"The story of the Buddha’s renunciation is probably best read as a parable rather than a narrative of historical events. It is unlikely that an educated and highly intelligent man like the Buddha would have been unaware of the facts of life, despite his privileged upbringing, and what we see described in the story is more likely a dawning realization about the true nature of the human condition. The palace may represent complacency and self-delusion, and its walls the mental barriers we construct to shield ourselves from unpleasant truths. The Buddha as a young prince was ‘living in denial’, as we might say today, and the four signs were experiences which challenged the cozy picture of the world he had constructed for himself. Eventually, when reality intruded forcefully in the form of the four signs, the tension became so strong that it provoked a kind of existential crisis which shattered his previous model of the world and launched him into a new and unfamiliar way of life. Experiences of this kind are familiar to everyone: although people no longer travel in chariots, the equivalent of the four signs can still be seen on almost any city journey in the form of hospitals, care homes, cemeteries, and churches, or unpleasant experiences like the sickness and death of family and friends which thrust themselves into our lives and shake our comfortable equilibrium."
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 04:44:26 +0000