Clear Vision Trust

Venturing Into the Forest

A Full Moon Journey

It is a beautiful night in ancient India. We are at the court of King Ajatasattu, in Rajagaha, the capital of the kingdom of Magadha. The King is sitting surrounded by his ministers on the upper terrace of his palace. It is October. The rainy season has passed; the night is cool. The finery of the King and his courtiers is lit by a full moon rising into the cloudless night sky. But the splendid appearance of the court bathed in the moonlight belies its reality, for the palace is a dark and unhappy place, full of intrigue and suspicion. Ajatasattu himself is deeply unhappy, racked with guilt. For many years he had longed to be King, while his father, Bimbisara, lived to a robust old age. Finally, Ajatasattu became so frustrated that he plotted against his father. When Ajatasattu's treachery came to light, Bimbisara was deeply shocked, but rather than punishing his son he agreed to step down and allow him to accede to the throne. However, Ajatasattu still felt uneasy, overshadowed by the image of the kind old king, who was much loved by his subjects. So he imprisoned his father, and finally allowed him to starve to death.

On beautiful nights like these the King experiences an uneasy mixture of emotions. The brilliant full moon seems to shine into dark recesses of his mind. It causes him to swing between hope that beauty and purity are still possible in the world, and a sense of his crime partially eclipsing the moon, preventing him from experiencing the peace and beauty of the scene. Out of this inner struggle comes the desire to visit a holy man who can help him to find some peace. He asks for suggestions: can someone recommend a sage with whom he could discuss spiritual matters? One by one his ministers propose six well-known teachers. But the King has seen them all before, and none of them has been able to bring him any peace. He has asked each the same question, and not one of them has been able to give him a satisfying answer.

Sitting in the moonlit assembly is a man called Jivaka. His life has taken a strange path in order to bring him into the King's circle. He was born as the illegitimate son of Salavati, a courtesan in Rajagaha. Not wanting to be encumbered with a child, she had abandoned her new-born baby in a basket on a dust-heap. The baby was found there and a large crowd gathered. Prince Abhaya happened to be passing by, and seeing the crowd asked what the commotion was about. On hearing that an abandoned baby had been found, he enquired whether it was still alive. On being told that it was, he adopted it and brought the child up. The child was called Jivaka. 'Jiva' means 'life', and the name sprang from the crowd crying 'It is alive!' As he grew older, Jivaka was moved by the way he had been rescued and cared for, and decided to devote his life to helping others through the practice of medicine. He was very successful, and eventually became the King's personal physician.

Ajatasattu turns to his doctor, who has sat silent, and asks him if he has any suggestion to make. Jivaka is a follower of the Buddha. Whenever the Buddha is staying near Rajagaha, Jivaka goes to visit him twice a day. Indeed he has donated to the Buddha his own park near Rajagaha - known as the Ambavana, the Mango Grove. This park is more accessible than the Veluvana - the Bamboo Grove, the other main area used by the Buddha's wandering followers. Knowing that it is the practice of the Buddhist wanderers to meet together on the full moon night, Jivaka suggests the King visit the Mango Grove to talk with the Buddha.

This is not a straightforward idea for the King. His father had been a great supporter of the Buddha - it was he who had donated the Bamboo Grove for the use of Buddhist wanderers. Also, years earlier Ajatasattu had been a supporter of Devadatta, one of the Buddha's followers who had become proud and competitive, and had tried to create a schism in the Buddhist community to his own advantage. However, Ajatasattu is suffering emotionally; the moon's serenity mocks him; he must try something to assuage the pain. He agrees to Jivaka's suggestion.

For the King to make such a visit requires considerable preparation. He is too concerned for his safety and his position to travel with only a small group of attendants. So the royal elephants have to be led out and saddled, and the royal household made ready to travel. Finally a cavalcade leaves the palace, with no fewer than 500 elephants, with courtiers, the ladies of the royal household, attendants bearing torches, and, seated at the head of the procession on the state elephant, Ajatasattu, with Jivaka in close attendance.

