Leaving the Palace:
A courageous and compassionate quest
"The human heart can go to the lengths of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now.
The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart spring.
Be thankful our time is now when wrong comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul humans ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into Awakening.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake, for pity's sake?"
(adapted from Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners)
I love this call to look into the face of suffering, to see the light of possibility in its dark depths. "Be thankful our time is now, when wrong comes up to face us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul humans ever took." Or, as the Bodhisattva, Santideva, said: "the heart that breaks open can contain the whole world."
We are challenged to stride out strongly towards the fullness of human potential .... but on a path that also traverses the darkness of our human frailties. The well-worn, well-fortified path of 'business-as-usual' is a dead end.
The path to freedom begins with the recognition of two truths: that being alive involves pain,difficulty and suffering; and that suffering has causes which can be removed. The word 'suffering' is an awkward translation of the Pali word, dukkha. Anything from a slight dissatisfaction to the anguish of full-blown tragedy, any gap between how things are, and how we want them to be, is dukkha.
It takes courage to begin the heroic task of removing the causes of dukkha. We wouldn't even begin, were it not for the recognition of two more truths: vast happiness and freedom are possible; and happiness and freedom have causes we can cultivate, and there is a path to happiness and freedom.
*****
In India, 2,500 years ago, a young nobleman, Siddhartha, responded to a call to awakening, to freedom. When Siddhartha was born, a holy man prophesied that he would become an 'awakened one', a Buddha. His father, Suddhodana, was a leader of the Sakyan clan, one of the many warring tribal republics of that time. He knew the survival of his clan depended on his son growing up to be a great warrior and leader of his people, so he was determined that the prophecy not come true.*
Suddhodana kept his son within the walls of the family compound, training him in the skills of battle and surrounding him with all manner of sensual pleasures including, in his twenties, a beautiful wife. The lame, the sick, the aged and the down-and-out were banished from sight. He was so thoroughly protected and distracted, there was no time or need to explore his inner life.
Nevertheless, a restless curiousity grew in Siddhartha, and one day he ordered his charioteer to drive him out to explore his native city. His Father, hearing of this, ordered that any people who were sick or maimed in body or mind should be kept indoors, so that Siddhartha should not be disturbed by what he saw. Well, we still try this kind of thing today, for example when the Olympic Games come to town. But we all know human lives are not so amenable to being 'tidied up'. Sure enough, the inevitable happened, and Siddhartha saw people who shook his secure world to the core; he saw a person who was sick, a person who was ageing, and a dead person.
Siddhartha was now in existential crisis. As his charioteer explained, sickness, old age and death were inevitable for everyone. He was shocked that if people knew this, they would still live such complacent, petty lives, chasing after one fleeting pleasure after another.
Intrigued and puzzled, he went out into the city once again. This time he encountered a wandering holy man, whose sense of composure, warmth and silent integrity are said to have aroused in him feelings of Pasada - a mix of inspiration, faith, clarity and serene confidence. In other words, this encounter inspired Siddhartha to have faith that there could be an end to suffering and the clarity and confidence that he could realise this end.
As this radical alternative opened up, Siddhartha's whole world shifted on its axis. He could see that most people seemed to be in a state of denial about sickness, old age and death. More importantly, he saw that this denial undermined people's ability to respond with compassion to one another.
"I considered how most people feel fearful, humiliated, and disgusted when they come across old age, sickness, and death in others, forgetting that they are subject to these things themselves. For myself, such a reaction did not seem fitting...." Anguttara -Nikaya 3:38
A life of complacent luxury, lived in denial and shored up by various psychological defense mechanisms, was no longer an option for Siddhartha. He left his family and set out on his urgent quest to find an end to all suffering.
*****
Complacency and denial are side-effects of living in the palace of Western affluence. We create endless distractions and defense mechanisms to dull and deny our personal pain, and blinker us to the suffering of others. Nevertheless, we are haunted by a sense of unease, stalked by a sense of vulnerability.
I worked with Rural Australians for Refugees for several years. Jennifer Wilson, a fellow refugee activist says,"to truly bear witness to the suffering of the asylum seekers is to be confronted by the reality that our fortunes are determined by all manner of events over which we have no control. Perhaps the fact that we are all so exquisitely vulnerable is what we flee from. It enrages us, fills us with fear and intolerable discomfort and we want only to expel it, or hide it away in a fortress in the desert".
Perhaps it is partly the flight from dukkha, from the inevitability of suffering, that aroused in many otherwise decent Australians a passionate hatred of the refugees. (But I won't get too sentimental -tribalism and ignorance also played their part.)
There's an additional factor that I want to draw attention to now: that is, the denial and distancing that can occur when we encounter suffering - our own or another's - and don't know what to do to make it go away. This arouses feelings of helplessness, which are linked to a sense of being 'out of control'. When we sense we can't control something - whether that's our own minds or other people or circumstances, it terrifies us. What do most of us do when we're terrified? Deny it - either by shutting down in some way, or by lashing out and blaming someone else. Either way, it reinforces our sense of helplessness, so we become as powerless as we fear we are.
*****
There's a story in the Buddhist suttas about a woman called Kisagotami. It is said that Kisagotami was a plain woman of humble birth who happened to catch they eye of a handsome and rich nobleman. Against all the odds, he married her, thus transforming her life. Unfortunately her mother-in-law deeply resented her for not being either beautiful or rich; she continuously found fault with her, and told her son get a divorce and take another wife. Fortunately, Kisagotami became pregnant and gave birth to a handsome boy. Suddenly, as the mother of her husband's heir, she was beyond reproach; now she could live out the 'happily every after' story.
