Exiting the River: The Nature of the Path to Enlightenment
A woman named Patacara sat near the bank of a river pouring water over her feet. She watched as each little stream made it farther and farther, but eventually sank into the same ground, and in that moment she realized an essential teaching of the Buddha: It’s not the length of a life that’s important, but the path it travels. Each stream of water traveled the same path and found the same extinction, but this is the nature of water – it succumbs completely to its instincts. If you place a drop of water at the top of a string or release it into a river, it can’t help but follow the easiest path. This is why samsara is often referred to as a river. But human nature is endowed with choice – so released into a river, we can choose to swim. There is no penalty in this life for choosing to float leisurely down the river, and if you’ve only seen the water, this would be tempting. But sooner or later you’ll hit a rock – then another one, and another – and eventually you may come to realize that the ease of riding down stream is ultimately not worth the suffering. Then you may make the choice to leave the water. The Buddha called this choice the Eightfold Path. Many have embarked on this path, but few have understood its nature. In a raging river, reaching enlightenment requires you to recognize the dangers beneath the surface, decide to swim to the bank, and ultimately realize that the cessation of dukkha means you have the choice to leave the water.
The most powerful attachments yield the most debilitating suffering, so the Buddha taught that it is essential to see the two as indistinguishable. It is essential to see that addiction to something that once seemed beautiful is addiction nonetheless. Alcoholics call it admitting powerlessness. Buddhists call it wisdom. Both recognize it as the first step to recovery. However, often times those who’ve never seen dangerous rocks in the river – who’ve never had passion turn to ashes or attachments wither away – won’t understand the suffering inextricably linked to them, and thus the benefit that enlightenment can offer. Kisa-Gotami lost her child, a fate understood in most cultures throughout the world as the worst suffering imaginable. Within just a few days, Patacara lost two children, a husband, and nearly every other member of her family. They understood that their attachments to things that once brought them so much joy had ultimately left their worlds in pieces. Sudinna hadn’t felt this. In his life of relative luxury, he had never felt the pain of attachments breaking, and he didn’t have the cosmic maturity to understand the concept on a more fundamental level. He didn’t see the rocks in the river. Thus, his feet hit the eightfold path before his mind had taken the necessary steps to understand which way he needed to go.
Of course it’s possible embark on the path to enlightenment leaving a pleasant life behind, but the idea is that if there is no good left in your attachments – your cravings, your addictions – then it’s easier to decide to let them go. This decision is necessary for the cessation of dukkha. The Buddha taught that dukkha lies in the emptiness we inhabit between the things we strive for, but that ultimately can’t be attained together. This is illustrated vividly in the story of Patacara. When her husband died she was left on the bank of a river with two children and only enough energy to carry one to the other side. Unable to part with either, she carried one across then went back for the second. In the river she watched as a hawk carried off her eldest child, and turned in time to see the second fall into the raging waters. Then there she stood, alone, to face the worst suffering known in this world. To be enlightened, you must make a choice. For Kisa-Gotami to regain her sanity, she had to choose acceptance of her child’s death over the competing will to somehow heal him. Similarly, to be awakened, you must come to value enlightenment over the cravings you’ll have to give up to achieve it. Sudinna didn’t choose. When he slept with his wife, the monks said to Sudinna, “How can you, your reverence, while this dhamma is taught by the lord for the sake of passionlessness strive for passion?” This inherent contradiction was why the Buddha was so hard on him. Being a monk meant he had committed to a very specific path, but his actions evinced his indecision. He spent his life swimming upstream, reveling in the river but growing tired fighting against it, and never made the choice to swim to shore.
This is because Sudinna didn’t see it as an option. Many, like Sudinna, spend their lives swimming because they know they must fight the river but are blind to the banks on either side. This was the arduous life that the Buddha warned against in advocating for the middle path. Those who heard the dharma directly from the lips of the Buddha were often able to see the riverbanks quite clearly. Additionally, those like Patacara who’d been reborn countless times in the realms of humans and gods alike had a more profound understanding of the path as a whole. Sudinna didn’t see the banks. He didn’t have the opportunity to hear the buddhavacanna or the karmic history to better understand the path, and didn’t realize he had the choice to leave the river altogether. The decision he made to produce an heir to his family’s riches doesn’t make him a bad person. It just means that he didn’t fully understand the nature of the path that he’d chosen. He thought that being a monk meant he had committed to swimming against the river. But no one can swim upstream forever, and the moment you get tired and stop swimming against a river, it carries you away.
The Buddha argued that our lives are made up of countless addictions, to people, sensations, and to life itself. These addictions claim our sanity. They can leave us wandering aimlessly through the world like Patacara, and clinging to ousted flames like Kisa-Gotami, but they won’t at first. Thus the first step to enlightenment is to see the rocks that lurk beneath the shining surface of the river of samsara. With this wisdom, we must make the choice to leave them behind. No one is swimming in the same river. Some are docile, calmed by lifetimes of accumulated karma, and swimming is easy. Some rivers are meant to build the muscles you’ll need for future lifetimes. Like Sudinna, some are caught in the intermediate lives that don’t often appear in scriptures because they aren’t novel, but necessary and human. Some rivers are too powerful to swim against at all. Like Paracara and Kisa-Gotami, life can leave you drowning in a raging river of agony and despair. But if the waters lead you to the Buddha, his wisdom may carry you to the banks on either side. With this mindfulness you won’t have to swim anymore. Like the women, you will have beaten attachment, beaten suffering, beaten being itself, and may trade this world for the bliss of nirvana, never to be born again.
References
“Patacara” in Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns, 55-59. Translated by Mrs C.A.F. Rhys Davids & K.R. Norman. Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 1989.
“Defeat” in The Book of The Discipline, 21-38. Translated by I. B. Horner, M.A. London: Luzac & Company LTD, for The Pali Text Society.
“Kisa-Gotami” in Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns, 88-91. Translated by Mrs C.A.F. Rhys Davids & K.R. Norman. Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 1989.