Most of the party start out in light-hearted mood, but as they travel out of the city and start coming closer to the Mango Grove, the King, who has spoken little, falls completely silent, and in response the chatter of those around him dies away. Ajatasattu has asked Jivaka how many of the Buddha's followers will be gathered in the Mango Grove for their full moon meeting, and Jivaka has told him there will be over a thousand people there. As the procession approaches the grove, the King begins to listen, with increasing unease, for some sound to indicate that a large meeting is taking place ahead of him.

Ajatasattu has had his own father put to death. He has made enemies in Kosala and other neighbouring states. He is not loved by his own subjects. He lives in a world of dark deeds and uneasy suspicions. As the elephants sway closer to the still silent Mango Grove, he begins to suspect the worst. The hairs on the back of his neck rise in fear, and he turns fretfully and threateningly to his guide: 'You are playing me no tricks, Jivaka? You are not leading me into a trap and betraying me to my enemies?' Jivaka tries to reassure him, but Ajatasattu's mind is not set at rest. He listens once more to the eerie silence coming from the Mango Grove, and then bursts out suspiciously, 'You said that the Buddha is meeting here with over a thousand of his followers. How can it be that there is no sound at all, not even a cough or a sneeze?'

His ministers could never have allayed the King's suspicions in such a situation. None of them could have prevented him from wheeling the state elephant back in the direction of the city and safety. However, Jivaka is a physician, not a politician, and there is something about him that is credible and reassuring. He insists that he is not leading Ajatasattu into a trap, nor delivering him to his enemies. He urges him onwards, saying 'Go on, your majesty, straight on!' The King moves forward a little further, but uneasily. This brings him close enough to the grove for Jivaka to point out a glow of light through the trees in the distance, which he says comes from lamps burning where the Buddha and his followers are meeting.

Somewhat reassured, the King urges his elephant down a small track that leads toward the light. After a while the track becomes too narrow for the beast to follow. The King dismounts, leaves his entourage of wives and servants, and walks forward through the trees with Jivaka to guide him. Following the glow of the lights, they soon come upon a clearing. Here they see a great assembly of Buddhist wanderers, all sitting in meditation, silent and unmoving. Facing the assembly, his back to the pillar of a pavilion, sits the Buddha. He too is seated in meditation, his still figure emanating a thrilling silence that permeates the clearing with serenity, just as the moon bathes it with radiance.

The pair steal forward between the ranks of the meditators, and then the King, so used to striding about and issuing commands, stands respectfully and quietly near the Buddha. In that charmed circle of concentration and loving-kindness he finds himself at peace in a way he has not experienced since he took over the kingship. While he waits for the meditation to come to an end, he looks around at the serene gathering, and then whispers to Jivaka, 'I wish that my son Udayabhadda could know the same peace that there is in this assembly!'

The Buddha ends his meditation, slowly emerging from the deep pool of silence that has filled the grove. He greets Ajatasattu warmly, which is a relief as the King had not been sure what kind of reception he might receive given his past deeds. After they have exchanged polite enquiries, Ajatasattu feels that the time has come to ask his question. Much hangs on the answer. As we have seen, the King has put this same question to other spiritual teachers, including the six renowned teachers whom his courtiers had suggested he visit again tonight. He has never yet received a reply which satisfied him. The question is a simple one, down to earth and practical: 'Do your wandering followers gain tangible benefits from their way of life - as demonstrable as those gained by people who follow ordinary trades and professions?'

The Buddha smiles at the question, and replies at length. He starts with something very pragmatic and tangible indeed. He points out that if one of the King's slaves were to go forth as a homeless wanderer, whereas previously Ajatasattu would have ordered him around, he would now pay him respect. Others of his subjects would also improve their position in relation to the King by becoming wanderers.

The King wryly acknowledges that this is a clear benefit. However, his real interest lies in knowing if there are higher fruits of following the Buddha's path. In response the Buddha outlines step by step all the stages of the path to Enlightenment. He begins by describing how people listen to his teaching, and having developed confidence in it decide to go forth as homeless wanderers. Then through living ethically by following the precepts (as we saw in Chapter 1) they begin to experience calm, relaxation, and confidence. In addition they practise awareness of the senses, and contentment with a simple life. With this foundation they are able to overcome the five hindrances that prevent entry into higher states of consciousness: desire for sense-experience, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt. The Buddha likens the feelings of a wanderer who has overcome these hindrances to those of someone who has been freed from debt, from prison, or from slavery.

