Buddha's Renunciation

the father of Prince Gautama the Buddha Savior of the Orient determined to protect his son from desperate knowledge and tragic awareness built for him and enclosed pavilion a walled garden of Earthly Delights okay so the story goes that an angel visited Buddha's father and said that he's going to have a son and the son is either going to become the greatest ruler that the world has ever seen or a spiritual leader and the father being a practical man thought oh this is no bloody way I want my son to be some like wandering spiritual leader I want him to be the greatest king that the world has ever seen okay and so the father decides how am I going to get my son to be the greatest ruler the world has ever seen I better get him to fall in love with the world because then he's not going to go traipsing after some sort of half-witted spiritual knowledge he's going to stick to practical tasks right that's something that a father should do to some degree is orient you in the world right maybe shouldn't subvert your your spiritual development to any great degree but there's a practical element to this and.and so anyways that's how it works and so that's what happens the the the father builds this city of perfection and he eliminates from it everything that's a reminder of the suffering that's associated with life so the only thing that's allowed the only creatures that are allowed to be in there the only people that are allowed to be in there are healthy young and happy people so the buddha grows up surrounded by nothing but the positive elements of life well you think well what does that mean well it's akin to the paradise idea obviously walled enclosure of paradise where there's no death but there's more to it than that - it's also in some sense what a good father would do what do you do with your young children well you don't expose them to death and decay at every step of the way right you you build a protected world for them like a walled enclosure and you only keep what's healthy and life-giving inside of it and you don't expose them to things that they can't tolerate you know maybe you don't take a three-year-old to a funeral now maybe you do but maybe you don't there's things that you don't expect them to be able to cope with you regulate what they're allowed to watch you're not going to show them the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when they're four years old right so so you're staving off knowledge of mortality and death and so he's just being a good father in many ways here all signs of decay and degeneration were thus kept hidden from the prince emerged in the immediate pleasures of the senses in physical love and dance and music and beauty and pleasure Gautama grew to maturity protected absolutely from the limitations of mortal being however he grew curious despite his father's most particularly and will and resolved to leave his seductive prison well it's that curiosity element it's the same thing that lurks in the Adam and Eve story it's like God tells Adam and Eve see that tree over there don't be bothering with it well you know what's going to happen with human beings especially if there's a snake associated with it they're going to be over there right away check in that place out and that's exactly what happens with the Buddha it's like he's raised to be healthy and what is what's the consequence of that is that the fact that he's healthy makes him look for what's beyond the protected confines of the thing that made him healthy it's like looks like even in the Geppetto story you know where Geppetto paints on Pinocchio's mouth and he's ready to go he puts them outside the next day and Pinocchio is ready to run away with all the kids right so the consequence of raising a child in a healthy way is that the child is going to be curious enough to go out there and look for some trouble and we actually know that because there is follow-up studies of teenagers you imagine that there's teenagers never break any rules and then there's teenagers who break all the rules okay these teenagers don't do very well introverted depressed anxious depressed sorry I said that twice these ones are antisocial the ones in the middle that's what you want you want your damn teenager to get out of the paradisal confines of your house and to go cause some trouble and to investigate maybe you don't want to know about it any more than you have to you don't want them to be breaking rules all the time and you don't want them to be so timid and oppressed that they can't make a move on their own and never make a mistake so the paradoxical thing here and it sort of echoed out this is why I like these two stories back-to-back is like if you give people what they want then the first thing they're going to do is try to get beyond it the Dostoyevsky says the same thing in notes from underground he says if you gave people everything they wanted pure utopia so he says so that they're there sitting in a pool of bliss with nothing but bubbles of happiness coming up from the surface and all they have to do is eat cake and busy themselves with the continuation of the species Dorsey said Dostoyevsky's observation is the first thing that people would do is find something to smash that with just so that something interesting and perverse could happen it's like well yes we're we're creatures that are designed to encounter the unknown we want to keep moving beyond what we have even if we have what we have is what we want and maybe that's partly because we're oriented towards the future we think well this is great but it's not good enough it's great but it's not good enough there's always something more that drives us forward well so that's what happens with the Buddha he gets curious he sees the walls he thinks there's walls there's probably something outside of those walls so then he goes to his father and he says I'm I want to go outside what's