It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the ‘cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can never see the world in the same way again. Life seems meaningless, and an Axial Age pioneer will feel compelled to break out of the old accepted patterns and try to find a new way of coping with this pain. Only when he had found an inner haven of peace would life seem meaningful and valuable once more. Gotama had permitted the spectacle of dukkha to invade his life and to tear his world apart. He had smashed the hard carapace in which so many of us encase ourselves in order to keep sorrow at a distance. But once he had let suffering in, his quest could begin. Before leaving home, he crept upstairs to take one last look at his sleeping wife and their baby, but could not bring himself to say goodbye. Then he stole out of the palace. He saddled his horse Kanthaka and rode through the city, with Channa clinging to the horse’s tail in a desperate attempt to prevent his departure. The gods opened the city gates to let him out, and once he was outside Kapilavatthu, Gotama shaved his head and put on the yellow robe. Then he sent Channa and Kanthaka back to his father’s house, and, we are told in another Buddhist legend, the horse died of a broken heart, but was reborn in one of the heavens of the cosmos as a god, as a reward for his part in the Buddha’s enlightenment.

Before he could begin his quest in earnest, Gotama had to undergo one last temptation. Suddenly, Mara, the Lord of this world, the god of sin, greed and death, erupted threateningly before him. “Don’t become a monk! Don’t renounce the world!” Mara begged. If Gotama would stay at home for just one more week, he would become a cakkavatti and rule the whole world. Think what good he could do! He could end life’s suffering with his benevolent government. This was, however, the easy option and a delusion, because pain can never be conquered by force. It was the suggestion of an unenlightened being, and throughout Gotama’s life, Mara would try to impede his progress and tempt him to lower his standards. That night, Gotama was easily able to ignore Mara’s suggestion, but the angry god refused to give up. “I will catch you,” he whispered to himself, “the very first time you have a greedy, spiteful or unkind thought.” He followed Gotama around “like an ever-present shadow,” to trap him in a moment of weakness. Long after Gotama had attained the supreme enlightenment, he still had to be on his guard against Mara, who represents what Jungian psychologists would, perhaps, call his shadow-side, all the unconscious elements within the psyche which fight against our liberation. Enlightenment is never easy. It is frightening to leave our old selves behind, because they are the only way we know how to live. Even if the familiar is unsatisfactory, we tend to cling to it because we are afraid of the unknown. But the holy life that Gotama had undertaken demanded that he leave behind everything he loved and everything that made up his unregenerate personality. At every turn, he had to contend with that part of himself (symbolized by Mara) which shrank from this total self-abandonment. Gotama was looking for a wholly different way of living as a human being, and to bring this new self to birth would demand a long, difficult labor. It would also demand skill, and Gotama set off to find a teacher who could instruct him in the path to Enlightenment.

Chapter 2 – Quest

once gotama had left the remote republic of Sakka behind and entered the Kingdom of Magadha, he had arrived at the heart of the new civilization. First, the Pali legend tells us, he stayed for a while outside Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha and one of the most powerful of the developing cities. While begging for his food, he is said to have come to the attention of no less a person than King Bimbisara himself, who was so impressed by the young Sakyan bhikkhu that he wanted to make him his heir. This is clearly a fictional embellishment of Gotama’s first visit to Rajagaha, but the incident highlights an important aspect of his future mission. Gotama had belonged to one of the leading families in Kapilavatthu and felt quite at ease with kings and aristocrats. There had been no caste system in Sakka, but once he arrived in the mainstream society of the region, he presented himself as a ksatriya, a member of the caste responsible for government. But Gotama was able to look at the structures of Vedic society with the objectivity of an outsider. He had not been brought up to revere the brahmins and never felt at a disadvantage with them; later, when he founded his Order, he rejected any rigid categorization on grounds of heredity. This critical stance would stand him in good stead in the cities, where the caste system was disintegrating. It is also significant that Gotama’s first port of call was not a remote hermitage but a big industrial city. He would spend most of his working life in the towns and cities of the Ganges, where there was widespread malaise and bewilderment resulting from the change and upheaval that urbanization brought with it, and where consequently there was much spiritual hunger.

Gotama did not spend long in Rajagaha on this first visit, but set off in search of a teacher who could guide him through his spiritual apprenticeship and teach him the rudiments of the holy life. In Sakka, Gotama had probably seen very few monks, but as soon as he started to travel along the new trade routes that linked the cities of the region, he would have been struck by the large crowds of wandering bhikkhus in their yellow robes, carrying their begging bowls and walking beside the merchants. In the towns, he would have watched them standing silently in the doorways of the houses, not asking for food directly but simply holding out their bowls, which the householders, anxious to acquire merit that would earn them a good rebirth, were usually glad to fill with leftovers. When Gotama left the road to sleep in the forests of banyan, ebony and palm trees that skirted the cultivated land, he would have come across bands of monks living together in encampments. Some of them had brought their wives along and had set up a household in the wild, while they pursued the holy life. There were even some brahmins who had undertaken the “noble quest,” still tending the three sacred fires and seeking enlightenment in a more strictly Vedic context. During the monsoon rains, which hit the region in mid-June and lasted well into September, travel became impossible, and many of the monks used to live together in the forests or in the suburban parks and cemeteries until the floods subsided and the roads became passable again. By the time Gotama came to join them, the wandering bhikkhus were a notable feature of the landscape and a force to be reckoned with in society. Like the merchants, they had almost become a fifth caste.

In the early days, many had adopted this special ajiva vocation chiefly to escape from the drudgery of domesticity and a regular job. There were always some renouncers who were chiefly dropouts, debtors, bankrupts and fugitives from justice. But by the time Gotama embarked on his quest, they were becoming more organized and even the most uncommitted monks had to profess an ideology that justified their existence. Hence a number of different schools had developed. In the efficient new kingdoms of Kosala and Magadha, the government had begun to exercise more control over the inhabitants and would not allow people to embrace an alternative lifestyle that made no contribution to society as a whole. The monks had to prove that they were not parasites, but philosophers whose beliefs could improve the spiritual health of the country.