The most important episode in the multifaceted biography of Siddhartha Gautama is told far too rarely. It’s a story of the future Buddha as an adult, just a few months and a few narrative footsteps away from his complete awakening. The story is a simple flash, just a moment in time. The episode points directly to a kind of nostalgia we’ve all experienced, that moment an adult remembers what it is like to be a child. The ancient texts tell of Siddhartha’s rediscovery of his own basic goodness, although the original discourse does not use such language. At age thirty-five, this man is close to the end of his quest. His determination to confront reality has been admirable, to say the least. For the past six years, he’s been in relentless pursuit of a stable understanding of his own mind and a panoramic awareness of the world of sentient beings. During this time, he has been striving with intense discipline and massive sacrifices, remaining outside the confines of his former life in society. He has studied deeply with several masters a transcendental style of meditation, and has engaged in grueling feats of self-denial. He has tools both for yogic discipline and for a most powerful concentration. But the states of mind he has mastered seem either too constructed, and therefore prone to impermanence, or else too harsh and punitive, fueling more of the same self-aggression that he set out to overcome. And now, just as he gives up on the extreme practice of self-denial that taught him great discipline but led to unnecessary punishment, he has a simple memory.
As if visualizing, the thirty-five-year-old nomad is instantly a child again, age nine. As if then were now, as if now were always, the man viscerally inhabits the child’s awareness, open and receptive. The nine-year-old boy is sitting under a rose apple tree, next to the fields at his father’s estate. He is watching the workers plow the soil. In this spot, the boy feels safe and comfortable, fully alive. He feels at home. He touches a relaxed presence, a knowing that expands inward and outward at the same time. It is as if the nine-year-old boy within were already meditating, without any effort, perceiving the current moment with curiosity and innocence. When the recollection fades, the man Siddhartha moves on, but he keeps the memory with him. The memory becomes an anchor of the final leg of his awakening as a Buddha. What the thirty-five-year-old remembers is that true presence is not some chore or task. Rather, awareness is an inheritance of one’s birth into the human family. Awakening is an expression of natural innocence, the innocence that already was-is-will-be.
This childhood memory sparks a powerful recognition of the unconditional aspect of mind, an awareness that accommodates every moment, even when the person doesn’t have a clue what to do with the moment yet. In the coming months, the grown-up Siddhartha uses this childhood memory, combined with the disciplines and meditative skills he has already learned. His insights begin to move forward by leaps and bounds. The recollection of this childhood innocence, alongside the rigor and discipline he has already achieved, create the circumstances for his final awakening.
Even though he was sitting under a rose apple tree, let’s not make the mistake of lifting rose-colored glasses to our eyes. Siddhartha wasn’t exactly recalling a “happier” time back in the day. The life he led as a nine-year-old was far from idyllic, even if it was blessed by wealth. His mother died in childbirth, and his father, by most accounts, was a controlling narcissist. Human life was hard, far harder than for a privileged person now, and life expectancy in the Iron Age was much shorter than it is now, even when compared to that in the very poorest countries of the modern-day world.1 Suffering and trauma were all around this nine-year-old boy.
This memory of ease and connection that revisits the thirty-five-year-old Siddhartha is not some perfect moment of bliss, no easy whitewashing of a yesteryear. Rather, as Siddhartha recovers from his very grown-up bout of self-aggression, pushing himself too hard against his own humanity, he recalls his inherent innocence. In the midst of confusion, chaos, and trauma, he reclaims a moment of presence, a moment of human goodness that he neither created nor had to earn. His innocence is not indebted to anyone or anything. It doesn’t appear only when life is great. Innocence does not stand in opposition to life’s chaos. Instead, Siddhartha recalls the innocence that abides within chaos.
This journey leads us to something that does not need to be created, something we already possess. We already are aware. We already were worthy. And we always will be innocent.
Nine is an interesting age in relation to the perception of innocence, isn’t it? It’s a very awkward moment in the process of our emergence as social creatures. When you’re nine or ten, people aren’t thinking of you as a cute little kid anymore; nor are they treating you like an empowered adult yet, either. In relation to self-identity, nine is a limbo period, a bardo, a space sandwiched between the forgiving cuteness of early childhood and the harsh “you-break-it-you-buy-it” accountabilities yet to come. For me, nine was the most chaotic and destabilizing limbo of childhood. Yet, when I contemplate a moment similar to Siddhartha’s under that rose apple tree, I am always drawn back to a connected moment within that chaos, that June day sitting on a bench in Riverside Park with my grandfather and parents. In that moment, all four of us were deeply dissatisfied with our current life circumstances, yet still content to be a family, together for just one more moment under the forgiving shade of an elm tree.