outside and his father says now you don't want to go outside and Buddha says yeah well I really do want to go outside and his father knows that unless he lets him go outside he's going to climb over the walls and so the father decides he's going to let him go outside we can fix everything out there first so he goes outside it's like the Chinese preparing for the Olympics you know when they sprayed the grass with with with green paint got rid of all the homeless people it's the same thing so he goes outside the city and he tells everyone all right all people sick people dying people hit the road we don't want to see it for a while clean all this out we want the attractive people around the sides of the roads like waving palm fronds and all of that and so when my son comes out he's going to see nothing but what's good and so he gets that all arranged in lets his son go outside now his son goes outside in this little chariot thing and he has a someone with him now unbeknownst to his father that person that's with him is an emissary of the gods and so in a perverse way he plays the same role as the serpent in the story of Adam and Eve and the gods have already arranged so that the father's carer is going to be insufficient and it's the snake in the garden idea it's like no matter how much care you take to make things perfect some of the some of what what you're excluding is going to come back in so anyways Buddha goes outside and and he's in his chariot and preparations were made to gild his chosen road to cover the adventurers path with flowers and to display for his admiration and preoccupation the fairest women of the kingdom the prince set out with full retinue in the shielded comfort of a chaperone chariot and delighted in the panorama previously prepared for him the gods however decided to disrupt these most carefully laid plans and sent an aged man to hobble in full view alongside the road the princess fascinated gaze fell upon the ancient interloper compelled by curiosity asked his attendant what is that creature stumbling shall be bent and broken beside my retinue and the attendant answered that is a man like other men who is born an infant became a child a youth a husband a father a father of fathers he has become old subject to destruction of his beauty his will and the possibilities of life like other men you say hesitantly inquired the prince that means this will happen to me and the attendant answered inevitably with the passage of time well that's the end of that party the world collapses in on Buddha and paying he hightails at home well what does that mean well that's what children do roughly speaking is there around their mother there they've got security there they go out into the unknown they encounter something that's just a little bit too much for them bang they come home they get all padded back into shape and hugged and taken care of hugging children and patting them is actually analgesic it actually reduces pain unsurprisingly that's what you do with someone who's grieving right if you hug them because grief is pain so so they you know you pat them they get rid of their pain they get rid of their anxiety you calm them down and what happens well the next day they want to go out again well that's exactly what happens to the Buddha so he's all shorted out by his encounter with death which is very little different than what happens to Adam and Eve runs back recovers for six months he has post-traumatic stress disorder he runs home and he recovers for six months right in time his anxiety lessened his curiosity granny ventured outside again this time the God sent a sick man in to view this creature he asked his attendant shaking and palsy horribly afflicted unbearable to behold a source of pity and contempt what is he and the attendant answered that's a man like other men who was born whole but who became ill and sick unable to cope a burden to himself and others suffering and incurable like other men you say inquired the prince this could happen to me and the attendant answer's no man is exempt from the ravages of disease once again the world collapsed and Gautama returned to his home but the delights of his previous life were ashes in his mouth and he ventured forth a third time the gods in their mercy sent him a dead man in funeral procession this creature he asked his attendant laying so still appearing so fearsome surrounded by grief and by sorrow lost and forlorn what is he and the attendant answered that is a man like other man born of woman beloved and hated who is once you who once was you and now is the earth like other men you say inquired the prince then this could happen to me this is your end said the attendant and the end of all men well that's the end of childhood right there's no going back after that it's like Pinocchio goes back there's no one home anymore it's there's nothing that your father can do to protect you from knowledge of death there's no returning to the childhood unconsciousness because you're new now no and there's no going backwards suicide that's going backwards that's how you replace your emergent self-consciousness with the old blissful unconsciousness and that's exactly what suicidal people wish they're going to destroy their painful self-consciousness and make it all go away the world collapsed a final time and Gautama asked to be returned home but the attendant had orders from the princes father and took him instead to a festival of women Oh curing NIR occurring nearby and a grove in the woods the prince was met by a beautiful assemblage who offered themselves freely to him without restraint in song dance and play in the spirit of sensual love but Gautama could think only of death and the endeavor decomposition of beauty and took no pleasure in the display

Channel: Whanhee

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Id: 1xAqI1lM3g4

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2017