The King is already impressed, but the Buddha continues still further. He evokes, with beautiful images, the various stages of deep meditative concentration known as jhana which his followers experience when they have overcome the hindrances - each one more subtle, refined, and deeply fulfilling than the last. For the tortured Ajatasattu these evocations of deepening happiness and serenity are like descriptions of beautiful lakes and streams to someone dying of thirst.

The Buddha does not stop even there. He describes how the wanderer can then, using the powerfully focused states of mind produced by these meditations, investigate the body and mind and come to a decisive understanding of their true nature. At each stage the Buddha points out to the King how what he has described is a tangible benefit that can be experienced, and how it is 'higher and sweeter than the last'.

Even now the Buddha has not finished leading the King imaginatively up the rainbow way of development to which his teaching gives access. Next he describes how the wanderer's mind can become so concentrated and purified that they experience supernormal powers such as clairaudience and telepathy, knowledge of their own and others' past existences, and deep intuitive insight into the law of karma - the consequences of people's volitional actions.

Finally, the Buddha portrays for his royal visitor how the wanderer arrives at total understanding of the Four Noble Truths, and knows decisively that his or her ignorance of the true nature of life and consciousness has been destroyed, and that all the restless yearnings caused by that ignorance have been stilled. The wanderer then recognizes that he or she has accomplished the whole path to freedom. They are completely liberated from suffering, and its causes have finally vanished.

The King is deeply moved by the Buddha's description - so much so that he goes for Refuge, and pledges himself to follow the path which the Buddha has brought so vividly to life for him in imagination. Not only that. He is so affected that he confesses the awful crime of killing his father, who had been a good and just man. The Buddha accepts this revelation without shock. He simply comments that to acknowledge one's faults for what they are helps prevent falling into them in the future.

Ajatasattu is pleased and delighted by all that has happened. He feels lighter and freer than he has for many years, but the effects of his terrible crime still have an obscuring effect on his mind. At this point, when he could have entered into even deeper communication with the Buddha, his old cares begin to tug at him once more. He remembers all the people waiting for him outside the charmed circle of the grove. Old cares and concerns begin to insinuate themselves into his mind. Excusing himself by saying that he has affairs of state to attend to, he takes his leave of the Buddha. Then, with Jivaka once more at his side, he follows the track back through the trees to his waiting courtiers and elephants. Soon the noisy procession can be heard moving away in the direction of the city.

In the stillness of the clearing, the Buddha is discussing his meeting with Ajatasattu with those around him. He is pleased that the King was moved by his teaching. However, he also expresses regret that their communication could not have gone even deeper. The Buddha says, with great sadness in his voice, that had it not been for the terrible crime which weighed so much on his mind, Ajatasattu could have gained Stream-entry that very night.(footnote 9)

Leaving Home for the Forest

In this story we have 'ventured into the forest' to meet the Buddha, and some of his wandering followers. How did the Buddha live, who were these 'wanderers' who followed him, and what can we learn from them about our own quest for freedom? According to tradition, the Buddha left home when he was 29 (though in some Buddhist texts one gains the impression of someone younger). As we have seen, after six years of practising the most dreadful austerities, he finally discovered the Middle Way between the indulgence in pleasure he had known during his life at home, and the asceticism which he took to the limits of survival in his search for freedom.

In leaving behind his wife and family, the Buddha was following a trend that was very common in northern India at that time. From about a hundred years before, a whole movement had grown up of people leaving domestic responsibilities and going from place to place, begging their food, in a search for truth and freedom. The area was very prosperous at the time, and could support this large population of non-productive wanderers. These seekers after truth were often held in high esteem by ordinary people.

We do not really know what caused this movement in society. India at this time was seeing the development of city-states, but that does not account for the phenomenon. People who became wanderers are often represented as saying that they found their life at home cramped and limiting. It is clear that, whatever it was that led them to do it, leaving home was for most of them the beginning of a quest for freedom. Naturally there were a number of philosophers and yogic practitioners who claimed to be able to show people the path to truth and liberation. As we have seen, six of the most famous of these were suggested to the King by his ministers, but the King had visited them all before, and their answers had left him unsatisfied.