This path offers no escape from chaos or pain. If you don’t develop sympathy for your own chaos, you won’t be able to help anyone else. Soon after remembering my own moment under the elm tree, I think of my connection to The Princess Bride again. The Princess Bride is not really a comedy, although it starts out that way. On every level, the movie is a wacky transmission of true love. True love is not an idea; it is the feeling of having a shared story. Perhaps that is why, as I grow older, I become even more nostalgic with regard to this film, and why its popularity continues to grow in the world. The movie reconnects me fully to basic goodness. I do not believe I am alone in this feeling.
At its very best, lineage is the transmission of those stories that remind you of your own bravery. My tradition, Shambhala, transmits its own fairy tale, about a mythical kingdom of the same name, a kingdom that supposedly existed at the time of the Buddha. The king and queen of this place, known later as the Rigdens of Shambhala, were no Trumperdincks. These leaders were openhearted, wise, and skillful. They invited the Buddha, later in his life, when he dedicated himself only to the teaching of others, to visit them. They asked the Buddha to give teachings for those of us who did not want to become monastic or leave the world behind for a cave. The Buddha supposedly gave the king, queen, and their court special teachings on the nature of mind and the nature of a harmonious society, teachings he had not given his monks. He taught a path of awakening within the turmoil of society, provided instructions on how to use societal relations as the vehicle for enlightenment. Shambhala, the myth says, soon became an enlightened kingdom. Its politics, art, culture, and economics were all executed with mindfulness and compassion. Goodness, interdependence, and sustainability were the underlying principles of the land.
I started teaching Buddhism in 2002 because my practice had helped me begin to navigate the confusion and awkwardness of being myself. I did not start teaching because I had any personal interest in religion, and I was especially averse to both blind faith and spiritual mythologies. For this reason, when I was newer to teaching meditation, I would often hesitate to tell the story of Shambhala as a place, because the origin story of my tradition, a mythology that Chögyam Trungpa carried in his heart during his nearly impossible escape from Tibet, was nothing but a Himalayan fairy tale. None of Shambhala’s historical existence could be verified, and I didn’t really see the point of sharing it. Most of the people I was working with as a student, colleague, and teacher weren’t really into myths, either, I gleaned. We were into studying the mind, not religion. We were into experience, not faith. We were into contemporary culture, not history. We were of the twenty-first century, not the ancient world.
What was the point of retelling the very unironic, very premodern fairy tale of Shambhala? That story didn’t even have any funny parts, no lines to be quoted and converted into awesome memes. The story didn’t even have any kissing parts. Why would anyone care about my family’s inherited mythologies?
Eventually I realized why the fairy tale really did matter. First, the Shambhala fairy tale, about a community of people pursuing spiritual awakening within society, as a society, was a useful mythology indeed. Told properly, the story could inspire us that Shambhala was, in fact, this place right here. If we used these teachings to awaken in the world, Shambhala could even be this American spot. That flipping of the script, allowing fantasies to illuminate your reality rather than using them to escape it, is worthy of martial arts masters. This is a trick that so many storytellers throughout history has strived to achieve. People consume stories in order to escape their lives, but what if their reasoning changes? What if people consume stories in order to illuminate their lives? If fantasy illuminates reality, then escapes become road maps back to direct experience. And then all paths lead to awakening.
This same flip from family mythology into a life lesson is what the Grandfather achieves for his Grandson when he utters the movie’s last line, “As you wish.” True love is not about Florin versus Guilder. And really, kiddo, trust me, there is no Buttercup. True love is right here in Evanston, Illinois. True love was right there in Riverside Park.
That was the same voyage, from mythology back to reality, that my lineage was inviting me to take as it presented me with its own crazy fairy tale about a Himalayan kingdom. Shambhala was not some mountainous myth; it was a vision of a society where people knew how to treat each other, via personal, interpersonal, and collective systems of mindfulness. That society could be this society. Enlightened society is right here, if we want it to be.
As. We. Wish.
Maybe I’m just getting older myself. By the time you read this, I will be contemplating the stories I want to tell to my own child. My own crop of hair has embarked on a slow harvest of gray. It is unclear if I trade in each dark follicle for any silvery insight, but I hope so. As I further my investment in family and lineage, as I deepen my vows, I also further my investment in the stories of my spiritual tradition, even if I have always been fiercely secular and scientific about my Buddhist practice. I have grown proud to tell the tale of my lineage, complete with its Himalayan palaces and crystal castles that never existed, yet still wait to be stormed.
