The Saint 55
no—he is off to found an aristocracy of spirit, an aristocracy that
all may join.
Gautama’s spiritual quest does not occur in a void. The forests
that he enters to seek the answer to the riddles of old age, sickness,
and death are full or people, mostly male but not all, engaged in spir-
itual quests. Everywhere there are monks who have taken vows of
poverty and chastity. When one group of monks passes another,
they call out to each other: “Who is your guru?” “What is your
dharma?” “Who is your teacher?” “What is your doctrine?”
There is a sense abroad in the world that an old spiritual order is
breaking down. Hinduism, with its manifold gods and its stunning
poetic texts, has been for centuries the heart of spiritual life in India.
But the Hindu high priests, the Brahmins, have become hierophants,
who hoard their knowledge. They have degenerated into spiritual
entrepreneurs. If you want holy teachings, you must pay for them.
In the eyes of young questers like Gautama, the Brahmin priests are
not unlike what the Sophists, who teach dialectical skill for pay, are
to Socrates or what the Pharisees are to Jesus. A new way has to be
found, Gautama sees, a way that is plainer, purer, more rational, and
can be proved on the pulse of experience. Gautama will become a
practical visionary. No mysticism, no enigma, little poetry— only
what is useful and conducive to peace here, in this life.
But fi rst Gautama explores the forms of knowledge available
among the wanderers, the “vagrant dwellers in the house less
woods.” Gautama fi nds two potential masters. Both are formi-
dable teachers and both recognize in the young Gautama a superbly
promising student. He quickly assimilates their teachings. Nothing
puzzles him about their thought, yet he sees that neither teacher
off ers the way to freedom. Neither can deliver him from his ob-
sessions with the sorrows of old age, sickness, and death.
In time, Gautama becomes an ascetic, and one of a particularly
uncompromising sort. There comes a time, the Pali Text tells us,