Although later Buddhist texts portray the Buddha as a monk, the head of an order of monks and nuns who lived by a carefully prescribed code of discipline, this is almost certainly a later reinterpretation of the Buddha's life. The Buddha undoubtedly left home in search of freedom. He lived the life of a homeless wanderer, and gained Enlightenment through meditation. After that he would have continued to spend time in the forest, occupied mainly with meditation, as well as venturing out to centres of population to teach. He gathered around him people of many lifestyles, both wanderers and house-dwellers, who followed his teaching of the way to liberation.

It is clear that people who stayed in their domestic situations were able to gain Enlightenment by practising the various aspects of the path that the Buddha outlined to Ajatasattu. However, the paradigm for following the path to freedom was to step outside conventional society and go into the aranya. This Sanskrit word literally means 'forest', but it connotes the wilderness, the 'no man's land' where you are on your own, under nobody's jurisdiction. The aranya could be the forest or jungle, the mountains or the desert, or a place that people usually avoid - such as a cremation ground or somewhere reputed to be haunted.

At that time most of northern India was covered in thick forest, and although there were a few great cities, such as Savatthi, most people lived in villages. It would only require a few minutes' walk into the forest to leave behind everyone you knew and your entire life so far. The forest was relatively undistracting, and provided the best conditions for meditation. It allowed a deep contact with nature and wildlife and therefore with death and the understanding of impermanence. The forest lifestyle was simple and peaceful. Of course there were hardships. Those who followed the wandering life had to come to terms with snakes, wild beasts, and stinging insects, as well as the uncertainty of what - if anything - would be placed in their begging-bowls. But still, compared to the situations they had left behind, they lived largely without mundane concerns.

One of the early Buddhist wanderers called Bhaddiya, who had been a king, was overheard by his fellows sitting in the forest saying aloud to himself, 'Oh, it's bliss!' Those who overheard him thought that he was wasting his time reminiscing about his life as a king. But it transpired that when he was a king he had never felt safe, and had been surrounded by armed guards day and night. Compared to that, it was his simple peaceful life in the forest that was bliss.(footnote 10)

The Forest as Symbol

We have seen what the forest meant to the early wanderers who often lived within it. In this section we shall look at the forest as a symbol, and read Ajatasattu's story in that light. In the rest of this chapter we shall use both the literal and symbolic meanings of our story to see what we can learn from it.

On a symbolic level, leaving home and going into the forest symbolizes leaving the hurly-burly of the everyday mind and its concerns, and venturing into the depths of consciousness. In the inner forest one's mind is simple and peaceful. This inner journey also symbolizes leaving behind any persona - the social mask we employ to smooth our relations with other people.

Thus we can see Ajatasattu's night-time journey in both literal and symbolic terms. Literally, he leaves his palace and goes out of the city to meet a holy man. The meeting impresses him deeply and frees him enough - at least temporarily - to enable him to recognize the path to freedom and to confess his crime. Symbolically, he leaves behind his surface level of consciousness with all its concerns. He moves beyond defining himself by his position. He lets go of the elephants and courtiers and other trappings that reinforce his egotistical sense of being King. As he walks into the forest, like Lear on the heath, he becomes just another human being.

The Zen Buddhist teacher Keichu once received a visitor, who announced his arrival by sending in his calling card. It read 'Kitagaki, Governor of Kyoto'. Far from being flattered that such an important person had come to see him, Keichu told his attendant to send him away. The Governor was stunned to receive such a rebuff. But then he thought for a moment, asked for a pencil, scratched out the words 'Governor of Kyoto' on his card and asked the attendant to present it to the master again. Keichu looked at the card, smiled, and said 'Oh, is that Kitagaki? I want to see that fellow!'(footnote 11)

In the forest, without his usual social and psychological props, Ajatasattu becomes anxious and uneasy. The ego, faced with the night journey into the depths of consciousness, fears it is being led into a trap and to its destruction. This stage in the spiritual journey is akin to the 'dark night of the soul' of the Christian mystics. It is a changeover from deriving one's support and sense of identity from the environment to gaining it from the riches in the depths of one's own mind. Unfortunately, like someone swinging between trapezes, one has to let go of one's present perch and reach out into space if one is to reach the new source of support. In this sense the night journey is like a birth. One leaves the security of drawing one's nourishment from outside, and learns to function independently.

