was to life. An intelligent person, he began looking around for avenues to sharpen and engage his mind. Some sort of an awakening probably occurred, that brought him to the realisation of the vast and as yet untapped potential that lay within him. Expected to live a nobleman’s life, Siddhartha was beginning to acknowledge his own need to move beyond it. Slowly but surely, the time was approaching when he would have no option but to deal with this inner urge.

This was also the point when Siddhartha began considering other issues. For instance, the Four Great Sights that Buddhist scriptures credit with changing the course of his life-that of an old man, a sick man, a corpse and an ascetic-are perhaps meant to be symbolic of Siddhartha’s thought process, rather than being taken literally as actual events. It also means that he was looking around with questioning eyes, and along with issues of individual fulfillment, was considering circumstances like death and diseases, that characterise the human condition. Perhaps the seeds of compassion were sown at this time; they took root and grew into what was to become the most important aspect of his teachings as the Buddha.

As Siddhartha’s mind ripened in contemplation, he felt the need to move on to a life of absolute spiritual commitment. The time had come to renounce his identity as Siddhartha Gautama.

The most rigorous trial of Siddhartha’s resolve was the renunciation of his newborn son, Rahula… Dressed and ready to leave, Siddhartha is drawn to Yashodhara’s chamber for a final glimpse of his son. He peeps in, and in the light of flickering oil lamps, sees Yashodhara asleep on a flower-strewn bed, with little Rahula in her arms. A wave of sadness washes over him as he realizes that along wealth and his home, he must renounce them too. Silently, he leaves.

Cutting of his long hair with his sword and donning the yellow robes of an ascetic, Siddhartha probably inspected the spiritual scene for a teacher. There were plenty to be had. A vibrant shramana, ascetic, tradition had always existed, even if on the margins of Vedic Hinduism. But constant warfare, a higher than ever degree of mass material prosperity, and the questioning of Brahmanical monopoly over religion had perhaps swelled the numbers of those opting out of society to find the truth for themselves…

The meditative methods that Siddhartha learnt from his initial teachers found an echo later in his teachings as the Buddha, in the form of useful tools to help quieten the mind by leading it away from its usual engagements. However, the quietened mind is not necessarily a mind that has understood, or is fulfilled -hence, Siddhartha’s need to move on to further discoveries.

Next, he went to Uddaka Ramaputta, from whom he learnt the Upanishadic concept of the one Absolute that manifests in everything, which he would refute post-nirvana. He also learnt to enter the meditative state that is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. Yet, this too, was not the fulfillment he sought. Siddhartha left again, and having had enough of teachers, began a rigorous ascetic practice on his own, in the company of five others. Even though he gracefully moved on after learning whatever he could from his teachers, he continued with conventional ascetic practice. Perhaps that was the model available to him and until he reached the ultimate understanding, which could not be his own, he had to make do with what he had.