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PSYCHOLOGY
When Everything in Life Seems Against You, Remember This
A powerful lesson spanning 2,500 years
What have an ancient Indian renunciate, a powerful Roman Emperor and a 20th-century psychiatrist got in common?
Well, for one thing, they all had more than their fair share of adversity and problems.
But more than that, their responses to adversity, and the life-changing lesson that each of them passed on to us, is strikingly similar.
Siddhartha Gautama was born into a royal family more than 500 years BCE. As a prince of the Shakya clan, he wanted for nothing. He was shielded from the adversities of life and provided with every luxury.
Yet he became deeply troubled by the inescapable fact that none of us, not even a royal prince, can escape old age, illness and death.
Secretly leaving the palace in the dead of night, Gautama cut off his hair, swapped his luxurious clothes for rags and became a wandering ascetic, determined to find a solution to the problem of suffering.
Through six long years of intense spiritual practice, including fasting, self-mortification, meditation and self-inquiry, he finally gained a deep insight into the universal problem of suffering. This insight freed him from…