Before sitting down to meditate, it might help to take a moment to reflect on the stories inherited from your own lineage, especially the stories that came to you when you were a child. These mythologies are the fertile soil from which will ripen the stories of whatever you long to create, those stories to be updated, reinterpreted, deconstructed, and, above all else, shared.
I don’t think we’ll ever wake up without honoring the spiritual value of modern culture, because the act of awakening will always occur within the context of one’s own culture. Modern culture is only a click or a tap away, and it’s too stamped on our psyches (like a tattoo we don’t remember why we got) for us ever to abandon now. If there are even any caves left in which to hide away from the world, those caves are currently being wired for the Internet. Pop culture has become a spiritual text in and of itself, and I fully embrace that fact.
Of course I want to discuss the dharma of ancient meditation, metaphysics, ethics, and psychology, for sure. If you are interested, I cover these topics in The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path. But I also want to discuss the dharma of stand-up comedy, the dharma of abstract expressionism, the dharma of Wes Anderson movies, the dharma of magical realism, and the dharma of Missy Elliott. And I especially want to discuss why mindful people belong on the front lines of any movement counteracting racism, sexism, poverty, and the catastrophe of climate change. Because all these things exist, they all must exist in our practice. Contemporary culture must become fully integrated into our spiritual lives, unless we want both culture and spirituality to become only parallel ceremonies of escapism. Neither culture nor spirituality possess the ability to benefit anyone without the other. Culture needs spirituality in order to have a moral compass, and spirituality needs culture in order to be aware of its context.
The Grown-up and the Kid
IF YOU LIKE PITHY ADVICE, here is what I have. It’s about the relationship between thinking and feeling, balancing emotional maturity and innocence, reconciling your outer grown-up with your inner child.
When it is time to think deeply, we each need to learn to think like an adult. We can settle our minds beyond our unevolved reactions to false threats, and beyond the false promises of instant gratification. For us grown-ups, time is short, and growing shorter by the day. We should contemplate what matters in life, and who matters, and what we would like to pass along to those people who somehow manage to arrive here next. I have written these words down—part memoir, part reflection, part humble bow to my favorite movie—because I realized that what matters most, what makes me feel the most awake and alive, is attending to my human relationships.
First, I must attend to my relationship to myself. The Buddhist teachings have offered amazing tools for moving through my resistance to my own mind a little bit more each day. Next, I should prioritize my relationship to those close to me. When it is time to think, I keep arriving at the conclusion that attending to these relationships is the most crucial thing I can do with the time remaining, however much time that might be. And finally, I contemplate my relationship to all humans, and to other beings. When I am at my most mature, I am prioritizing human relationships. When I am settled and thinking clearly, everything I do feeds this intention, each movement nourishing an act of true creativity.
And when I am not thinking clearly—oh boy. Then my intention gets lost, stuck within a rush-hour flood of habitually acquired triggers. When I forget my intention, dopamine and cortisol rule me, and I morph into a hungry ghost, a zombie of habit and karma.
Still, it is not always the time to think like a grown-up. Thinking clearly only gets you so far. If you only think, no matter how brilliant your ideas may be, you will end up anxious, doubtful, and disembodied, caught up in the Velcro entrapment of your own story line. Sometimes, it is simply time to feel: feel your perceptions, be who you are, and touch your humanity. And when it is time to feel, it is best to leave that grown-up behind for a little while, just like Siddhartha did under the rose apple tree, just like The Princess Bride invites us each to do. When it is time to feel, you might want to recall that child you once were, curious and vulnerable. Perhaps you are nine years old again, or maybe you suddenly rediscover yourself at some other point, a place where the explicit memory that visits your awareness declares a feeling of belonging, no matter the uncertainties of life. Recall the child who has not yet engrained the belief that there is some big problem with being a person. Let yourself be visited by that child frequently, the one who still leans in, opening toward the world rather than bracing or strategizing against it. Where does that memory, that tender engram, live for you?
If we are going to survive as a species, we need grown-ups to lead this world, more grown-ups than ever before. The grown-up is the one who sees clearly, eyes free from dust, reasoning beyond immediate pleasure and pain. The grown-up considers the legacy and the planet we want to leave behind with compassion for others firmly in mind.
Still, that grandchild is always here. That kid is the heart of the matter. The kid is the one who has felt each story. The kid has already received the transmission of basic goodness.
The child is the one you need to ask about true love.