Welcome to Vol. 9 of our Perennial Habits course. Here’s a quick review: our first meditation discussed How to Change When Change is Hard and the need for clarity, motivation, and shaping the path for change. Next, we talked about How to “Think” About Change, which discussed the stages of change and the notion of cognitive flexibility. Then, we explored The Paradox of Small Changes, which focused on thinking big and small. Followed by Becoming Every Day: A User’s Guide, Discerning the Way, A Simple, But Not Easy Stoic Exercise, How to See — Like a Sage, and The Wisdom of Gratitude.
***As a reminder, at the end of each lesson, you’ll find links to related podcasts and meditations.
The Middle Way — Buddhist Teaching
As discussed in The Teachings of the Buddha, the word Buddha means “one who is awake.” The Buddha’s real name is Siddhartha Gautama. He was born a prince in an ancient kingdom of northern India. Although his father protected him as a youth in beautiful palaces, as he grew older, the Buddha encountered what we must all face: “the inevitable sorrows of life.”
The modern-day philosopher Peter Kreeft describes the story of the Buddha this way in his series Socrates’ Children,
The story of Gautama’s own enlightenment is dramatic. His father was a king in India some twenty-six centuries ago. A prophecy at Gautama’s birth said that this child would be either the greatest world-conquering king or the greatest world-renouncing ascetic and mystic. In order to make the first half of the prophecy come true, Gautama’s father tried to make kingship totally attractive to his son by surrounding him with palace luxury, allowing nothing bad to enter and not allowing Gautama to leave. But the curious youth escaped four times and saw “the Four Distressing Sights”: a sick man, an old man, a dead man, and a begging man.
No one could tell him why anyone got sick, old, or died. Gautama eventually left the palace, joined the ascetics (sannyasis), and practiced the severest self-denial for years, but he came no closer to solving the great riddle.
Finally, he took a decent meal for the first time in years. This was his first discovery: the middle way between self-indulgence and self-mortification, neither of which had produced enlightenment. He then sat down under the Bodhi tree and resolved not to rise until he had read the riddle of pain.
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