However, the everyday self does not have to make a leap of 'blind faith'. The King is led on by Jivaka, his physician. In this symbolic reading of the story, Jivaka represents the spiritual friend. Buddhism places tremendous importance on spiritual friendship - communication with people who have more knowledge of the path to freedom than you, who can encourage and inspire you when you feel you are lost in the forest of consciousness. Jivaka visits the Buddha regularly. He knows from his own experience that the forest is not dangerous. Despite appearances to the contrary, he is certain that it is possible for its silence to conceal a great assembly of wisdom and compassion. So he can urge the King onwards, and give him confidence. We could also see Jivaka as a guiding inner aspect of the King, an intuitive side that somehow knows there is more to consciousness than the superficial levels, and which can lead him, laden down as he is with his guilt, to a source of healing.

Jivaka, the healer of bodies, leads the King to the Buddha, the healer of minds. In fact, the Buddha was sometimes called the Great Physician. One of his central teachings, the Four Noble Truths, is said to be based on ancient Indian medical formula. The Buddha identified the disease of humanity as unsatisfactoriness, the cause as craving, and the prognosis as excellent - a full cure with the state of Enlightenment - provided that the course of treatment of the Eightfold Path (right view, right emotion, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right concentration, and right meditation) was followed.

The King panics in the darkness (having left behind his attendants with their torches), but the encouragement of his spiritual friend gives him the faith and courage to continue. Finally he sees the torches of wisdom shining deep within the forest. He emerges from the trees, which symbolically form a maze or labyrinth, and arrives at a still space in the depths of consciousness. This deep level of the mind is silent - it usually gives no indication of its presence to the everyday ego. It makes no demands. It is simply there. But to contact it is to come home; to feel a sense of awe and wonder at the beauty, depth, and richness of the mind. So the King, seeing the great assembly of meditators with the Buddha at their heart, is overwhelmed by this revelation of the treasures of peace and wisdom that have been hidden in the depths of the forest. He is transformed by arriving at the centre of the maze of consciousness in this way. He gives up his old beliefs and goes for Refuge to the Buddha. He purifies himself of his terrible crime by openness and confession. And, contemplating the great assembly in meditation, he forgets himself and thinks instead of his son, wishing that he may experience such peace and contentment.

Here, unfortunately, there is a gap between the symbolic and the literal world. There is an irony in this story on the historical level, which is worthy of a Greek tragedy. Ajatasattu, who has killed his own father, Bimbisara, feels guilt and remorse dragging at his mind, and longs for his son Udayabhadda, whom he loves deeply, to know the happiness that his crime has denied him. Sadly, Ajatasattu's reign was brought to an end in about 459bce when he was killed in his turn by Prince Udayabhadda, the son he so loved. And so the wheel of suffering continues to turn....

Some Principles of Meditation

Whilst there are benefits to be gained by literally entering the forest, living in the forest fundamentally means venturing beyond egotistic security. To become truly free, we need to make an inner journey - leaving behind the safe palace of the surface level of our mind, and entering the inner forest of unexplored levels of consciousness. This is where the practice of meditation comes in. Meditation is a vast subject, and not something one can learn satisfactorily from books. However, it is central to the Buddhist path to freedom, as we saw from the major place it occupied in the Buddha's answer to Ajatasattu, so I shall say here a little about the principles of Buddhist meditation.

Ajatasattu could find no peace of mind on that full moon night because his extremely unethical behaviour in killing his father weighed on his mind. In outlining the path to freedom to the King, the Buddha talked about ethics before describing meditative states. This is because you can meditate successfully and consistently only on the basis of an ethical life. In fact, true meditation consists of a continuous flow of powerful, ethically positive states. We saw in Chapter 1 that the Buddhist precepts involve the development of qualities such as loving-kindness, generosity, contentment, truthfulness, and awareness. These qualities, which those on the Buddhist path to freedom aim to cultivate in everyday life, can be experienced especially strongly when we withdraw the mind from outside objects and concentrate inwardly. This allows us to experience these positive qualities undistracted by sense-impressions. More than that, it enables us to become more aware of our mental states and gently and steadily to work to cultivate and deepen these ethical qualities such as contentment and loving-kindness.

