54 Ancient Ideals
deliver others, from the frustration of human life. Gautama re-
solves that he w ill take up this quest. He decides that he w ill leave
the palace. (That is, he will leave the Self ’s life of plea sure and ease
that we know in youth, and he will do so voluntarily, through the
strength of his own will.) His parents weep when he tells them he is
leaving. He does not have the heart to wake up his wife and his son
(his darling shackle), who will surely oppose his going and maybe
with their tears keep him at home. At the crest of a hill, Gautama
changes clothes and horses with his servant (who, some say, re-
turns to the dwelling of the gods, his errand done) and goes off in
search of his destiny. He leaves not as Achilles does, to become
the renowned warrior of his father’s hopes, but to develop through
harsh adversities into one of the most profound spiritual teachers
yet known to mankind.
Diff erent as they are, Achilles and Gautama are also bro th ers of
the spirit. Both reject the easy life that fate off ers them. Achilles will
not stay at home with his family and possessions and live to serene
old age; Gautama cannot abide inside the walls of the plea sure dome.
He leaves to contend with old age, sickness, and death, and in a
sense Achilles does too. Achilles deals with old age and sickness by
his willingness to depart from the world before those evil states de-
scend upon him. He will never be anything but young and brim-
ming with health and surpassingly beautiful. As to death, Achilles
seeks to overcome it by rushing toward it. By bravely dying young,
he will gain the only kind of immortality he can believe in—
immortality on the tongues of men through time. Both Achilles
and Gautama rebel against a safe predictable life— the kind of life
we associate with the prudent Self. Both act against their own “hap-
piness” and the happiness of their families. Both go off to trans-
form the world. Both are aristocrats. The day a certain Indian po-
tentate meets Gautama, he says that he wants to make the young man
his heir. He knows he has met one of his kind. But Gautama says