Leaving the City (I)

Buddhacarita, Chapter Five: Leaving the City

The king again increased every kind of exquisite provision for the five desires, offering entertainment day and night, hoping to bring delight to the prince's heart.

But the prince's weariness and detachment ran deep; he felt no trace of love or delight in any of it. He thought only of the suffering bound up in birth and death, like a lion already struck by an arrow.

The king sent his great ministers and the finest sons of the noble houses — young men of excellent appearance, intelligent and well-versed in courtly manners — to accompany him day and night in his wanderings and his rest, hoping thereby to win over the prince's heart; and, before very long had passed in this way, the prince asked the king's leave to go out once more.

Mounted on a swift, fine horse, adorned with every kind of jewel, he set out from the city surrounded by the sons of the noble houses.

Just as the four kinds of lotus all open wide beneath the sun, so the prince, radiant with his own godlike splendor, cast his light over the whole retinue that followed him.

Leaving the city to wander in the gardens, along a broad and level road, past trees thick with flower and fruit, his heart grew so glad that he quite forgot to return.

By the roadside he saw a man plowing, turning up the soil and killing the worms and insects within it; and at this his heart was moved to sorrow and pity, a pain that pierced him more sharply than any thorn.

He saw, too, the plowman himself — worn and toiling, his form gaunt and haggard, his hair disheveled and streaming with sweat, dust caked thick upon his body.

The plowing ox, too, was spent with exhaustion, its tongue hanging out, its breath coming in short, urgent gasps; and the prince, compassionate by nature, was moved to the deepest pity at the sight.

Sighing with feeling, he descended from his mount and sat himself down upon the ground, surveying this whole scene of suffering, and reflecting on the nature of arising and passing away.

"Alas — the people of this world, in their ignorance, are unable to awaken to this at all." He then comforted the men around him, and let each one sit wherever he pleased.

Sheltering himself beneath the shade of a rose-apple tree, he sat upright in correct meditation, contemplating birth and death in all things — their arising and their passing, their ceaseless and impermanent change.

His mind grew settled, calm, and unmoving; the five desires dispersed like clouds clearing from the sky; and, with both examination and sustained reflection still present, he entered the first meditative absorption, free of every defilement.

Free now of desire, joy and bliss arose in him, and he entered true absorption in samādhi: he saw how bitterly this world suffers, broken down by old age, sickness, and death.

To endure this great suffering throughout one's whole life without ever perceiving it for what it is, and yet to feel aversion at seeing old age, sickness, and death in others — this itself is the deepest affliction of all.

"I now seek the supreme Dharma, and ought not to be like the rest of the world — bound myself to old age, sickness, and death, and yet turning around to despise these very things in others."

Contemplating in this way, with true and thorough insight, he saw that youth, vigor, beauty, strength, and long life itself never once pause, even for a moment, in their ceaseless renewal, and in the end all return, without exception, to the law of decay and dissolution.

He felt neither joy nor sorrow, neither doubt nor confusion; he neither slept nor clung to desire; he neither destroyed anything nor held aversion toward it. In this stillness, free of every hindrance, the light of his wisdom grew ever more radiant.

At that moment a Pure Abode god took on the form of a wandering monk, and came to where the prince sat. The prince rose respectfully to greet him, and asked: "What manner of person are you?" He answered: "I am a śramaṇa.

Fearing and wearied by old age, sickness, and death, I have gone forth from home to seek liberation — for sentient beings are subject to old age, sickness, and death, their change and decay never once ceasing.

And so I seek an unchanging bliss, one that knows neither cessation nor birth; I hold enemy and kin alike with an equal heart, and devote myself to neither wealth nor beauty.

My only peace is found in the mountain forests, empty and still, with nothing to be managed or pursued; every worldly thought already stilled, I dwell in quiet solitude in the open wilderness; making no distinction between fine food and coarse, I beg simply enough to sustain this body."

And with this, right there before the prince, he rose lightly into the air and vanished.

The prince's heart filled with joy. He recalled the buddhas of ages past, who had established exactly this same dignified bearing, and whose remaining image he now beheld appearing again before him.

Sitting upright in correct reflection, he attained at once the very thought of the true Dharma: what means should I now take up? And so his heart settled, at last and for good, on going forth from the household life.

Gathering in his feelings and restraining all his senses, he rose slowly and returned toward the city, his whole retinue following after him, believing he meant only to rest nearby, not to journey far away.

Within, he had secretly given rise to a heart of compassion, and now sought only to transcend the world entirely; though his body followed the road back home, his heart in truth remained behind in the mountain forests — like a wild elephant kept in chains, forever thinking only of roaming the open wilderness.

As the prince now entered the city, men and women crowded the roadside to greet him: the old wished he were their own son, the young wished to be his wife or husband, others wished to be counted among his brothers, his kinsmen, his own household.

Had all these wishes then been granted, every craving and every clinging gathered up in them would have come to an end all the same. The prince's heart filled with joy at this, for he suddenly caught, in their very words, the sound of "the ending of clinging" — and thought: should these wishes of theirs indeed be fulfilled, this very ending of clinging is the wish that must truly come to pass. Reflecting deeply on the bliss found in the ending of clinging, the thought of nirvāṇa grew ever stronger in him.

His body was like a peak of gold, his rounded arms like an elephant's trunk, his voice like the rumble of spring thunder, his deep blue-black eyes like a king among oxen.

With the inexhaustible Dharma itself as his very heart, his face shining like the full moon, walking with the gait of a lion-king, he made his way slowly back into the palace.

Like the son of Indra himself, reverent in heart and dignified in bearing, he went to where his father sat, bowed his head, and asked after his well-being — and then told him of his fear of birth and death, and begged him, in sorrow, for leave to go forth.

"Everywhere in this world, whatever comes together must, in the end, be parted.

It is for this reason that I wish to go forth, seeking true liberation."

Hearing him speak of going forth, the father king's heart was seized at once with great alarm, like a great, wild elephant startled into shaking the slender branch it grips.

He stepped forward, took hold of the prince's hand, and, weeping, said to him: "Set aside, for now, what you have just said — this is not yet the time to take up such a path. In the restlessness of youth, the heart is easily stirred, and the practice of the Dharma, taken up too soon, gives rise to many faults.

Even now, your heart has not yet grown truly weary of these wondrous realms of the five desires; and to go forth and take up ascetic practice while your resolve is not yet fully settled would accomplish nothing certain.

Out in the empty wilderness of the mountain forests, your heart is not yet truly at peace; though your heart delights in the Dharma even now, it is not yet as mine will be, when my own time comes.

You ought instead to take up the affairs of this kingdom, and let me be the one to go forth first — for to abandon one's father and cut off the family's line of succession would itself be contrary to the true Dharma.

Set aside, then, this wish to go forth; take up instead the ways of the world, and once you have known its ease and its good renown, only then may you go forth."