The Buddhist Awakening: Opening of the Third Eye

The King was worried about Siddhartha’s restlessness.  The prophesy was still on his mind. So he arranged for Siddhartha to take a tour of the city that lay outside the palace gates. He hoped that this would placate the restless Siddhartha.

It is said that Siddhartha was 29 years old at the time. It is hard to imagine that a person would have been able to live 29 years confined within palace walls. Siddhartha’s trip outside the palace could not have been his first actual trip outside the walls. 

But it was a first; it was his first trip outside his safe little world with his third eye open.  This was the first time he would see the world and process it using his own judgement, not the conditionings his parents had given him.  He was ready to see the city as it was and not simply measured by the preconceived map in his head.

All of us have a map of judgements in our head. This map is given to us by our parents and our culture. We filter the world through this map, seeing what we need to see and rejecting everything else.  This filter is very useful. It allows us to navaigate the ups and downs of life without too much fear and judgement.  It helps us feel secure.

The King saw to it that Siddhartha’s route through the city was carefully choreographed.  All sights that could possibly be disruptive were removed.  The poor, the beggars were removed from the streets and they were swept clean. Residents were made to line the street to sing his praises.  

At first Siddhartha was pleased. Everyone loved him, everyone sang his praises.  Flowers were strewn on the path of his elephant calvacade. It seemed that nothing much would come out of this trip and Siddhartha would return to his safe secure seat in the palace.

But then towards the end of the ride Siddhartha saw something that would have previously been filtered away by the internal conditionings. A few old people had slipped by unnoticed and were standing on the side of the street enjoying the royal procession.  

Siddhartha was dumbstruck. Who were these people and why did they look like this?  Of course as a 29 year old man he could not have been unaware of old age. As he grew he would have seen all the people around him grow and age including his father.  But really this is the first conscious awareness of old age, that in this life nothing lasts forever.   

Look back to the first moment when you felt a real heartache, you were dumped by your girlfriend or someone you cared about passed away.   What did the heartache do to you? Did it make you question any values? 

The palace guards were quick to usher the old people away and out of sight.  But  Siddhartha insisted on getting off the elephant and leaving the procession to follow them. His faithful aide Chunda came along too.  As he followed the old people out into the unsanitized parts of the city he asked Chunda, what did it mean to get old? 

Chunda had to sadly explain it meant losing your health, your looks, your faculties and yes kings got old too.

As Siddhartha found his way into the poorer section of town he venured into a hut and saw a lady lying down moaning. He was alarmed, what was wrong with her? Chunda was there to explain; that she was ill and sufferring and Kings too got ill. 

Then Siddhartha saw the funeral rites of a dead man on the banks of the river. They were burning his body.  Death is our final destiny explained Chunda. It is the point of separation where what once was can never be, where the body goes cold and lifeless and its consciousness comes to an end.  

For the sheltered Prince this was a shatterring revelation. He too will die one day.   Then what is the point of all his pleasures?  Until now he has always taken them for granted.  Like Americans getting drunk on credit bubbles he has assumed they will continue indefinitely.  When we are young death seems so far away. 

Finally Siddhartha saw a group of monks dressed in their ascetic robes chanting and walking a procession.  Chunda informed him that they are seekers. People who have renounced material things to search for wisdom, to understand what life really is, who we really are.

As we wander along on our life journey, if we look back we will notice that we are drawn to many different things at difficult periods in our life.  These could involve work, relationships, travel or anything else.  What pulls us is our own internal need to understand.   So Siddhartha was drawn to these monks. He had become aware of suffering and where before his life was soley focussed on his own cares for the first time he felt empathy for someone else. The monks drew him to them, they had some knowledge that he needed.  

A wound has appeared in his psyche, getting through his hiterto impenetrable armour.  This wound is his pathway to his soul.  Having seen that life is not what he has believed it to be he will never be the same again.  He can now no longer go back to the old conditioned life and all its comforts.   

He has, like Adam, been thrown out of the garden of eden, that blissfully unaware conditioned existence.  

Now he will learn what pain really is.