by Tang Huyen

He surveyed the world and everybody in it — deities, Māras, divinities, monks, brahmans, princes, men — and it didn't occur to him to run out and save them. The concrete chunks of meat out there in the meat market did not attract his attention.

When the Buddha was in that six-year period of intense Jaina self-mortification and self-starvation, his overall mood was one of intense aversion to himself and to the world. He tried to beat down his nature by sheer will, mentally and physically, as if in extreme hostility to himself. He was all wrapped up in that endeavour of self-hatred and self-aversion, which of course extended to his world, too. It was himself against himself, utterly, frontally, monolithically, without relief. He was single-mindedly devoted to that project of squashing himself by any means available to him.

In that spirit, it would have been scarcely possible for him to feel friendly to anything or anybody, for he soaked himself in hatred and hostility and that was all that he thought about. It would have been scarcely possible for him to even think of anybody else, for he was all wrapped up in himself, albeit in extreme aversion, hatred and hostility. It was revolt in pure form. He imposed himself on his nature, beat it down, sought to vanish it by sheer will.

The whole mindset was inhospitable to any positive feeling, especially harmony, sympathy and compassion, whether to nature or to anybody else. The programme scarcely left any room for that. It was explicitly self-torture with a view to death and all resources were mustered in that direction. There was no wiggle room and no concession. It was as totalitarian as anything humanly imaginable.

We know in our time that there are people who commit suicide, but slowly, by drinking, smoking, taking drugs, or the like. It takes years or even decades, but it works. Their mindset is one of self-hatred, self-rejection, self-condemnation, all carried out all the way, without letup.

The Jaina rationale for the programme of all-out self-mortification and self-starvation with a view towards death is that deed (karman) is stored as material particles (prakṛti) in the body and has to be burnt by severe, unforgiving penance (tapas), slowly, gradually, patiently, and not by, say, quick and easy death.

That was the future Buddha's only, gruesome occupation for six years, and it scarcely left any room for positive feelings, especially harmony, sympathy and compassion, whether to nature or to anybody else, and he didn't show any during that time. It was a spirit of conflict, of discord, of strain, of friction, of dysharmony, all stretched out to the limit, and he diligently pushed them out to their limit, insofar as it was possible for him. He spared himself not at all. His salvation depended on that (so he thought).

When he awoke from that dreadful programme and realised that it had all been a big error, he dropped his own uninhibited infliction of suffering on himself and began taking food again. His spirit became relaxed rather than uptight, friendly rather than hostile, receptive rather than rejecting, forgiving rather than condemning, serene rather than atrocious, opening up rather than closing down.

After he regained strength, he entered meditation, quiesced the compositions (the fourth aggregate), and awoke a second time, this time to the quiet and quiescent mind which did not attempt to impose itself at all on whatever it received. He relinquished all resistance to what happened and calmed all the compositions — he defined Nirvāṇa as the complete calming of the compositions (sabba-saṅkhāra-samatho) — and simply received what happened the way it happened, not the way he wished it to happen or the way he thought it to happen. That was how he became a Buddha, "awakened."

The awakened state, if I am so bold as to speculate, is akin to disinterested aesthetic contemplation, in which there is no self to observe anything but just an impersonal receptive contemplation, in utter devotion, without imposition, without resistance. It is as contrary to the Jaina spirit of beating down on nature by sheer imposition as anything humanly imaginable.

After the Buddha's awakening, he took some time to readjust to the human scene. Humans did not interest him much. They scarcely aroused his sympathy.

"Now while the Blessed One was alone in retreat this thought arose in him: 'He lives unhappily who has nothing to venerate and obey. But what monk or Brahman is there under whom I could live, honouring and respecting him?' Then he thought: 'I could live under another monk or brahman honouring and respecting him, in order to perfect an unperfect code of virtue or code of concentration or code of understanding or code of delivrance or code of knowledge and vision of delivrance. But I do not see in this world with its deities, its Māras and its Divinities, in this generation with its monks and brahmans, with its princes and men, any monk or brahman in whom these ideas are more perfected than in myself under whom I could live, honouring and respecting him. But there is this Law discovered by me — suppose I lived under that, honouring and respecting that?'" — SN, IV, 2; AN, IV, 21; tr. Ñāṇamoli, The Life of the Buddha, 36–37.

So he surveyed the world and everybody in it, with its deities, its Māras and its Divinities, in this generation with its monks and brahmans, with its princes and men — which is a verbose way of saying: everybody in heaven and on earth — and it didn't occur to him something like: "Wow! There are other chunks of meat out there in the meat market who need salvation! I should run right out to save them! I am all psyched up!"

He only thought of the abstract Law (Dharma) discovered by him as worth paying attention to. The concrete chunks of meat out there in the meat market did not attract his attention (though he did survey them).

He was beseeched by somebody else into teaching (the impetus came from outside, as he initially had wanted to remain quiet), accepted, didn't quite know where that would lead (he was a victim of circumstances), but once the movement got rolling he fully dove into the role and acted vigorously until his death. It was a happy accident (which his opponents never liked, to the present day and long into the future). It was not planned, not premeditated. It was happenstantial — driven by events, not by volition. It could have been otherwise (which is the Aristotelian definition of contingency).

It was a slow, gradual transformation, initially led from the outside, but compassion grew on him and he took up on it and was all fired up.

An eventful itinerary of consciousness, with a few complete reversals of course, eh? Who would have thought?

Was it in any way logically necessary? Or was it like in Las Vegas?

Let us remember that due to his extreme exhaustion he could have died shortly after his awakening, and Buddhism would have never been started. Such a possibility would have been beyond his control. It just would have happened. But the starting of Buddhism also just happened, haphazardly.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism, alt.zen, and alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan on October 8, 2005. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post arose in response to a question about clinging and aversion, but expands into a sustained reflection on the three phases of the future Buddha's life — the Jaina asceticism, the awakening, and the reluctant teaching — arguing that the founding of Buddhism was not the enactment of a predetermined plan but an accident of biography, contingent and lucky.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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