world. The adept’s task is to discover that inner wisdom. The
discipline that arises from this notion of the guide may be
called autonomous in nature because the aspirant’s spiritual
endeavors are self-contained and independent of external au-
thority.
A good example of autonomous discipline would be the
set of practices and assumptions reflected in the stories of
Siddhartha Gautama’s enlightenment and subsequent life as
the Buddha. According to traditional accounts, the prince
led a comfortable and secure life in his father’s palace until,
as a young man, he was shocked and utterly disillusioned
with the passing enjoyments of the material world by the
sight outside the royal walls of an old person, a sick person,
and a corpse, sights that his father’s protection had hitherto
prevented him from seeing. After encountering a wandering
ascetic who seemed to have attained a certain equanimity in
the world of sickness and death, Gautama at age twenty-nine
left his father’s palace in search of a teacher who could help
him understand the nature of life. He is said to have found
successively two highly respected masters, but eventually left
each one, unsatisfied, because he had become their equal in
wisdom and yet still did not understand. He despaired of any
teachings from another person, because even the most
knowledgeable people did not know the full truth.
Traditional accounts say that Gautama then went alone
into the forest, where he found a quiet place to fast and to
control his breathing in order to enter into a trance in which
he could gain transcendent knowledge. Eventually abandon-
ing even some of these techniques because they led to what
he experienced as a debilitating and therefore counterpro-
ductive physical weakness, he developed his own kind of
meditation, which was neither austere nor self-indulgent.
While meditating in this “middle way,” he was confronted
by demonic forces who tempted him, unsuccessfully, with
worldly power and prestige.
Gautama is said to have entered into four successive le-
vels of meditation (Pali, jha ̄na), each one giving him deeper
awareness of the origins and nature of suffering. Finally, at
the dawn ending the night of the full moon, he gained com-
plete understanding and stood up, alone. At that point he
became the Buddha, the Enlightened One. He understood
what have come to be known as the Four Noble Truths: (1)
that all conditioned existence is permeated by suffering; (2)
that there is a cause of suffering (namely, desire); (3) that
there is a way to end suffering (namely, to cease desiring);
and (4) that the way to cease desiring is to follow a set of
principles that became known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
Traditional Buddhist hagiographies and commentaries
note that one follows that path by maintaining and practic-
ing the following disciplines: correct views (samma ̄-dit:t:hi) to
see things as they really are rather than as one wishes them
to be; correct thoughts (samma ̄-sankappa), directed only to
the goal of enlightenment; correct speech (samma ̄-va ̄ca ̄), in
which one does not say anything that would harm his or
other people’s integrity; correct action (samma ̄-kammanta),
in which one refuses to kill another creature, take what is not
given, or enjoy illicit sexual relations; correct livelihood
(samma ̄-a ̄j ̄ıva), to earn a living only by ways in which living
beings are not injured; correct exertion (samma ̄-va ̄ya ̄ma),
characterized by dispassion and benevolence; correct mind-
fulness (samma ̄-sati), the remembrance of the Four Noble
Truths; and correct meditative concentration (samma ̄-
sama ̄dhi), which allows one to understand the harmful na-
ture of selfish desire. The Eightfold Path thus combines the
practice of proper wisdom (namely, correct views and
thoughts), morality (correct speech, action, and livelihood),
and meditation (correct mindfulness and concentration).
Buddhist tradition firmly maintains that the Buddha
gained this insight by himself. Records of the Buddha’s first
discourse after his enlightenment note that he told his fol-
lowers, “No one in any of the worlds—neither the gods, nor
Ma ̄ra, nor Brahma ̄, nor ascetics or priests or gods or human
beings—had ever gained this highest complete enlighten-
ment. I [alone] knew this. Knowledge arose in me, insight
that even my mind cannot shake.” No teacher is said to have
given this insight to the Buddha; the implicit lesson here is
that other people, too, can gain such knowledge if they culti-
vate autonomous discipline. Gautama himself seems to have
resisted the role of a master. One text records his encourage-
ment to others that “as wise people test gold by burning, cut-
ting and rubbing it, so are you also to accept my teachings
only after examining them and not simply out of loyalty to
me” (Jña ̄nasa ̄ra-samuccaya 31).
Interactive discipline. In another form of discipline,
the teacher is neither completely external nor completely in-
ternal to the seeker. Rather, teaching and learning occur in
a continuing and flexive process. The discipline needed here
centers on a dialectical way of seeing or knowing that in itself
brings the seeker to the desired transformation. Outside au-
thority exists in the form of tradition, ethos, or structures of
the natural world; but that authority is affected in various de-
grees by the hopes, worldviews, and training of the disciple.
Similarly, internal authority holds sway, but it is defined and
given form by external structures. Interactive discipline cen-
ters on practices that arise in an open-ended or multivalent
relationship between the seeker and what he seeks.
Representative examples of interactive discipline might
best come from the aesthetic arena. One thinks of a New En-
gland Shaker crafting a perfectly simple wooden chair; a sita ̄r
player quietly practicing a morning ra ̄ga in the Indian dawn;
an Italian sculptor lovingly fashioning an image of the Virgin
Mother out of a piece of marble. In such cases the disciple
undergoes experiences in which the ideal is made real
through his or her own creative power, but that ideal itself
determines the form in which the disciple can make it real.
Not only is there disciplined action; there is also a cultivated
interaction between the disciple and the discipline itself.
At times the artist seems to be the effective agent in the
creative process who brings his or her work to fruition
through bold assertion. “This is not the moment for hesita-SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE 8701