The Saint 59
profession should I take up? Shall I move from the country to the
town? He is renowned for having a cool head; he has the prowess
of a logician. But his heart is warm. He shows genuine love and
concern.
People do not know what to make of him. He does not remind
them of anyone that they have known. So they ask him not, Who
are you? Rather they ask him, What are you? Are you a man or are
you a God? On this matter the Buddha does not equivocate. I am
just like you, he tells them. I am a man. I was born and in time
will die. And then they ask, Are you truly enlightened? Have you
achieved the apogee of spiritual knowledge? Enlightened? the
Buddha is prone to reply. Say rather, simply, that I am Awake. He
is, more precisely, the awakened one, which suggests that in the past
he was asleep. He was a somnambulist, sleepwalking his way
through existence in the vale of Self. So virtually all of us, men and
women, are asleep in the inner and the outer being. We are not truly
alive and will not begin to live until we take the fi rst step down the
road to knowledge by conceding that life is, at its core, suff ering.
What is it to be awake? First, it is to be attuned to the truth of
pain. The awakened individual refuses to shut out the suff erings and
terrors of life. He says no to all anesthesia, whether the anesthesia
be alcohol, sex, entertainment, consumption, or travel. (He has his
little poisons for the day and his little poisons for the night, says
Nietz sche of the man who lives only in the State of Self.) The awak-
ened one is responsive to suff ering and does not turn away from it
in himself or in others. He does not try to pretend it is something
other than what it is. He escapes from his palace of plea sure and
leaves the life of non- awareness behind him. All false cheerfulness,
all hearty embrace of Self, he distrusts. He sees life’s sorrow for what
it is, yet he is not brought to despair by it.
The Buddha teaches tranquility through the ac know ledg ment of
suff ering and through detachment from selfi sh desires. And he has