Buddha and the Wilderness

(Chapter 46)

The story is told that Siddhartha Gautama was born in 563 B.C. and was
the son of a wealthy ruler of a small kingdom in the Nepal region of India.
Siddhartha’s family were Hindus, who believe that humans are trapped in an endless
cycle of life, the samsara cycle of suffering, death, and rebirth. The goal of
life is to escape suffering by accumulating knowledge and wisdom to transcend
attachment to the physical world and unite with Brahmin in the spiritual world.
Hinduism dates back to before 2,000 B.C.

Siddhartha lived in luxury and was set to inherit his father’s fortune and
social status. According to the story, one day a fortune-teller showed up at
Siddhartha’s family palace and predicted that the young Siddhartha would
become a great emperor provided he did not see a sick man, an old man, a dead
man, or a monk. Siddhartha’s father tried to keep him from seeing suffering. One
day, however, Siddhartha left the palace and quickly encountered the suffering of
the sick, the aging, the dying, and the voluntary poverty of a monk. Siddhartha
gave up his life of future riches and took up the life of a wandering monk, seek-
ing answers to why there was so much suffering in the world and how to escape
it. He realized that being rich would not prevent him from growing old, getting
sick, and dying.

So, Siddhartha went searching. He studied with Hindu holy men and he
fasted for six years, but found only more suffering. One day Siddhartha sat down
to meditate under a banyan tree and unexpectedly awoke enlightened as the
Buddha. He had found Nirvana, a place of freedom from suffering, the end of the
painful road of physical life and emergence into the realm of spiritual enlightenment
and bliss.

Buddha stayed on earth approximately another 45 years preaching and
teaching others what he discovered about transcending suffering. He developed
the Three Universal Truths, the Four Noble Truths, the Five Precepts, and the
Eightfold Path. He taught meditation. By detaching from the physical world and
going inside one’s self, one could find enlightenment and Nirvana. One could
escape the physical world and the abstract interior world of the mind. Through
meditation one could discover that the physical world and the world of thoughts
are not real. They are illusions, impermanent, and ever changing. The past is gone
and not real. The future is not here and it is not real. Only the present is real, but
not the physical world, sensations, emotions, or thoughts of the present. Only the
spirit of the present is real and never changing. Any attempt one makes to hold
onto anything that is not real leads to suffering, the suffering of attachment. Also,
any attempt one makes to try to avoid or escape suffering makes the reality of suffering
more real, leading to more suffering. The goal of meditation is to be ever
present in the moment of the Now, constantly flowing, and detached from all that
is not real. Suffering becomes an illusion to be ignored. Ignorance is Bliss. Bliss
is Enlightenment. Enlightenment is Nirvana and there is no suffering in Nirvana.
Our earthly world is full of suffering. It seems real to me. It’s hard to
imagine it’s all just an illusion. I’ve tried to shut my eyes to the suffering of this
world. I’ve tried to meditate it away. I’ve even tried to medicate it away. Most of
my excursions into nature have been attempts to free myself from the suffering of
the modern world, to flee from its pain, to escape.

One thing I love about being in nature is the ease with which I can enter
a meditative state where I become mindful of the present, of the here and now. In
nature I am able to forget about the past and not worry or dream of the future. I
can experience the flowing spiritual moment and forget my suffering and the suffering
of this crazy, modern world.

Nature has taught me about the natural order of life. The natural world is
full of aging, sickness and disease, dying, and death. Nature can be harsh. One
animal’s suffering is another animal’s delightful meal. Nature can be neutral and
indifferent to suffering. Nature has taught me to have some acceptance of this nat-
ural order of things. Most of the time I have a detached attitude about this kind of
suffering. I do not take it too personally. With understanding and acceptance, this
suffering is not as painful.

My involvement and time in nature has shown me that most of the suffering
in the world is caused by or complicated by unnatural human and cultural
forces. Whereas human civilization and culture could help ease the pain of the
natural causes of suffering, it has evolved into a system that causes more pain than
it cures. More specifically, it is the economic systems and philosophies operating
in the world that cause most of this world’s suffering. It is the economic system
of greed that creates and will not cure famine and disease. The economic system
of greed causes wars to be fought. And it is the economic system of greed that is
causing our earth’s environment to be sick and dying. The suffering caused by
nature is neutral, indifferent, and based on need. The economic system of greed is
willfully self-centered and aware of the suffering it causes others by its exploitation
and injustice. The greedy choose to be neutral and indifferent to the pain they
cause.

