The Trauma of Everyday Life

the heels of describing his delicate nature, the Buddha remembered the moment when he first caught sight of his ego, struggling to maintain its hegemony. He described his first inklings of insight and the first cracks in what a psychoanalyst would call his “false self.” He also made clear the connection between these insights and the dawning of his ability to relate sympathetically to others.
Whilst I had such power and good fortune, yet I thought: “When an untaught ordinary man, who is subject to ageing, not safe from ageing, sees another who is aged, he is shocked, humiliated and disgusted; for he forgets that he himself is no exception. But I too am subject to ageing, not safe from ageing, and so it cannot befit me to be shocked, humiliated and disgusted on seeing another who is aged.” When I considered this, the vanity of youth entirely left me.
I thought: “When an untaught ordinary man, who is subject to sickness, not safe from sickness, sees another who is sick, he is shocked, humiliated and disgusted; for he forgets that he himself is no exception. But I too am subject to sickness, not safe from sickness, and so it cannot befit me to be shocked, humiliated and disgusted on seeing another who is sick.” When I considered this, the vanity of health entirely left me.
I thought: “When an untaught ordinary man, who is subject to death, not safe from death, sees another who is dead, he is shocked, humiliated and disgusted, for he forgets that he himself is no exception. But I too am subject to death, not safe from death, and so it cannot befit me to be shocked, humiliated and disgusted on seeing another who is dead.” When I considered this, the vanity of life entirely left me. 4

    In later iterations, these reflections on the vanities of youth, health, and life were combined with other traditional stories to yield the more familiar tale of the future Buddha’s disillusionment with his overly protected world. In these later versions of his story, Gotama (the Buddha’s given name) was taken out beyond the palace walls by his charioteer Channa and on each occasion was confronted with aspects of life his protective father had prevented him from knowing. But it is interesting that this familiar story appears in the Pali Canon only in a legendary recounting of a
past
Buddha’s life story, never as part of the current Buddha’s history. Many scholars believe that the former Buddha’s story was recruited at a later time to explain the Buddha’s motivation for leaving home. But the above passage is the closest the traditional Canon comes to explaining his disillusionment with his protective upbringing, and it sheds a great deal of light on the Buddha’s inner predicament. There are obvious parallels between this passage and the traditional story of the Four Messengers, but the version in the Pali Canon points to the inner reflection the Buddha engaged in. He was clearly wrestling with himself and with the defensive shroud that had been thrown around him. He had been raised to think that trauma did not exist, that nothing out of the ordinary could ever happen to him, that he would always be maintained in his state of grace. But just beneath the surface was a trauma that had already taken place, one that his father was trying to forget and hoped the young child would never have to deal with. On one level, this is an unbelievable story, so gilded as to make it impossible to relate to. Who could reach the age of twenty-nine and never consider the possibility of old age, disease, or death? But on another level, the kind of denial that cloaked the Buddha is akin to that which we all use to live our lives without collapsing.
    Therapists who specialize in the treatment of trauma spell this out clearly. They speak of how trauma robs its victims of the “absolutisms” of daily life: the myths we live by that allow us to go to sleep at night trusting we will still be there in the morning. In their use of the word “absolutism” these therapists reveal an important link between ancient Buddhist philosophy and today’s psychotherapies. The Buddha, after his awakening, emphasized over and over again the contingent nature of the universe: the transient, chaotic, and impersonal flux he summarized in the sutra entitled “The Way of Putting Things as Being on Fire.” But before his awakening, as revealed in the passages about his delicate nature, he was a living example of the perils and promises of one who