Once, I was having a conversation with a female friend on Buddha’s life when she expressed her grudge towards Buddha for doing injustice with his wife and son. She was quite disappointed with his adopting a renunciant life after marriage and leaving his wife and son behind for having to achieve enlightenment. I had answers to her questions and doubts but seeing her fragile state of mind I chose to be quiet but this resistance, skepticism and annoyance towards the Great Being left me with a somber heart taking me towards deeper contemplation. She is not the only one who had disappointment but many people in our society do raise questions on the actions of the enlightened beings. Sharing a contemplation here for us as common man to develop faith.
There is nothing wrong with questioning for quenching our curiosity or clearing our doubts but when we try to gauge the lives of great beings with our limited minds and make them fit into social conventional parameters its difficult to get satisfied as these great beings are designed to be socially unconventional. That is the way they can themselves get out of the relative reality and thereby pave a path for the masses. Their life analysis needs an integrated approach not a fragmented view. That would not give us correct conclusions.
Few reasons which shows us that Buddha did not do injustice with his wife:
• When Buddha was Siddhartha prior to his enlightenment, he was quite inclined towards enlightenment. The suffering of mankind deeply affected him and he was determined to find a path to ease out the suffering of humanity.. Also when Siddhartha was born a Great Master had made predictions that he would be an ascetic and adopt the path of renunciant. His wife was his friend and a close family associate and happened to know his state of mind, nothing was hidden from her. Moreover she was also of compassionate nature and wanted to help her husband in this noble path.
• Sacrifice is the prime essence of lives of great men. Anyone we see in the history of mankind who have done some great work for mankind have actually made a high degree of personal sacrifice. What happens in the modern world our perspective gets coloured by instant material gratification and when we see sacrifice in the life of these men our desires, attachments starts to fall off which we don’t like and to protect that we raise questions on them. We get aggressive towards whatever we feel is trying to erode our attachments, isn’t that so ? Lets think about it!
• Transcending narrowness of perspective. Enlightenment is a process to move from small I to big I. From me to the world, micro to macro, individual self to great expanded self. So, it requires us to give up the narrowness of the perspective that we have.
• Buddhas wife, his son and lot of people of royal family took up the path of Dharma and surrendered to Sangha for protecting and spreading dharma in this world. They were enlightened too following His way and that is what they seeked. Buddha’s wife gave him the permission to leave the household for the greater good as at that time it was not possible to find a path staying within the household as he was the first one to go to the other side! The first person has to make some sacrifice for the rest of people behind him, in other religions of the world also we can identify a similar pattern. Now as we already have a founded path yes its not required for a married man ,a householder to leave his family behind, that would be seen as injustice and irresponsible attitude but at that moment when a great path was being established probably it was required!
Lets try to not judge them and adopt a deeper perspective towards them. They are living embodiments of virtues, compassion and benevolence and exist for the benefit of all sentient beings.
