|
There once was a man, Sid, called the Buddha. He had two arms, two legs, an ample trunk of a body, a head, two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and all the rest just as we who read this treatise do, though if you asked him, he would not agree. . . . . . .
The following is written with the novel Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse in mind... but it is in no way connected to it. The use of the word Steppenwolf is not intended to infringe on the memory of Herman Hesse or his works.
This peice does not need to be accompanied by the novel, but it adds a new dimension to The Magic Theatre, if one were to find this tattered pamphlet upon entering it. Now, enjoy, for this treatise is not so unlike the other, its near-namesake!
Treatise on The Buddha
There once was a man, Sid, called the Buddha. He had two arms, two legs, an ample trunk of a body, a head, two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and all the rest just as we who read this treatise do, though if you asked him, he would not agree. He would say that his body possessed all these attributes, even as ours, but that they were not his. He would feel no attachment to his body, for he would see himself as separate from it but still a part of it at the same time. And so he was the Buddha, the enlightened one, the one whose ideas society kept at arm's length. He that had forsaken all to gain even more, the Buddha was different from the masses, and at length, different from the Sid that was, but no longer is.
The Buddha is at once a man and not a man, for it is he that has no longer any claim or need or want of being a man, yet is still a man by all physical measures. Not that he contains within him a man and a "not a man", rather that he "is" without being; there is the Buddha, but no longer Sid, for Sid is not needed when one has reached enlightenment. This is not found in nature, this ‘enlightened one'; it is arrived at through suffering and austerity, two things which Sid, in his life, knew naught of.
The life of a prince is, in all ways, in complete contrast to that of a Buddha; lavish, superficial, and bound by society's rules on all sides. But Sid was just that, a prince, before he found the Buddha within him. He grew up knowing what he would be, just as his father before him, and when he married and had a child, he already knew that he would have a wife and a child, because that was the life chosen for a Prince, and the life ordained for Sid. None of that would have been of any consequence if Sid had not seen it, as through another's eyes, and seen it not as the Prince, but a new idea of his personality.
And thus the budding Buddha grew from monarch to be the outsider, the onlooker, the observer. And from the forest home of a sage, looking back on his chariot of luxury and of excess, a sudden disorientation overtook him. Why had he been safely placed in this life of superfluity? And moreover, why had he been there for so long without noticing? With that, the Buddha took the first steps in the progression to enlightenment; he questioned the self that had come to be known to himself, and begun to wonder if that was it, that was all, and if that was just, or right.
The idea of the self was well established by this point by society, but a distanced self was well known too, especially in that part of the world that, according to scriptures which were saved and preserved by holy men and princes, had seen not only many wars over such trifles as nouns; religion, boarder; but had seen not one or two but 8 previous revelations of the self and of the place of the self in relation to religion, to society, to the world, and to itself. Each avatar heralded the same message, and each fell on deaf ears to some, but awoke a fire in others. This fire ignited in Harry, so he began to learn as no others have endeavoured to learn. He learned from no teacher but his own mind and his own conscience, trusting to what he knew to be right and just and logical. He found enlightenment not with others, with students, with teachers, with society, or with the people he wished to save from suffering, but within himself, when he released himself from the clutches of the Self and all of its wants and desires.
To find a Steppenwolf it is easy; one who will either cling to society and its rules with a the strength of a newborn's grasp, or fling himself as far from all such rules and ideas as he can go, and never step in between them for fear of death, although he claims to wish for it; this is easy. Men are so easily discontented and ready for the easiest way out of any problem, even the problem of life, that by comparison Steppenwolves are a dime a dozen. But the Buddhas, those who are willing and ready to suffer themselves to end another's suffering, to feel pain to understand where pain comes from, those who would sooner learn their inner workings so as to heal themselves and others than to pretend that all is healed or worse yet, never blemished with pain or suffering in the first place; those are the ones that are few and far between. But they still exist, those who will endeavour to try. Whether you call them the Immortals, the Saints, Gods who have walked on Earth, or those select few behind the bars of an asylum, there are those who choose to learn from themselves. They choose to become a part of the wolf's fur, rather than a single, individual hair; the fur may have a million hairs within it but, until each hair is seen as a part of the fur instead of as an individual, that hair will never assume the real shape, which is the fur.
It is terribly easy to think of oneself as one; the person that one is, that is all that they are. The end. So contrite, so shallow, so untrue of human nature; for who can confess to be only one thing at any one time, or a part of one thing, or a follower of one set of rules? So then two might be an answer, yet it is not, because the idea of two selves cries of opposites and extremes, those Steppenwolfean ideas which leave no room for a middle, no room to compromise, and certainly no room to grow between the two. So infinite selves are the logical answer, but alas! To the Buddha, that is not so; for how can there be many souls within each when there is just one soul for us all; one mass to which we are a part. So then we each have no soul, no self, nothing to which we need be attached; so say-ith the Buddha.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
