Kanthaka

King Śuddhodana had great expectations for his son, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, to inherit and expand the family empire. He provided him a civilized life of comfort, convenience, security, and status, yet the young prince was so dissatisfied with his sheltered, privileged existence that he rejected his father's expectations and abandoned his beautiful wife and newborn son, whom he bluntly named "Fetter."

Bourgeois sensibilities judge Siddhartha as selfish, inconsiderate, irresponsible, and foolish, yet this jarring abandonment of duty seems a necessary component of the hero's adventure. Consider the equally jolting words of Jesus: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters - yes, even their own life - such a person cannot be my disciple." There are no epic tales of the contented family man.

When Siddhartha left his family’s palace, it was his beloved horse, Kanthaka, that bore the dissatisfied young prince into the wild, indifferent world to suffer the trials that ultimately flowered into his enlightenment, transforming him into the Buddha.

Buddhism finds reality to be empty of cosmic meaning and purpose and attributes human suffering to desire - like the desire for meaning and purpose. I knew my purpose for incarnating by the age of ten. My childhood hero was Jacques Cousteau and a meaningful life for me meant emulating Cousteau’s on-screen persona:

  • To use science and technology to fearlessly explore the wilderness.
  • To witness nature and be awestruck into silent reverence - Eutierria.
  • To transform my ignorant fear into self-awareness and understanding love.
  • To tell emotionally impactful stories of my explorations that spiritually transform my audience.

My parents, sensible and pragmatic bourgeoisie, perceived my vocation merely as a nice hobby. Fearing I would be unemployable as an oceanographer, they discouraged me from pursuing my vocation and paid for my undergraduate degree in engineering. They were not wrong in their pragmatism - I have had amazing opportunities in my lucrative engineering career. People envy my lifestyle and achievements, and yet, I am chronically dissatisfied, bored, and lonely. My life in the palace lacks purpose and meaning.

Ennui.

And so, on the occasion of my 60th birthday, I depart my family’s palace. I travel to Thailand to collect Kanthaka - my sailboat - that will bear me into the wild, indifferent world.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lying with the Heavenly Woman

I heard this myth this weekend and thought it brilliant. Lying with the Heavenly Woman is an African myth, where the heavenly anima and the mother archetype are often indistinguishable. This story portrays the double anima. A father warns his young son that one night the heavenly woman will appear and ask to lie beside him. If the son agrees, warns the father, he will be dead the next morning. In order to keep this from happening, the father moves the family to another village. The heavenly woman comes to the son in the new village and he lets her lie with him. The next morning he is dead. The heavenly woman is horrified because she had no intention of harming the boy. She persuades an old shaman to build a fire and toss a lizard into the hottest part of it, proclaiming that anyone who loves the youth enough to retrieve the lizard from the fire will restore his youth to him. Three people try and fail – the heavenly woman, the mother and the father. Following that, a plain girl who secr...
Read more

The Truckasarus Project

Image
When I was a young man, I had the svelte body of an athlete ... and I had a lot more hair ... and I took pretty girls on dangerous adventures to wild, remote places (where there were no toilets) ... and my vehicle of exploration was the most fantastic Toyota 4x4 pickup truck. From the desert beaches of Bahia San Luis Gonzaga, Baja California Sur, to the hang glider launch at King Mountain, Idaho, my beloved truck carried me to my most precious memories. I have been accurately diagnosed as a puer aeternus, a man with difficulty letting go of the paradise of childhood, Antoine de Saint Exupéry's "Little Prince." Venturing forth in my truck to explore some uncivilized place, to climb a remote granite upheaval, to fling myself off a mountain in my hang glider, to kayak around an island in the Sea of Cortez, was the adrenaline that made my bourgeois professional life bearable, and my truck was integral to my lifestyle, my very identity. In 93, my poor little truck was very tir...
Read more