Siddhartha realized that inheriting his father’s wealth would not ultimately
save him from suffering old age, sickness, and death. Instead, Siddhartha
chose to be a poor monk and found his own Nirvana, a world indifferent and neutral
to suffering, a spiritual metaphysical world beyond all pain caused by
involvement in the real physical world. Buddha’s escape to Nirvana over 2,500
years ago was primarily motivated by escaping the cause of natural suffering.
Nature seemed to be causing most of the world’s suffering then. By closing his
eyes to the natural world, he made it disappear, seeing it as an illusion not to be
desired, not to be attached to. He became neutral to nature, indifferent.
The world has evolved since Buddha’s day. There still remains about the
same amount of natural suffering now as then, but the amount of man-made suffering
has increased explosively. I have repeatedly escaped the world of suffering,
particularly the suffering caused by human culture. I have closed my eyes and
meditated my way far, far away from human pain. And I have run away from
human society, escaping into the wilderness of nature, running far, far away from
anything human. There are places I have been to where the human world does not
exist, where humans have vanished and the world of humans is only an illusion.
If I had stayed up on the mountain meditating or wandering that wilderness desert
for another 40 days and 40 nights without food or water, I could have stayed in
Nirvana forever. But I came back; I always come back. I’m not yet ready to leave
forever. I love this earthly journey. In spite of all the natural suffering, I’d like to
stay a while. It’s the suffering caused by economic greed that causes most of my
pain and concern. There is no excuse for it. I can’t ignore it for long and I surely
won’t accept it.

Every time I come back after leaving, I find the human world of greed
worse than when I left. But every time I get a chance to escape the man-made
world, I see it from the perspective that it’s all a man-made illusion and that it suffers
mostly from unnatural causes made by humans themselves. Consequently, I
realize that if it’s all an illusion and man-made, then it can be imagined differently
… remade, recreated. Humans have the capacity to choose to live differently,
to establish and live by economic systems based on needs, equity, fairness, justice,
compassion, respect, mutual aid, cooperation, and love. Not greed.
The Buddha meditated his way to Nirvana, but he came back and many
of his teachings were about social justice and creating more equitable communities.
I believe in meditating. There are times when I need to close my eyes to the
suffering of the world. There are times when I need to escape in order to see the
world of suffering as an illusion, in order to try to imagine the world differently.
The problem I have with meditating these days is that every time I open
my eyes, I see nature disappearing. I see the wilderness vanishing before my very
eyes. Human need and human greed are gobbling up the natural world, replacing
it with a world of humans. We humans have already created over six billion of us
on the face of the earth. It is becoming harder and harder, almost impossible, to
escape the human world, the modern man-made world, to find nature, and experience
the wilderness.

We humans cannot create more nature; we can only create more humans.
We can use nature and alter nature. We can reconstruct nature in the image of
humans. We can destroy or preserve nature, but we cannot create more nature.
I love the reality of nature and the realness of the wilderness. We need
nature. We need the option to escape into nature, into wilderness, in order to
remember who we are and where we came from. The ability to escape the human
world in order to imagine and dream of new possibilities, new beginnings, and
new ways of living is necessary for our existence. We must not alter or destroy all
of nature. Instead, we must use nature wisely and preserve nature. Human life
depends on nature. All of life depends on nature. The well-being of life depends
on the wellness of nature. Of course, there is sickness and disease, the process of
aging and dying, and death. That is part of the natural order of life. I accept natural
suffering as part of this life. In nature new life comes from dead life. Nature
reincarnates itself. It is the suffering caused by humans that is unacceptable.
At this point in evolutionary time, the well-being of all life and the wellness
of nature depend on human involvement, interaction, and intervention.
Humans are causing planetary sickness and disease. Nature is in the process of
dying an unnatural death. The fate of nature is in human hands. How much longer
can humans continue to live in a world dominated by the economic system of
greed? When will we open our eyes? When will we awake and become enlight-
ened by the truth, beauty, and love of nature?

I’m still here physically and spiritually. Perhaps I’ve always been here,
and perhaps I’ll always be here. Maybe I am caught in the endless cycle of samsara.
Or maybe I’m living a never-ending cycle of bliss and Nirvana. There is
something about this life on this earth that is so very real, so incredible, for both
the natural world and the human world. I hope to live here a while longer. I hope
that life on earth continues forever, never to die an unnatural death because of
human greed. I hope we humans decide to live by a new economy of love for all
our neighbors and for all of nature. I hope we can find a new balance between the
world of humans and the world of nature.

I have three children of my own on this earth. I hope they get a chance to
live here a long, long time and experience a world of human kindness. I want my
children’s children’s children to be able to see nature and experience the wilderness
with eyes wide open. I hope our journey continues.