The Surprising Practical Lesson of the Story of the Buddha
Perhaps the most iconic image of the Buddha, captured in innumerable statues and paintings, shows the young prophet sitting cross-legged in full lotus beneath the Bodhi Tree. The fingertips of one hand point to the ground, calling upon the Earth as witness to his claim of enlightenment.
This image, or one like it, is probably what comes to mind when you think of the Buddha — steadfast, unflinching, immovable. If that’s the case, it might surprise you that the trait which most aided the budding Buddha on his journey to enlightenment was not his staunchness… It was his adaptability.
His mental flexibility.
His willingness to change his mind — and the course of his actions — in the light of new information.
Before I explain, here’s a bit of background. [If you’re already familiar with the biography of the Buddha, you can skip to the next section break.]
According to legend, Siddhartha Gautama was born the heir apparent to a kingdom in India around the 5th Century BCE. A group of eight sages (brahmins) predicted that the boy would grow to become either a great king or a holy man who renounced the world. Wishing his son to follow in his footsteps, the king confined the boy to the palace, where he enjoyed a life of luxury and pleasure, insulated from the ugliness and pain of the world.
At the age of 29, Gautama ventured outside the palace for the first time. Early on his journey, he saw an old man for the first time. He asked his charioteer to explain this creature that looked human but walked slowly, with stooped shoulders. The charioteer explains that aging and deterioration happen to everyone and cannot be avoided.
He next saw a person suffering from disease and learned from his charioteer about illness.
Then he saw a dead body and learned the ultimate fate of all living things.
Gautama was distraught until he saw an ascetic, who sought freedom from suffering through meditation and ritual privations. The young man was now thoroughly disenchanted, wise to the faulty evidence that had always surrounded him about the nature of life and the best way to live.
Unable to enjoy the sumptuous offerings that had previously delighted him, he decided to follow the ascetic’s example. He left his wife and child and set out to discover the origin and solution to human suffering.
Seeing that he had abandoned one futile course for another, Gautama shifted his thinking and, once again, adopted a new approach.
After years spent practicing austerities, however — and now well into his 30s — Gautama found that he was no closer to his goal. He then made another discovery: while ordinary people spend their lives hopelessly addicted to the fleeting pleasures of the flesh, the spiritual aspirants he met were no less in thrall to the rigors of their practices. He noticed a compulsive quality to these extreme rituals of privation that prevented the practitioners from attaining real liberation. Seeing that he had abandoned one futile course for another, Gautama shifted his thinking and, once again, adopted a new approach. In this way, he arrived at the Middle Way, a hallmark of Buddhism — elaborated in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path — which emphasizes harmony, balance, and moderation.
He attained enlightenment after meditating beneath the Bodhi Tree for 49 days and resisting the most alluring temptations creation had to offer— the episode captured in that iconic image.
The story of the Buddha has enormous allegorical complexity and spiritual depth, but this may be its most practical lesson: Had Siddhartha Gautama been unable or unwilling to course correct — and even to abandon ship — he never would have attained Buddha-hood.
In this story, the Buddha was not innately wise or courageous or moral. He certainly didn’t have the advantage of being born without sin. He wasn’t especially clever or virtuous or humble. He wasn’t special in any way, really, apart from being materially privileged by birth. What he did possess was a willingness to change his mind… and, along with it, the course of his life.
Faced with the sick, poor, and dying men, others might have run back to the palace and sought the distraction of increasingly extravagant pleasures, desperately indulging in sex, drugs, and entertainment until the bitter end. The twenty-nine-year-old Gautama instead made a root-and-branch break with his former way of life. He saw the writing on the wall. He knew where his life was headed. He knew this road was a dead-end, no matter how long that road ran or how attractive the scenery.
During his ascetic period, he showed a similar flexibility. Other spiritual aspirants, after devoting years to their austerities, would have felt they were in too deep to call it off. They were committed to this course and didn’t want to chock up their prior efforts to a loss. They’ve come this far, after all… what’s another month? Another year? Another decade?… The Buddha was clear-headed and adaptable enough to see that it wasn’t working. He had the sense to cut his losses and to look for another way.
The story of the Buddha has enormous allegorical complexity and spiritual depth, but this may be its most practical lesson: Had Siddhartha Gautama been unable or unwilling to course correct — and even to abandon ship — he never would have attained Buddha-hood.
In an episode of his podcast, Cautionary Tales, Tim Harford contrasts the fates of two early-20th-Century economists, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes. Both failed to predict the stock-market crash of 1929 and had their fortunes wiped out by it. But while Keynes recovered, Irving Fisher never did. The reason, according to Harford, is simple: Keynes adapted, adjusting his economic theories and strategies in response to new information and becoming one of the most influential economists in history. Fisher, on the other hand, held fast to convictions that had proven cataclysmically false; he died poor and was forgotten by history.
An unrepentant lover of wine and women (and men), John Maynard Keynes was unlike the Buddha in many ways. But if we look at the quality that led each to success in his chosen pursuit, we find a distinct commonality.
Had Siddhartha Gautama cleaved to conviction, convention, or habit — had he been unwilling, at each step of the way, to give up his old ideas and to adjust his life accordingly — he would have ended up like Irving Fisher, devastated by his crash and unable to learn and grow.
Instead, he was able to overcome, not just the vicissitudes of the economy, but the bitter realities of life itself.
Greg teaches Film at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the creator and host of the podcast Quite Useless, on which he shares his thoughts on a range of topics in the arts.
