What the Buddha didn't have...
There is a PBS documentary about the life of the Buddha that I like to watch when I'm feeling scattered or uneasy. It might be nice to think that it is the philosophical message of the story that comforts me, but I suspect that it's the consistency of the music and the voices contrasted with the animations and video clips that make up the documentary. The tempo at which the visuals and audio portions are shared is consistent and there are periods of silence and periods of intense sound but neither of these last too long. There is no monotony, but the rate at which the stimuli change is very pleasant to me and helps me regulate my own thoughts and feelings when they are racing.
Much of the documentary is about historical experiences in India at the time when Siddhartha Gautama was alive. When speaking about his youth, they highlight all of the things that he had. He had protection from the sun and chill, he had the best foods, he had musicians and dancers to entertain him during the rainy season, he had education in history, politics, and combat arts.
When they talk about what he didn't have they generally limit it to the obvious bits that he learned when out with his charioteer: Sickness, Old Age, Death, Spiritual Seekers.
They go on to describe how fearlessly he left home and went out into the world to renounce all the comforts and even the necessary supports of life and placed himself onto a death path to attempt to find an answer to suffering.
They describe how, in his hour of enlightenment, he responds to the challenge, “Who do you think you are that you are worthy of enlightenment and who speaks for you?” by touching the earth and claiming the witness of all creation for his worth.
They describe how, having chosen to spend the rest of his life sharing what he had learned, he meets his old peers and informs them that he has achieved enlightenment and they should speak to him with respect.
When I think about displays of arrogant behavior in my modern world, I think of people who are feeling insecure and feel the need to be aggressive about their place in the world to fend off the fear of being put down or disrespected. When I think about people seeking messages that they are worthy I think about how they may doubt their own worth in a very fundamental way. When i think about people fasting for spiritual reasons I think of people punishing themselves for who they are or purifying themselves to make themselves more worthy. None of these examples fit the story told about Siddhartha Gautama.
I struggled with the cognitive dissonance I experienced over the difference between this man's behavior and the behaviors of people who have been around me my whole life. The obvious answer might be “He's special.” but that only leads me to the question “How is he special?”
I am beginning to suspect that the difference lies in another group of things that were absent from Siddhartha's childhood. Insecurity, uncertainty, isolation.
Children must rely on the grown ups around them for all resource and protection. When resources and protection break down, children tend to blame themselves for the failure rather than the grown ups, because they have no choice but to depend on those grown ups. This places a seed of self-doubt, self-loathing, and fear of insecurity very deep in every child who has known any insecurity. That describes most of us. Many examples of children whose physical needs are cared for but whose emotional needs are ignored show us how this is not a matter of enough food, enough shelter, enough money.
The wealth of Siddhartha's childhood was not in the dancing girls and fancy food or his education in leadership and warrior ethos. The wealth of Siddhartha's childhood was the care and human connection of those people who held him when he was frightened, who corrected him when he was testing his boundaries, who gave him honest answers to his questions and helped him understand the difference between his individual human worth and the conditions of the world around him.
That is not to say that those of us who grew up with more normal childhoods can never achieve enlightenment nor become anything other than the fears of our youth set us to be. I think, instead, it is a magnificent illustration of how we can deal with the root issue behind so many of our daily challenges.
The child we have been is still here within us and we are now adult enough to comfort and listen to that child. When I think, “Nobody ever listens to me when I say that I'm afraid.” it is a chance for me to remember that I am technically a grown up now and I am capable of listening to myself.
When I think, “I am garbage and a horrible person and I don't know why anybody puts up with me.” it is a chance for me to listen and respond with tenderness and comfort.
When Siddhartha went into fasting for the purposes of spiritual growth, he didn't have to work with any deep fears about going hungry or old narratives about how he wasn't good enough to feed or having to choose between eating or watching someone else go hungry. When he was in a position to recognize that basic human worthy applied to him, he was able to state that as being an obvious thing that nature and the world could attest. When he attained the ability to change his interaction with the world so that he could be present and attentive with equanimity and compassion for all, he recognized that this was worthy of respect and that it was helpful and comforting for him to accept and use a title of respect among those who had formerly been his peers.
Understanding how a childhood devoid of insecurity could affect a person's capacity for accepting the world as it is and finding connection with all beings is a pretty huge thing because it points me in the direction where I can choose to spend my energy and time transmuting my experiences of insecurity into experiences that do not and never can define my worth.