Under the Rose Apple Tree

I’d like to share a story with you. When Siddhartha, the future Buddha, was a child he went with his family to the annual planting festival, which took place in spring when the farmers were preparing to sow the year’s crops. It was an important event for the whole community. Local farmers and villagers would come from all around to celebrate. The highlight of the ceremony was the ritual plowing of the first furrow. Only after this official opening of the planting season, and the blessing of the crops, would local farmers begin to sow their fields.

During one of these planting ceremonies young Siddhartha was playing happily with his friends in the fields when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. As the plow cut through the soil to make a furrow he saw how much life was being disrupted and destroyed while preparing the field. He saw little bugs running for safety as the plow disrupted their peaceful existence and worms cut in two by the sharp blade. He saw confused little beetles and other burrowing beings thrust to the surface and the little creatures that used to be on the surface buried down below. As their worlds were flipped upside down they seemed agitated and disoriented. So many beings were suffering.

Deeply moved by this experience, young Siddhartha left the festivities and sat by himself under a rose apple tree to think about what he had seen. It struck him that in order to simply live it was necessary to eat and walk from one place to another, activities that created great distress and even ended the lives of other beings. He realized that just to survive on this earth we inevitably cause other beings to suffer. No matter how kind we may try to be, we can’t avoid it. We could stop eating meat, we could wear screens over our faces and sweep the path before us as we walk like the Jains, but still we cannot go through a day without causing harm to other living beings.

This profoundly disturbing realization inspired young Siddhartha to begin his personal search to understand the nature and cause of suffering. The question tormented him- why is there so much suffering in this world? Can anything be done about it? The awareness of suffering deeply touched his heart and awakened his kindness to the core. This was to be the insight that changed the course of his life and led to all his future teachings.

It's funny how our lives can change unexpectedly in a moment. Many of us have had such a moment. The meditation teacher Adyashanti talks about being stopped in his tracks like this when he was a young boy on the playground of his school. I remember a moment of awakening when I was a little girl under a lemon tree. Some of us remember these moments and for others this tender awareness has become buried by other memories.  Still, remembering it or not, our initial awareness of the inevitable suffering in life has made many of us set foot on the path, looking for our own answers as to why simply living entails so much suffering.

These days we are acutely aware of the suffering all around us and may feel helpless to stop it. We are collectively waking up to the suffering caused by humans through awareness of wars on distant shores, wars that were previously too far away for us to know about. With media ever present, we see our fellow humans suffering in the middle East, in Africa, in the Ukraine, in Syria, in ghettos, school rooms and hospitals. The pictures of suffering children tug at our hearts. It can be overwhelming. On top of that there is our personal everyday suffering of aging, sickness and loss. Try as we may, we are powerlessness to prevent even a fraction of this suffering, even if we become vegetarians, even if we send money to causes we believe in or work at homeless shelters. No matter what we do, the suffering is bottomless and our actions only seem to make a slight dent in this chasm.

Like many others I came to spiritual practice in an attempt to end my personal suffering. But as my inquiry deepens I can see that suffering is a feature of life to be used wisely, not a bug to be afraid of. Trying to get rid of suffering is a hopeless task leading only to discouragement. Rather, it can be a natural resource which, when used wisely, leads to many gifts. After all, without suffering there is no empathy.

I honestly don’t know why suffering is so essential to the process of awakening. But, for some reason, it is the glue that connects us to one another and to all beings. When we acknowledge our mutual suffering we realize we are not alone, we are all in this together. Out of his rose apple tree insight Siddhartha began a journey that would lead him to becoming a Buddha. We are all becoming Buddhas with suffering pointing the way.