The word 'meditation' can be used in two senses: as the practice of working with the mind in order to clear away the obstacles to higher states of consciousness, and as the actual experience of those higher mental states. The Buddha outlines for the King the obstacles that stand between us and the meditative states of bliss and deep contentment. These are known in Buddhism as the five hindrances: desire for sense-experience, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt. It can be comforting to reflect that if we can just hold these five hindrances in abeyance for a little while we shall experience higher and more satisfying states of mind. While there is much that could be said about all five, and how to work with them, the meaning of the first four will be fairly obvious. Doubt is not so much to do with honest questioning as with an unwillingness to come to a conclusion, to make up one's mind and commit energy to the practice of meditation. The Buddha says that the basis for overcoming the hindrances is awareness of the senses and simplifying one's life. We shall look more at this advice in the next section.

The Buddha explains to Ajatasattu that once the hindrances have been overcome - at least temporarily - one enters meditation, in the sense of enjoying higher states of consciousness. This true meditation also has two aspects. The first is calming the mind and attaining increasingly concentrated states. These states, known as jhana in Pali (dhyana in Sanskrit) are deeply enjoyable, and become increasingly refined and blissful. However, though they are a vast improvement on our usual states, they are only a temporary respite from unsatisfactoriness. To break out of suffering completely we need to cultivate the second kind of true meditation, through which we gain insight into the true nature of reality. Calming the mind and insight meditation work together. Through the former we become able to concentrate strongly and clearly, then we use this powerfully focused state to examine the nature particularly of our own mind and body, as the Buddha describes. Once we come to see the nature of reality, not just intellectually but in a flash of intuitive understanding based on a concentrated mind, we shall have reached the stage of Stream-entry, which sadly eluded Ajatasattu's grasp in his meeting with the Buddha.

States of Mind and 'You Are What You Eat'

While we may practise meditation regularly, can we really make a radical shift in our level of consciousness whilst living an otherwise unchanged life? In order to overcome the hindrances that block our entry to higher states, the Buddha mentions two factors we need to cultivate outside meditation. The first of these is that, at the very least, most of us will need to simplify our lives, to give ourselves some time and peace away from the bombardment of modern-day living. Ajatasattu had all the noise of his 500 elephants and their riders to distract him. Today we have a much greater barrage of information, noise, distractions, and demands hammering at our minds all the time. So, if we wish to hear what one writer calls 'the voice of the silence' we shall need to do whatever we can to live a simpler, less cluttered lifestyle, and to reduce the amount of everyday input.

These days, many people are concerned to ensure that what they put into their stomachs is healthy, and that they eat a well-balanced diet. But relatively few people give the same degree of thought to the diet on which they feed their minds. In the course of a day the mind of the average city-dweller munches indiscriminately through an indigestible mixture of ingredients. This may include a political row, a flood, and a couple of murders from the morning news bulletin; the faces or car bumpers of a thousand or so fellow commuters; various bits of office gossip around the coffee machine; and a whole number of work issues to think about (and it's only mid-morning). By the end of a day of such non-stop force-feeding it is not surprising that many people feel mentally rather bloated and unwell. Nor should it come as a shock that when they sit down to snatch a few minutes' quiet at the end of the day their minds are too busy processing this unpalatable surfeit of material to be able to attain any degree of quiet and calm.

To help us improve our mental diet - and therefore our mental states - it is essential to practise 'guarding the gates of the senses' - the second of the Buddha's recommendations for overcoming the hindrances to meditation. This means staying aware and keeping the initiative in relation to the experiences and impressions to which we expose our minds. It will involve both reducing and refining what we take in. Firstly, we need to find ways of reducing the quantity of input. If we fed our bodies in the way we feed our minds most of us would have died of obesity long ago. Do we really need to fill our lives with wall-to-wall experience? Can we listen to ourselves rather than the radio or tv for once? In particular, can we learn to do one thing at a time, giving it all our attention? Then we need to look at the quality. Are we living on the mental equivalent of junk food? Are the experiences we take in fulfilling? Do they broaden our understanding of life and encourage us to become better, freer human beings? Or are they just intensifying our tendency to distract ourselves, to fill ourselves with pleasant experiences that never really satisfy us, like living on a diet of strawberry cheesecake? Lastly, we need to look at the assumptions, views, and opinions behind what we take in, keeping a sharp critical edge to our minds to question the values we are being offered by the magazines we read, the films we see, the people we spend time with.

