CHAPTER

Waking up

eIGHteen

Once upon a time, about two and a half thousand years ago, a prince was born

in the north of India. His name was Siddhartha Gautama, and he led a happy and

indulgent childhood, protected from the harsh realities of life. One day he walked

out of his comfortable palace into the streets and saw a sick man, an old man, a

beggar, and a corpse. Shocked by all the suffering he saw, and the contrast with

his own life, he vowed to search for the meaning of existence. When he was 29

he left behind his wealth, his wife, and his young son, and set off to become a

wandering ascetic, depriving himself of every comfort and outdoing all the other

ascetics of his time with harsh self-imposed discipline. After six years, when

almost starving to death, he accepted some milk gruel, gradually regained his

health, and concluded that neither indulgence nor deprivation was the way to

truth: a middle way was needed. He sat down under a pipal tree and vowed not

to get up again until he understood.

On the seventh day, with the morning star shining in the sky, he became enlight-

ened. This famous story, based on at least some historical fact, is the tale of an

ordinary person waking up  – and this is how the Buddha described what had

happened. He had woken up.

He realised that what he had seen was there for all but could not be spoken

about. So he could not see how to teach. Yet people flocked to him and so he

spent the next forty-five years travelling widely and teaching the ‘Four Noble

Truths’ and other teachings that became known as the dharma. He urged peo-

ple not to be satisfied with hearsay or tradition but to look within to see the

truth, and it is said that his last words were ‘Work out your own salvation with

diligence’.

‘Zen can no more be

explained than a joke.

You see it or you don’t’

(Humphreys, 1949/1951, p. 3)