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The Price of LiberationAn Eminent Buddhist Scholar Asks: How "Middle" was the Buddha's Middle Way? by Peter Masefield articleIt is always intriguing to wonder what the founder of what was to become, sometime after his death, a major world religion, might think were he to witness the way in which hisoriginal teachings had come to be understood, and practiced, by much later generationswith different cultural backgrounds in other parts of the globe.In the case of Christianity, one may wonder what Jesus might have thought, had hissecond coming, so eagerly anticipated by the early Church, actually materialized. Whatwould the man who upturned the tables of the moneylenders in the temple make of theopulence of the Vatican, or Muhammad of the present-day ayatollahs in Iran and theTaliban in Afghanistan?Or what might the Buddha, a man who rejected the household life in favor of the life of arecluse living in the jungle on the fringe of society, make of the fact that the essentiallymonastic movement that he founded had become, at least as practiced in the West in thelate twentieth century, an essentially lay movement amongst those whose domesticresponsibilities ensured that their adherence to the path could be at best a halfhearted, and part-time, affair?In the Buddha's own day, for instance, when asked by Sariputta, the Buddha's chief disciple, whether he had been diligent in matters spiritual, his lay brahmin* follower Dhananjani complained:How could I be diligent, good Sariputta, when there are my parents to support, my wifeand children to support, my slaves, servants, and work people to support, when there areservices to perform for friends and acquaintances, services to perform for kith and kin,services to perform for guests, rites to perform for the ancestors, rites to perform for thegods, duties to perform for the kingand this body too must be satisfied and looked after!to which Sariputta replies:What do you think about this, Dhananjani? Suppose someone failed to live the holy life because of a need to support his parents, his wife and children, his slaves, servants andwork people, because there were services to perform for friends and acquaintances,services to perform for kith and kin, services to perform for guests, rites to perform for the ancestors, rites to perform for the gods, duties to perform for the king, as well ashaving a body that had to be looked after. Because of this failure, the guardians of NirayaHell might drag him off to their hell. Would he gain anything by saying: "I failed to livethe holy life because of a need to support my parents and so forth"?to which Dhananjani finally responds:
 
 No, good Sariputta, for the guardians of Niraya Hell would hurl him wailing into NirayaHell itself. (M II 186f)This is not to say that lay-followers of the Buddha were unknown in his day, nor to saythat there were not certain persons who, though attaining liberation, opted to remainhouseholders to no apparent detriment, but it has to be conceded that the practicesadvocated by the Buddha were those intended almost exclusively for those who hadremoved themselves from the household circle in favor of a nomadic life of asceticism inthe jungles of northern India. Indeed, on one occasion, when Anathapindika, a lay-supporter whose generosity to the Buddha and his monastic followers had known no bounds, was informed, on his deathbed, by the Buddha's chief disciple Sariputta, that heshould train himself not to grasp after objects of the world and the feelings to which suchgrasping gives rise, Anathapindika, somewhat justifiably, retorted:Although the Teacher and the monks who were developing their minds visited me for along time, I have never yet heard esoteric talk such as this,to which Sariputta replies:Esoteric talk such as this, householder, does not occur for householders clad in white. It isfor those that have gone forth, householder, that esoteric talk such as this occurs. (M III2600)Let us, therefore, without further ado, take a fresh look at what was really going on in the jungles of northern India in the fifth century B.C.E., and to what extent the practices of modern lay Buddhists in the West reflect the original ideals.As is well known, the Buddha is said to have taught a "middle way"a middle way between, on the one hand, addiction to sense-pleasures and, on the other, addiction toself-mortification. Why he should have done so begins to make better sense when viewedagainst the background of his own life experiences before becoming enlightened.Tradition has it that the Buddha was the son of a local chieftain in northern India. When asoothsayer summoned to forecast the child's future predicted that he would become auniversal monarch were he to remain a layman, but a Buddha were he to renounce theworld and go forth, his father, hoping his son would remain a layman and subsequentlysucceed him, shielded the child from all life's ills, surrounding him with every possibleluxury.One day, however, the Buddha-to-be managed to sneak out of the palace without theguards noticing, where he encountered four signs: a sick man, an old man, a corpse, and areligious recluse. Quick to realize that he, too, was subject to sickness, old age, and death,he soon after abandoned his wife and first-born for the solitary life of an ascetic in the jungle, where he practiced a life of severe self-mortification for six years, hoping to finda solution to the problem of man's mortality which had so shocked him. At times he wentabout naked, flouting life's decencies, eating one meal a day, then once every second day,until he was one to eat only once a fortnight. And when he did so, he ate potherbs or 
 
millet or wild rice or grass or cowdung. At other times he wore coarse hempen cloths, or rags taken from the dust-heap. He plucked out the hair of his head and beard, lay on a bedof thorns. The dust and dirt that accumulated on his body fell off in lumps, as he sat up allnight in the open, both in the times of snowfall and the hot months of summer, and over the years his body became so emaciated that his skin clung to his skeleton, and he almostdied before realizing that this was not the way to the goal he was seeking any more thanhis former life of luxury had been. (M I 77ff)He was, of course, not alone in opting for such austerities. Rather, it is clear that such practices were common amongst the religious drop-outs of his day, such as the Jains, whohad similarly rejected the luxurious, opulent lifestyle of the small religious elite thatcontinually increased its wealth and consolidated its power by officiating at ever moreelaborate sacrificial rituals paid for by the laity. The fact is that by the time of the Buddhalarge numbers of such ascetics were to be found living on the fringe of a society whichlargely despised them.That the Buddha finally abandoned these practices in favor of a middle way between theabove two extremes did not mean that the middle way that he advocated was not austereitwas just less austere than those earlier practices to which he had once been committed.Indeed, the nomadic lifestyle that the Buddha advocated for his monastic community,once he had become enlightened, was no easy one: with nothing but a ragged robe for  protection from biting insects, cold nights, and monsoon rain, and with a diet consistingofwhen luckymere discarded scraps and leftovers, his fellow monks were obliged to leada fiercely austere lifestyle, isolated from society in the depths of the jungle, where theywould sleep little, if at all. Monastic rules dictated every moment of waking life: monkswere obliged, except when discussing the Buddha's teachings, to maintain the "ariyan**silence," whilst they were also told how they should walk, stand, or sit, how they shouldurinate or defecate, and when and how they should sleep. It was not even open to themonk to decide when he should eatand when he did so eat, he was obliged to mix upeverything he had managed to receive in his almsbowl into an unpalatable mass, and thenconsume same in small lumps, all the time noting, as he did so, that he was only eating inorder to sustain his body until liberation was achieved.It comes as little surprise that those practicing such an existence were not envied by their contemporaries. Nor were they even admired:Monks, this is the meanest of callings, this of an almsman. A term of abuse in the world isthis, to say ‘You scrap-gatherer! With bowl in hand you roam about'. (It 89)It was held by many in the Buddha's society that those who adopted such a lifestyle haddone so through fear of kings or robbers, through debt or having lost their relatives or means of livelihood (M II 66, It 89) and perhaps for this reason alone the Satanic figureof Mara*** had no difficulty in causing house-holders to revile, abuse, vex, and annoymonks by persuading such householders that:
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