Buddhism thinks of us having six senses. It sees the everyday mind as a sense that needs to be guarded like the others. Just as the eye deals in visual impressions and the ear in sounds, the everyday mind engages with memories, thoughts, and fantasies. Just as it is important to monitor what is coming in from outside, we need to pay attention to guarding the gate of the mind. We shall find that there is little we can do directly to dam the flow of thought. Plans, worries, pieces of music, powerful feelings, seemingly-random associations, and many other things flow continuously through us throughout the day. This endless stream carries all kinds of flotsam and jetsam from the profound to the tedious. Whilst we cannot usually control it, we can make the effort to be aware of it, and to see what aspects of it we are putting energy into. Those mental events that we reinforce by dwelling on them tend to become habitual. It is important to see whether we are creating positive habits or more mental shackles for ourselves.

Time Away (and Leaving Altogether)

As well as making a strong effort to guard the gates in the midst of everyday life, it will also be very helpful, if at all possible, to give ourselves some time away from our usual circumstances. At the risk of flogging the food analogy to death, this time away is like the mental equivalent of a visit to a health farm, in which we allow the mind time to relax, and feed it a very light and healthy diet. There are various ways of doing this. We can go away on a meditation retreat, of which there are many organized by different Buddhist groups in the West these days. Alternatively, we can take some time alone, preferably away from home in natural surroundings. We can spend a day, weekend, week, month, or even longer, allowing our mind to calm and settle: spending time in meditation, as well as reflecting on our lives, and perhaps doing some reading that inspires us to follow the path to freedom. (Even with this kind of reading we need to be careful about quantity. More isn't usually better. One page that we reflect on and take to heart is worth a hundred that just wash over us.)

We may even need to think radically, to consider leaving our usual circumstances behind altogether. In our story, Ajatasattu is prevented from seeing the true nature of existence and finding his freedom because of the crime that weighs so heavily on his mind. His is a very extreme case, but sometimes much more ordinary circumstances can block our progress towards freedom. We may have a circle of friends who support and encourage us in following the ignoble quest - such as drinking or taking drugs. Or we may have a job where the values we are expected to uphold go against our beliefs. Clearly, at the time of the Buddha many people felt cramped and confined in their lives. They felt they had lost their freedom, lost the initiative to alter circumstances. So they re-established it by radical means. They left everything they knew and ventured into the forest. Obviously we must not do this in an irresponsible way. But we should not dismiss it as a possibility.

In any case we need to bear in mind that our present circumstances are temporary. Many people in ancient India saw that their existential situation was that they were wanderers through this world. Leaving home, their lives became demonstrations and reminders of this fact. Some of the meditations they practised helped to reinforce this awareness - particularly the contemplation of impermanence or death. After all, at death we shall leave behind all our surface concerns, even our own body, and - ready or not - we shall find ourselves venturing into the unknown. Reflecting on this fact helps us put into perspective our everyday concerns. It can also encourage us to give time to meditation and other methods that help us to find the centre of wisdom and peace within our own minds.

Whether or not our search for freedom leads us to change our external circumstances, internally a major revolution has to take place. We need to 'go forth' from basing our lives on the search for pleasure, gain, fame, and praise - all of which are impermanent and external. Then, even though we are living within society, we shall be outside it, in the sense of not sharing its values, and not being controlled by desire for success and approval. Once we have made the journey deep into our own minds and found the riches of states of profound meditation, we shall carry that peace and contentment into every situation in which we find ourselves.

notes:

9: See Samannaphala Sutta in Maurice Walshe (trans.), The Long Discourses of the Buddha, Wisdom, Boston 1995, pp.91 et seq.
10: Udana ii.x. in F.L. Woodward (trans.), The Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, Pali Text Society, Oxford 1935, pp.23-4.
11: For this story see Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Penguin, London 1991, p.40.