The Trauma of Everyday Life

situations, the absolutisms of daily life were upended and intolerable emotions took center stage. And in both situations a similar therapeutic intervention was needed to deal with the “singularity” of the event. Both my patient’s daughter and the heroine of the Buddhist fable felt split off from the consensual reality of other people. They were both anguished and alone and in need of a greater understanding.
    The Buddhist story is of a young woman of the Buddha’s time named 9 (pa-
ta
-char-a) whose losses approach the limits of the imagination. The beautiful daughter of a wealthy- merchant, * was confined to the top floor of her seven-story home when she was sixteen to prevent her from getting involved with men. Despite this measure (or perhaps because of it), she fell in love with one of her family’s servants. When her parents decided to marry her off to a man of their choosing, she disguised herself as a servant girl and ran away with her lover to a faraway village, where her young husband farmed a small piece of land for them. Soon pregnant,begged her spouse to take her back to her parents’ home to give birth, explaining to him that her mother, seeing her with child, would forgive her and accept their union. When her husband refused, afraid that he would be arrested or killed, she set out by herself. He followed, they argued, she delivered her baby boy before she could reach her ancestral home, and, seeing no point in returning to her parents once she had given birth, she returned to her adopted village with her husband.
    Some time later, the sequence repeated itself. Pregnant for a second time,set out for her parents’ home carrying her young son. Her husband followed, caught up to her about halfway there, and tried to convince her, to no avail, to return home with him. An unexpected storm arose suddenly, lashing them with rain and frightening them with thunder and lightning, andwent into early labor. She asked her husband to find a place where she could give birth, and he went off to look for wood with which to build her a shelter. Chopping down some saplings, he was bitten by a poisonous snake hiding in an anthill and died.gave birth alone in the midst of the storm and set out in the morning with her two children to look for her husband, discovering his corpse as she turned a bend in the road. Blaming herself for his death, she proceeded on toward-, and her parents’ house.
    On her way she came to a river swollen from the recent storm. Its waters were waist high and there was a strong current. Unable to wade across with both children in her arms, she left the older boy on one bank and ferried her baby across first. Placing him on the far bank, she returned to get her older son. Halfway back to him, she saw a hawk swoop down from the sky and pluck her baby from his resting place on the far bank. Stuck in the middle of the river,could only scream as she watched the great bird fly off with the infant in its claws. Hearing her cry, her eldest son mistakenly thought she was calling for him, and he jumped into the river to try to come to her. The current was too strong for him and quickly swept him away.
    But even this was not the end for. More suffering awaited her. Like Kisagotami having lost her infant baby,was, by now, completely traumatized. As she came to the outskirts of her parents’ town, she encountered a traveler coming in the other direction. She asked if he knew her family and he reacted with alarm. “Ask me about any other family but that one,” he said. The previous evening, in the sudden storm, the family’s house had collapsed, killing both the elderly couple and their remaining son. “There,” he said, pointing to a pale blue wisp of smoke in the distance. “If you look where I am pointing you can see the smoke from their funeral pyre.”collapse was complete. “Those who saw her called her a crazy fool, threw rubbish at her, and pelted her with clods of earth, but she continued on until she reached the outskirts of-.” 10
    The Buddha, of course, was residing nearby, surrounded by a number of disciples. He recognized her as “one who was ripe for his message of deliverance” and, against the advice of those around him who cautioned him to keep his distance from the crazy woman, he beckoned her toward him. “Sister,” he cried. “Regain your mindfulness!” And, although it is not clear how she even knew what he was talking about (perhaps he said something more like