Hero’s Journey from the Prince to The Gautama — Becoming to Being
May 26, 2021: Full moon day, Lunar eclipse. How can it get better than that? More spiritual.
Got this in one my WA groups:
We celebrated 2565th Buddha Purnima.
As we celebrate #BuddhaPurnima, the day Siddhartha became the Buddha… the day he attained Nirvana.
When the Prince was born, it was predicted he would either become the Emperor or a great teacher. His father, the King wanted him to become the Emperor. Like all parents, the king wanted his son to succeed and bring more glory. He took all the necessary steps to keep the prince in the world, with all its Maya! Later, when Siddhartha went out on the chariot he saw
- A dead body
- A sick man
- An old man
Those triggers were more than enough for the young prince to respond to the Call to Adventure.
Thanks to the pandemic, we are getting so many such triggers:
Old, sick, dead are a few of them. Some of the triggers we are experiencing are very bold calls to adventure. As the author says, we avoid these calls citing different reasons
The hero begins in a situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown. According to Campbell, this region is represented by : a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of their own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father’s city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or they may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder… or still, again, one may be only casually strolling when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum, from every corner of the world. (Wiki)
The Buddha chose to respond to the Call to adventure and embarked on a Hero’s Journey.
Self-actualization need (Maslow) is a choice — Nirvana or #FullPotential or Sat-Chit-Ananda. Joseph Cambell reminds us, Follow your bliss!
In the end, only 3 things matter:
- how much you loved,
- how gently you lived, and
- how gracefully you let go.
May 26, 2021, was an important day personally too. Where am I on my Hero’s Journey? What is my excuse?
