The Search for the Prince (I)

Buddhacarita, Chapter Nine: The Search for the Prince

The king's own grief and sorrow moved his teacher and his chief minister so deeply that, like a fine horse driven on by the whip, they rode swift as a rushing current, their bodies weary yet unwilling to spare themselves the effort, straight to the forest of ascetic practice.

Setting aside every worldly ornament of rank, and mastering well their own senses and faculties, they entered the brahmins' own hermitage, and paid reverent homage to the seers there.

The seers invited them to be seated, and spoke to them, offering words of comfort.

They then said to the seers: "There is a matter on which we wish to inquire. There is a king renowned for his purity, King Śuddhodana, of the illustrious sugarcane lineage.

We two are his teacher and his minister, entrusted with matters of the Dharma and its governing principles. The king is like Śakra, lord of the gods, and his son is like Jayanta, Śakra's own son.

To escape old age, sickness, and death, this son has gone forth, and may have come to take refuge here — we have come on his account, and beg you, most honored ones, to tell us if you know."

They answered: "There is indeed such a man here, of long arms and the marks of a great being, who examined our own practice and then went on to seek instead the true path beyond birth and death.

He has gone on to Ārāḍa, seeking there a still more excellent liberation."

Having thus confirmed this with certainty, and mindful of the king's own urgent command, they did not allow themselves to consider their own fatigue, but pressed on swiftly along the road.

They found the prince dwelling in the forest, every worldly ornament now set entirely aside, his true form nonetheless still radiant, like the sun emerging from behind dark clouds.

The one entrusted by the kingdom as its very teacher of the gods, and the minister who upheld the true Dharma, both set aside their own worldly dignity, dismounted, and approached on foot.

Just as King Bṛhaddyumna and the seer Vasiṣṭha once went into the mountain forests to see Prince Rāma, each following his own proper manner in offering reverent greeting,

or as Śukra and Aṅgiras once gave their whole hearts to reverence, in service to Śakra, lord of the gods —

so the prince, in turn, showed the same reverence to the king's teacher and his minister, just as Śakra himself once comforted Śukra and Aṅgiras.

He then bid the two men be seated before him, as the two stars Punarvasu attend close beside the moon.

The king's teacher and the minister then addressed the prince, just as the seer Vipula Vaka once spoke to Jayanta.

"Your father the king's longing for you pierces his very heart like a sharp thorn; wild and bewildered, he has fallen into madness, and lies now upon the bare ground.

Day and night his grief and longing only grow, and his tears fall constantly like rain; he has charged us with a message for you — we beg you now to listen closely.

'I know your heart truly delights in the Dharma, and of this I have no doubt at all — yet your entering the forest wilderness at so untimely a moment torments my own heart with grief and longing; if you truly hold the Dharma in your thoughts, then you ought also to have compassion for me.

I ask only that you relax somewhat this longing to wander far away, and ease this heart of mine, which hangs now in suspense — do not let the very waters of my grief and sorrow break apart the banks of my own heart.

As clouds, floods, wildfires, and hail bring ruin to mountains, so grief and sorrow are themselves a fourfold affliction, scattering, parching, scorching, and destroying the heart.

Should you first return home to your own land, and go wandering again as a sage once the proper time has come — but instead give no thought at all to your own kin, abandoning even your father and mother — how could this possibly be called compassion, the sheltering and protecting of all beings?

The Dharma does not require the mountain forests; one may cultivate stillness even while remaining at home. To awaken, and to strive diligently by skillful means — this alone is what deserves to be called "going forth."

To shave one's head, don dyed robes, and cast oneself off into the mountain wilds — this is merely to harbor fear and dread; how could this alone be worthy of the name "studying the way of the sages"?

I wish only for the chance to embrace you once more, to pour water in consecration upon your crown, to place the heavenly diadem upon your head, and set you beneath the royal canopy — let me look upon you with my own eyes just once more, and only then will I myself go forth.

Kings such as Mūrdhagata, Ānūḍha, Aṃśa, Vajra, Vāsava, Aṃśika, Videhajana, and Nāraśvara — every one of these kings, too, wore the heavenly diadem, adorned their persons with strings of jewels, wore rings of pearls upon their hands and feet, and took their pleasure amid their palace women — and none of this stood in the way of their own cause of liberation.

You should now return home, and take up together these two undertakings: cultivate in your own heart the supreme Dharma, while also serving as the supreme lord of this earth.'

Weeping, he charged me with these very words, and bid me proclaim them to you exactly as he spoke them.

Since this is the king's own solemn charge, you ought to heed his instruction and return.

Your father the king, on your account alone, is drowning in a sea of grief and sorrow, with no one to save him, nothing to rely upon, and no way to free himself — you alone should be the ferryman to carry him across to a place of safety and peace.

Just as Prince Vairāmbha and the two brothers of the Licchavi, hearing their own father's respectful command, returned to him — so, too, ought you to do now.

The debt owed a loving mother's care in raising you cannot be repaid in a whole lifetime — and she now, like a cow that has lost her calf, cries out in grief, forgetting even sleep and food.

You ought now to return at once, to save my very life — for a lone bird parted from its flock grieves, and even a great dragon-elephant suffers, wandering alone.

One who has lost the very shade he relied upon must think now of rescue and protection — an only child, still young and now fatherless, meeting with suffering he knows not how to voice — you must relieve this desolate suffering, as one rushes to save the moon during an eclipse.