Then, at around 6 months of age, her beloved son died. Kisagotami went mad with grief - and with fear, for now she was more vulnerable than ever. It literally drove her mad. Clutching her dead baby, she roamed the city, knocking on doors, grabbing people in the street, pleading for anyone who could bring her dead baby back to life. Of course no one could. In their helplessness, they slammed their doors in her face and turned down side-streets to avoid her.
After a couple of weeks, she overheard people talking about a holy man who was camped on the outskirts of town, who had helped many people. Still clutching the baby's corpse, she stumbled into the Buddha's encampment and threw herself at his feet, begging him to bring her baby back to life. In his wisdom and compassion, the Buddha saw what to do - both for Kisagotami, and for all the people in the town who had turned away from her. He said, "Kisagotami, I can help you. (Not "I can bring your baby back to life" - simply, "I can help you".) "Leave your baby here", he said, "and go back to town. Bring me a handful of mustard seeds from any household in town. There's just one thing - the mustard seeds must come from a household where no one has died."
Gratefully Kisagotami ran back into town. "The Buddha says he can help me, if you will give me a handful of mustard seeds", she said to each person who answered her knock. Relieved to be able to do something to help, and encouraged by hearing the Buddha was involved, the people said "Of course you can have a handful of mustard seeds". But then Kisagotami had to ask, "Has anyone in this household ever died?" "Oh yes", was the invariable reply. "My husband .... my father ....my son ... my mother-in-law .... my baby niece..." On each doorstep there was a moment of reflective empathy, as each sensed the suffering of the other. People came out onto the street and started talking with their neighbours about how death had affected them. A sense of gentle compassion moved from person to person as they, and Kisagotami, acknowledged that death had visited every household in town.
Kisagotami's madness subsided into simple grief, as she let go of her extreme inwardness, and came back into relationship with humanity. She had suffered a great loss, but it was no more or less than that suffered by everyone in the town. There are no hierarchies in suffering. The townsfolk had recalled their own grief, and opened their hearts to her and to each other. Gently they guided her back to the Buddha's camp where, with his blessing, she buried her baby. We'll leave Kisagotami's story there.
*****
I remember another story told to me by a friend who worked as a social worker in Centrelink. One of her colleagues was a refugee from Chile. He had been imprisoned and tortured. He had lost his family, his possessions, his homeland. One day, when she was feeling irritated by what she perceived as an endless litany of complaining clients, she turned to him and said: "Peter, how can you - you who have known so much suffering, remain so patient and tolerant with these people with their petty complaints?" "But Sue, he replied, this is their reality." "This is their reality." This is one of the most intelligent, compassionate statements I have ever heard.
I repeat, there are no hierarchies of suffering. There is just suffering.
True compassion requires an open heart and a well-developed moral imagination and capacity for intelligent empathic reflection.
*****
Empathic reflection on suffering and its causes connects and empowers us; denial of suffering and its causes tears us apart. The Buddha used dukkha as the basis for his universal teachings, because we all know what difficulty feels like. Our capacity to experience physical, mental and emotional pain, links us across all divides of nationality, race, colour, religion, gender, sexual preference, political or other belief. It's like a common denominator of humanity.
(Please be clear I'm not 'deifying' suffering, or ignoring the third and fourth Noble Truths - that extraordinary happiness in possible, and there is a path that guides us in that direction. This talk is about the first two Noble Truths - the reality of suffering and it's causes; and it is about our capacity to grow, change and evolve by confronting it, rather than repressing or denying suffering.)
Empathic reflection on suffering begins with ourselves. In your meditation practice, I hope you have had many peaceful, happy, contented or even blissful moments. And, you will probably have come up against pain in some form - whether that's physical, mental or emotional. The practice is to become intimate with everything that arises - including your pain - not resisting, rejecting or grasping anything - just knowing your experience inside out.
We come to retreats or go to churches or therapists to try and come to terms with the uncertainties of life. But if we are really honest with ourselves, we will see that we are often after is consolation, not insight. Then we hit a point in our practice when we see just how needy we are, and how we use our intellectual postures of being people dedicated to wisdom and insight as defences against this neediness.
It’s an inescapable embarassment that every sincere practioner has to face on the path of insight. It's a beautiful paradox. Acknowledging, feeling, this vulnerable neediness is itself a stage of insight because it links us directly to the first noble truth - not as a doctrine one learns, but through the reality of immediate experience. This is a real step to integrating the insight of the First Noble Truth. At this point we stop keeping the teachings at arms length, and really see that it’s about me. Truly facing the truth of our vulnerable humanity, and therefore the universality of Dukkha, is not essentially depressing. Paradoxically it is ennobling and liberating. Waking up to the implications of the First Noble Truth, personally, is the first step on the path to wholeness and awakening.
When we go for consolation, rather than insight, the parts of ourselves that we can't acknowledge or accept become like internal exiles. Most people who have done some meditation practice will have noticed the tendency to cling to some aspects of experience as 'me' and to 'other-ise' less desirable parts as 'not me'.
I suspect many more internal civil wars have raged silently in meditation halls than have than have been fought in the external world, and maybe there are more internal exiles and refugees in our psyches than in all the camps and detention centres in the world! Perhaps homeless people on the streets reflect the parts of ourselves we have, with the force of our will, while clinging to an idealised 'self', taken by the scruff of the neck and cast out into exile.