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ac hieve the first jhāna after years of study and hard work, but it had c o me to him
without any effort on his part and given him a foretaste of Nibbāna. Ever sinc e he
had left Kapilavatthu, he had shunned all happiness as part of his campaign against
desire. During his years as an ascetic, he had a lmo s t destroyed his body, hoping
that he c ould thereby forc e himself int o the sac red world that was the inverse of
humanity’s usual suffering existence. Yet as a c hild he had attained that yogic
ecstasy without any t rouble at all, after an experience of pure joy. As he reflected
on the coolness of the rose-apple tree, he imagined, in his weakened state, the
relief of being c onvalesc ent (nibbuta), after a lifet ime of fever. Then he was st ruc k
by an ext raordinary idea. ‘Could t his,’ he asked himself, ‘possibly be the way to
enlightenment?’ Had the other teachers been wrong? Instead of t ort uring our
reluc tant selves int o the final release, we mig h t be able to ac hieve it effort lessly
and spontaneously. Could Nibbāna be built int o the st ruc t ure of our humanity? If an
untrained c hild c ould reac h the first jhāna and have int imat ions of Nibbāna without^
even t rying, then yogic insight mu s t be profoundly natural to human beings.
Instead of ma kin g yoga an assault upon hu ma n it y , perhaps it c ould be used to
c ult ivat e innate tendencies that led to ceto-vimut t i, the ‘release of the min d’ that
was a synonym for the s u p re me enlightenment?
As soon as he had mulled over the det ails of that c hildhood experience,
Go t a ma b e c a me c onvinc ed that his hunc h was c orrec t. T his was indeed the way to
Nibbāna. Now all he had to do was prove it. What had produced that mood of c alm
happiness that had mo d u la t e d so easily int o the first jhāna?
An essential element had been what Go t a ma c alled ‘sec lusion.’ He had been
left alone; he c ould never have entered the ecstatic state if his nurses had
distracted him wit h t heir chatter. Medit at ion required privac y and silenc e. But t his
sec lusion went beyond physic al solit ude. Sit t ing under the rose-apple tree, his min d
had been separated from desire for material things and from anything
unwholesome and unprofit able. Sinc e he had left h o me six years before, Go t a ma
had been fight ing his human nature and c rushing it s every impulse. He had c o me to
distrust any kind of pleasure. But he now asked himself, why should he be afraid of
the type of joy he had experienced on that long-ago afternoon? That pure delight
had had nothing to do wit h greedy c raving or sensual desire. S o me joyful
experiences c ould ac t ually lead to an abandonment of egot ism and to the
achievement of an exalted yogic state. Again, as soon as he had posed the quest ion
to himself, Go t a ma responded wit h his usual, c onfident decisiveness: ‘I am not
afraid of suc h pleasures,’ he said. The secret was to reproduc e the sec lusion that
had led to his t ranc e, and foster suc h wholesome (kusala) states of min d as the
disinterested compassion that had ma d e him grieve for the insec t s and the shoots
of young grass. At the s a me t ime , he would c arefully avoid any state of min d that
would not be helpful or would impede his enlightenment.
He had, of c ourse, already been behaving along these lines by observing the
‘five prohibit ions’ whic h had forbidden suc h ‘unhelpful’ (akusala) ac t ivit ies as
violenc e, lying, st ealing, int oxic at ion and sex. But now, he realized, t his was not
enough. He mu s t c ult ivat e the posit ive attitudes that were the opposite of these
five rest raint s. Lat er, he would say that a person seeking enlightenment mu s t be
‘energetic, resolut e and persevering’ in pursuing those ‘helpful,’ ‘wholesome’ or
‘skillful’ (kusala) st ates that would promote spirit ual health. Ahimsā (harmlessness)