Ok, I’m going to pretend the last couple of posts didn’t happen…
so, I was thinking the other day and I was going to use a fictional
character to make my point when, I realized that a real person would
make the same case as a fictional person…… so, I am offering up
a case to be made for a certain type of person/action……
I have studied up on the Buddha and I noticed that his life was
a normal life for a prince, soon to be king… he was educated and trained
to be king one day, from a young age……
then because he saw the three aspects of life which are the cause
of suffering, sickness, old age and death…he wanted to
eliminate suffering from this world and so he spent time
as an adult trying to understand how to end suffering…
so, you have two aspects of the Buddha’s life, the following the path
that was expected of him as prince, soon to be king… he followed
society’s expectations of what a prince was… just as we follow expectations
of what our role is in society…given our status in the social/economic/political
realm that exists in our respected countries…
and the second path was when he was 29, that is the traditional age given,
that he turned to following the path to enlightenment…
he gave up, walked away from the expectations that he was supposed to follow
of being a prince, soon to be king… he search for enlightenment, which is
something that a prince does not do…he walked away from the expectations
that he was supposed to follow as prince… he followed his own heart, as it were…
and in the end, he found enlightenment and founded a new religion…
which was certainly not the expectations he had placed upon him
from birth…….
we have another person who walked away from expectations and became
something else… We have Jesus… he was born a Jew and he was expected to
live out his life as a Jew… and for the Jewish people nothing is more sacred
then obeying the law… the Jewish religion is about obeying the law of god…
and if we read about Jesus, he lived a typical Jewish life, although we don’t
know what happened between the ages of 12 and 30… but I for one,
am willing to bet the farm on the fact that he lived his life as a typical
Jewish man living in Judah the first century………he worked as a carpenter
and most likely lived at home… with mom pushing him to date and marry
and carry on the family name within the Jewish tradition……
living and working and then finally dying as just another Jewish person
during that time period………
but why he began his ministry, we don’t know… but I can guess…
he had heard stories about his fabled childhood… what person can
lead a traditional, long-established ancestral life that was expected of him,
given the stories of his birth…it must give one pause…
how does one live up to those stories of birth by
leading a traditional, ancestral life?
I for one, don’t know how………
so at some point, he left his traditional, established, sanctioned life
and began a new path… Just like the Buddha… he found a path outside
of the norm, of what was expected of a typical male in his time and place…
He left being Jesus and became the savior…… a path few take…
and what may have drove him to take this extraordinary path/road?
He couldn’t have been happy or satisfied or pleased with his life…
because happy, satisfied, pleased people don’t walk away from what
is expected and/or sanctified by society…they carry out their duties
as is expected of them by society…they work, they marry and have babies
and grow old together and then die… that is the expected path
of people in every society… to follow the established norm of what the
society expects…and to follow the path that every other person follows
and is expected to follow…
But Jesus didn’t and the Buddha didn’t…
and if we carry this to our modern world, we see this of Gandhi… he tried
to follow the path that was expected of him… he became a lawyer…
and tried to follow the expected, social norm that every person of India
is expected to follow… just as we Americans expect people in America
to follow the established norms and traditions of our society……
and we see that Martin Luther King also begin the path of expectations
and soon began to travel the less traveled road… of fighting injustice
wherever he found them and what of his expected path? Of being a preacher
and preaching the word of god? He didn’t really follow that path, did he?
had MLK followed tradition and was simply a preacher who preached in
a church and minister to the needs of his flock… we would have never
heard of MLK… He would have died an old man and well loved preacher,
but he wouldn’t have found his calling in life had he played it safe and was
simply a preacher in a church…
If you name me someone who is famous, I can probably guess that person
became famous not by following the given expectations of his family or
of his society… they probably did something that was beyond, outside
of the expectations that their society and their families had for them……
Greatness is not found in obeying and leading social or family expectations,
but in overcoming those expectations and becoming something different…
Lincoln was a simple country lawyer who could have stayed as a country
lawyer and made a name for himself and some money and he would
have been respected and admired by the people of Springfield ILL…
but he rose above and beyond the expectations of his society and
his family by becoming president………
the path to becoming and to become great, doesn’t lie within
following expectations of society or friends or family…
it is an infinitely harder path to follow…
take another name, an “evil” name, Adolph Hitler…….
his path, the path he wanted to follow was to be a painter…
he tried to enter a couple of schools of painting and was rejected…
How history would have changed had he been accepted and became
a painter……to follow a path that was traditional and accepted by society…
it might have been frowned upon within certain circles, but it was still
an accepted path within society……
but think of his future… where instead he became the “Furhrer”…
that path was definitely not part of the established and socially
accepted path within society… no one grows up with the approval
of society that suggests that they become a dictator…
Hitler traveled the less travel path and created destruction
and chaos throughout the world… a less traveled path…
and without the approval of society…
it is important to note the life path of those who have changed
and created the modern world…they stood outside of the normal
standard path that society “deems” useful and important…
following the traditional, established, sanctioned life doesn’t lead
one to find new paths or to greatness or to becoming…….
it is only by overcoming what is expected and established,
that one can achieve true and lasting achievements
and accomplishments………
to find a role model requires one to find a role model who
overthrew the establish order and the traditional order of things…
be the Buddha and walk away from the traditional and established
existence that is meant for you…… become the Buddha by
engaging in an existence that lies outside of the traditional
and established path of society…
become something more……
Kropotkin