Siddhartha’s Quest: The Birth of Yearning

We live in an uncertain universe. Even the occurrences one takes for granted, like, say, the sun rises every morning, are inflicted by the hydra-headed claws of uncertainty. Though the scientific community maintains that their deductions are unshakeable and eternal, the truth, which Hume rightly observed centuries ago, is that all empirical conclusions are but wobbly-feeted offsprings of questionable premises. Based on this, however, one can not disqualify sciences entirely. In any case, if pressed to comment the veteran Hume would announce in his thick, fibrous voice, emphasizing the shaky foundations of scientific inquiries, “Yes, ladies and gentleman, we’ve no method to demonstrate with certainty why the sun must rise the next morning.”

The discussion on whether the sun must rise does not matter, at least not until the sun actually ceases to show up the following day. For this reason, this concern can be brushed aside as of now though not the lesson drawn from the observation that even the conclusions of scientific importance can be brought into the inexorable glare of skepticism. After all, straining our skeptical mind on scientific foundations is bound to throw this inquiry into disarray.

What little one knows about the world springs from the armor of scientific methods and one can’t, it is true, make any progress by completely eliminating every possible route that leads to truth. Acknowledging that our knowledge is grounded on shaky foundations, one must then proceed to direct one’s gaze at the real world, at, for instance, the sunset dazzling the swan in the lake, or the full moon shimmering serenely in the beloved’s eyes.

One must note that the same moon whose aesthetic glow mesmerizes us on clear nights is, in fact, hurtling away in the empty space at a reckless speed. Like it, our Earth too, while we go through our lives with the complacency of sleepwalkers, is flying around the sun at a wild velocity and could, at any moment, veer away from its path and plunge into the abyss. That the Earth is revolving around the sun is a scientific fact. However, the possibility that at any moment it could disappear into oblivion is also not an entirely unlikely event. In a way science, though it has, no doubt, inspired our civilization to an unimaginable glory, has not managed to cure our perennial dread of mortality. In fact, after removing humanity from the centre of the universe and thrusting us on a sphere hurtling in space, it has further intensified human’s longing for immortality.

Amid this indigenous dread of death, which has been there since time immemorial, and the desire to latch onto something eternal, a flaming emotion is born in the human soul. This emotion is yearning.

Schopenhauer was right when he wrote, “Humans are the only creature that is surprised by his existence.” Indeed one has never seen any other species immerse into the investigations of reality, or to contemplate death with the intensity of humans. Of course, one can not get into the brain of other animals and therefore can not for certainty know if they really do ruminate on death. However, from the actions of these animals, which, unlike humans, suffer from the perennial dearth of scientific or philosophical methods, it is clear that the animals do not share the yearning of humans.

Human yearning mostly springs from the dread of death, and this yearning, though manifested in innumerable shades, is commonly expressed as the desire to find eternal truth about life. Since time immemorial humans have launched their metaphysical quest for truth. Even the writers of Upanishad, a book written by ancient sages thousands of years ago, is brimming with this desire to understand death. In Nachiketa, one of the characters of the Upanishad, this yearning manifests with burning intensity. Even when Yama, the emperor of death, tries to dissuade him from penetrating the depths of death with the offers of richness and luxury, the young seeker insists with feverish force to continue on his quest to understand the eternal.

However, this yearning force is not only associated with understanding death, though, of course, mostly it originates through the realization of one’s fleeting existence and the desire to hold onto an eternal truth. One of the greatest knights of yearning is Siddhartha, the Buddha, who went on to drink that rare honey of enlightenment.

Siddhartha, the prince of a state in Lumbini and who lived around 6th century BCE, was an unusually sensitive man. He was conscious of the sufferings of other animals and humans from an early age. When later he came across the sights of sick people followed by dead individuals, his heart was shattered and the fire of yearning, already alive in his soul, transformed into a raging, seething flame. So powerful was this blazing inferno of yearning that he abandoned his kingdom, his beautiful wife and his son at the blossoming age of 29. One can imagine him standing at the threshold of his bedroom, looking at his son for one last time and battling against the warm pull of family life and that tormenting flame lodged in his soul.

That night, the fire of yearning triumphed in Siddhartha. He spent years wandering the forests, seeking that truth which would bring him to peace with reality. Where do all sufferings come from? Why do we die? Almost seven years later, the tormented Siddhartha, after years of unremitting quest, had managed to snatch the eternal and feel it in his soul. The young seeker had harnessed the inferno of his soul, his yearning had found peace, and he had become the Buddha.

What one sees in Siddhartha is the manifestation of yearning at a highest degree. In fact, the universe, in its long course of years, has managed to express its pulses in humans who want to feel her throb through their conscious effort. Siddhartha stands as an epitome of this effort, who felt the storm so powerfully that he relinquished everything to embrace the eternal truth of existence which not even sciences, grounded as it is on shaky foundations, can not guarantee.

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