Around this time of year, varying according to the calendar
in vogue, the day of the equinox and the fullness of the moon, birth and awakening are celebrated with particular joy and poignancy. Around this time, 2,576 years ago, was born a Nepalese
prince who, in his mid-thirties, would wake up to the illusory and painful
causes of suffering, and then teach the alleviation thereof. Around this time a half-dozen
centuries later, another mid-life sage would be publicly and
gruesomely tortured to death, and then (according to one version of his
biography), come back to life, again to show that existence beyond suffering is
possible.
Their suggested paths to end suffering might sound different
on the surface – the prince chose wisdom and compassion, the carpenter chose
love and humility. The semantics hardly matter (though the bulwarks since grown
up around them might have you believe otherwise). As Rumi explained, “There is but one light
that shines though many windows.”
And the light they both saw in their waking from dream-death, that both delivered with eloquent urgency to a self-suffering world, is available to all of us on the day of our own birth and in every moment hence. The Pali
Canon called it Right Protection:
By patience and forbearance, by a non-violent and harmless life, by lovingkindness and compassion does one in protecting others protect oneself.
