Lord Buddha in Crisis -Word Play (Part 4)

The story of the Buddha’s renunciation, the homeless life, and enlightenment, is the standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero and represents an embellishment of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation—initiation—return. There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure.

Over the many centuries that have passed, society has put before you the ideal of a ‘perfect man’. It doesn’t matter which culture you were born into. As you grow up, you have scriptural doctrines and traditions handed down to you which tell you how to behave — codes of morality and social etiquette. You are told that through unquestioning practice, you can even eventually come into the state attained by the sages, saints and saviors of mankind — a messiah, a Christ, a Krishna or a Buddha. And so you try to control your behavior, to control your thoughts, to be something unnatural. Eventually at some point in your life, a shocking flashpoint occurs and your entire trust in that belief system comes crashing down, creating deeply unsatisfying circumstances and powerlessness, robbing one of the experience of meaning.

Gautama’s background is worthless: it can’t be a model for anybody, because each and everyone’s background is different. Every event in your life is something unique in its own way. By using the models of Jesus, Buddha, or Krishna we have destroyed the possibility of nature throwing up unique individuals.You are the hero in your own journey. Not a copycat model of someone else.

Without eventually having “true existential crises”, you will never get to the heart of the Buddha’s message, and it will be just an intellectual game or a means of further strengthening your fictitious self. If you’re selling something a buyer doesn’t really need, it helps to imbue it with some promise of spiritual fulfilment or peace. It works for the seller. The buyer often regrets it.