Leaving the Palace of Rājā Śuddhodana

Was Siddartha a wastrel and a loser?

In modern terms to renounce a life of opulence and power makes no sense. Online fame and influence are the pot of gold at rainbow’s end for many. People seek to be connected or well-known and to wander off into the forest suggests a lack of sanity and a throwing of toys out of the cot. People seek advancement and the fulfilment of ambition. To squander “opportunity” can seem ungrateful, wasteful and petulant.

Śuddhodana wanted his son Siddartha to follow in his footsteps and become a leader of men, to wield temporal power. Instead he fled the palace leaving behind his wife and young child like an irresponsible absent father who did not financially provide for his erstwhile spouse and progeny. What a bad father! He went down on skid row and hung out with the crusties in the forest.

Like many figures in religious and spiritual lore Siddartha renounced his prior life cutting all attachments thereto. It seems that according to lore renunciation is a necessary act on the path to enlightenment. Until you do the experiment you can never be sure that you are really able to let go, to go cold turkey to your old ways of being and living.

The three “poisons” of Buddhism are sometimes stated as attachment, ignorance and aversion. To surpass attachment one must be able to renounce whatever it is that one is attached to. It is at this physical real-world hurdle that many a would be Bodhisattva balks. Excuses can be readily found.

The so-called great renunciation is not to the taste of all and sundry.

We all have our metaphorical “palaces” to which we are attached and perhaps even obsessed by. To leave behind the security of our home-world and step into the unknown  is too scary for most. Our comfort of living is very dissuasive; our social conditioning suggests that to do so is lunacy.

Yet our comfort and material succour can prove to be the bars of our prison and our return ticket to Saṃsāra.

---

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

“The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

William Shakespeare

From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1