Throughout the whole kingdom, every man and woman burns with the blazing suffering of this separation; their sighs rise like smoke to the very sky, clouding over the eye of their own wisdom in its haze — they seek only the water of your presence, to extinguish this fire and let their eyes see clearly once more.'"

The bodhisattva, hearing his father's earnest teaching, so full of grief and suffering, sat upright in correct reflection, and answered gently and respectfully, according to what the moment required.

"I too know that my father the king's compassionate thoughts of me run exceedingly deep — yet it is precisely because I fear birth, old age, sickness, and death that I have gone against a debt of kindness that could otherwise never be repaid.

Who does not treasure the one who gave him life? Yet, because parting must come in the end regardless, even should we manage to remain together through life, when death itself arrives, nothing can hold us together any longer — and it is precisely because I understand what I truly treasure that I have taken my long leave and gone forth.

Hearing of my father's grief and sorrow only deepens the ache in my own heart — yet this, too, is like a dream's brief meeting, which vanishes in an instant back into impermanence.

You should know this for certain: the nature of sentient beings is not all the same, and the grief and suffering that arises need not be reserved only for a son and his parent.

The very suffering of parting arises, in every case, from ignorance and delusion — it is like travelers on the same road, who happen to meet for a moment along the way, only to part again in but an instant; this parting is itself simply the natural order of things.

What comes together becomes, for a time, a bond of kinship, and by the same principle of conditions, it naturally comes apart again; once one has thoroughly understood that kinship itself is but a temporary coming-together, one ought not to give rise to grief and sorrow over it.

Parted from one's kin in this present life, one seeks new kin again in another life to come; even a kinship newly formed will again come apart — there is nowhere, in the end, that is not some form of kinship.

Forever coming together and forever scattering apart — why should this scattering, in itself, be any cause for grief?

Even within the womb, one changes moment by moment; with every passing instant something dies and something else is born anew.

Since death may come at any time at all, how could the mountain forest ever be the wrong time for it?

Waiting for the proper season to enjoy the five desires, waiting for the right time to seek after wealth — and yet death itself may come at any time whatsoever; apart from death, there is no such thing as an improper time.

As for your wish that I become king — though the law of parental affection is indeed hard to go against, this would be like giving medicine that only worsens the illness; and so I cannot bear to accept it.

A position of high rank is itself a place of ignorance and delusion, given over to indulgence and following wherever love or hatred leads; one lives one's whole life in constant fear and dread, one's thoughts and cares wearing down body and spirit alike — to bend to what pleases the crowd while going against the true Dharma is not something the wise would ever do.

A magnificent palace of the seven treasures may yet have a raging fire burning within it; a heavenly feast of a hundred flavors may yet have poison mixed into it; a cool, clear lotus pond may yet be thick with venomous creatures — a position of high rank is, in just this same way, a house of disaster, and the wise do not choose to dwell in it.

Even the great and excellent kings of ages past, seeing the many faults that come with ruling a kingdom, and the cruelty inflicted upon its people, grew weary of it all, and went forth from it.

And so I know that the true suffering lies in kingship itself, and that it cannot compare to the peace found in practicing the Dharma — better to dwell in the mountain forests, eating grass like the very beasts of the field,

than to be unable to bear dwelling in the depths of a palace, as though sharing one's very den with a black serpent. To cast aside the throne and the five desires, and to take up every hardship in wandering the mountain forests instead — this alone is to follow the true order of things, by which one's own delight in the Dharma gradually grows ever more radiant.

To abandon now this forest of quiet stillness, and return home to take up the five desires once more, would only increase my own suffering under the true Dharma, day and night — this is simply not something I could rightly do.

A great man of renowned lineage, delighting in the Dharma, goes forth from home, forever turning his back on his own renowned family, establishing the resolve of a truly great man — disfiguring his own appearance, donning the robe of the Dharma, and wandering the mountain forests in his delight in that very Dharma.

Were I now to cast aside this robe of the Dharma as well, it would go against my own sense of shame and conscience — even the heavenly kings themselves could not permit such a thing, how much less, then, a mere return to a mortal man's own splendid dwelling?

Having already vomited out greed, hatred, and delusion, to then go back and consume them once again would be like a man eating back his own vomit — how could such suffering possibly be endured?

It is like a man whose house has caught fire, who by some skillful means rushes out of it — only to turn around and go straight back inside a moment later. How could such a man possibly be called clever?

Having seen the fault in birth, old age, and death, and having, out of weariness with it, gone forth from home — to now go back inside again would be no different from that very same foolishness.

To cultivate liberation while dwelling in a palace is simply not possible at all; liberation is born of quiet stillness, while kingship itself is like a form of torment and punishment.

Quiet stillness undoes the very majesty of kingship, and true kingship itself runs directly against liberation; movement and stillness are as fundamentally opposed as water and fire — how could these two principles ever be reconciled together?

One who is resolved upon cultivating liberation does not, therefore, also dwell upon the throne.

And should someone claim that one can dwell upon the throne while also cultivating liberation at the same time — this itself shows that his resolve was never truly fixed to begin with; for one whose resolve is genuinely fixed understands liberation in exactly the way I have described.

Since his was never a truly fixed resolve in the first place, he may go forth and then return again just as easily. But I myself have already resolved this matter fully: I have cut the very hook and bait of kinship and attachment, and have taken up, by the correct and proper means, the true going forth from home — how, then, could I possibly go back inside again?"