Asoka, the Philosopher Emperor

The story of Siddhartha Gautama tells us he was a prince who for twenty-nine years was well guarded from the knowledge of pain, grief, sickness and death, and who, through his royal father’s especial care, was steeped in every conceivable earthly happiness. But the inevitable happened. Siddhartha saw pain, grief, sickness and death. Seized with the overmastering passion to solve the problem of human sorrow, he made the Great Renunciation — of his wife and child whom he loved so well, his princely estate, his worldly happiness — and wandered far and wide, seeking wisdom. Dissatisfied with what the sages of his day had to teach him, he at last looked within himself. Enlightenment dawned an him. With it came that mental serenity, that ineffable peace which he called Nirvana. He wondered far some days whether the wisdom he had won could or could not be given to men and women. Compassion triumphed, and the Buddha taught thereafter for five and forty years all who came to him.

On individual effort and individual realization he laid the emphasis, rejecting the authority of the priesthood, and the efficacy of ceremonies for individual salvation. He denounced the cruel limitations imposed by the formal observance of some caste rules. He pointed out that whatsoever emphasized the distinctions between one man and another merely increased egoism, and destroyed the growth of true individuality. The desire for asserting this ego, the illusory “I am”, the fleeting external garb mistaken far the true self, was the root cause of suffering, said the Buddha. As long as man made the mistake of regarding this ever-changing illusory manifestation compounded of matter, sense and mind as the stable, permanent reality, an unchanging “I am”, all his desires would be ego-centred, would conflict with the desires of some of those around him and inevitably beget sorrow. Such a man would always be the slave of the childish “I wish; I like; I want”, always at the mercy of his appetites and urges. All desire which was unexamined, undisciplined, unfaithful to the truth of life was the source of sorrow; and the cessation of such desire meant the extinction of sorrow and the beginning of true happiness through pure action. For this, it was necessary to look within.