Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

14 C. Peter Bankart, Kathleen H. Dockett, and G. Rita Dudley-Grant
today as Yoga included intensive practice in meditation, fasting, celibacy, social
isolation, and physical privation.
The ultimate purpose of these religious practices was to achieve liberation
from reincarnation after death, which was to be achieved by the accumulation
of karma, benefit derived from performing appropriate sacrifices. Many of these
Brahmic beliefs and practices would eventually be codified into the religion of
Hinduism, but at the time of Siddhartha’s life and teaching they represented the
practices of the dominant folk religion of “the people of the woods” – holy men
who had withdrawn from society to live solitary ascetic lives devoted to pious
ritual and practice. This was, of course, precisely the lifestyle choice that
Suddhodana was most desperate to keep from his growing son.
As many famous princes have done, and continue to do, the boy Siddhartha
grew to a jejune manhood untroubled by the concerns of ordinary mortals. His
closest friend and constant companion was Channa, who also served as the young
prince’s chauffeur, charioteer, and informant about the world beyond the family
cloister. The two young men conspired to have adventures, as young men will; but
Siddhartha reached the age of marriage and even became a father without once
experiencing the joys or sorrows of the real world just beyond his illusion of his
reality.
Gradually, however, Siddhartha grew increasingly curious about life beyond
the walls of the royal compound, and he prevailed upon his loyal friend to take
him on a clandestine excursion around his kingdom. What he encountered on this
trip and its effects on the young man’s consciousness were destined to change
human history.
What Siddhartha saw in the world that his father had tried to hide from him
was nothing at all like the world his loving father had so carefully constructed for
him in the first 25 years of his life. With his own eyes he experienced a world
filled with human misery and despair. On that day, in rapid succession the young
prince encountered a withered old man bent with infirmity and close to death,
another man who was consumed by a disfiguring disease, and then to his ultimate
dismay, he saw his first corpse – borne aloft by a large group of tearful mourners.
He was struck senseless by the horror of the sorrowful world he saw all around
him. Bewildered, he asked the loyal Channa if this is the world in which all men
lived. Channa replied, “Yes, master, there is no escape. Old age, sickness, and
death – such is the lot of all men.”
This discovery of the sorrows of life had a profound effect on the young
prince, and he was devastated to learn that there were no learned men who could
soften or even explain the brutal truths that he had so unexpectedly learned. This
new knowledge profoundly changed the young prince, who now withdrew into
a period of intense introspection. He could not fathom how ordinary life could
be so unrelentingly harsh. Beyond that he understood all at once that all of the