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TEACHINGS | EASTERN HORIZON 19

funny—the point of stressing the reality of aging, illness, a miasma, a soup of reality we’re drowning in. But the
and mortality is not to make people depressed. It’s a thing is—whether we realize it or not—by tuning into
way to remind people of the nature of reality: everything this suffering, we are living out a form of the Buddha’s
ages and eventually passes away. This is, of course, true teaching. Confronting your aging, the possibility of
for every human being who ever lived. It doesn’t matter sickness, and the inevitability of death, makes you a
whether you’re rich or poor, powerful or powerless. natural Buddhist. There’s wisdom to be had in delving
into all aspects of your aging being—not just now, in a
For many of us today, the truth of mortality is harder time when aging makes one even more prone to death
to avoid than it’s ever been in our lifetimes. The global by COVID-19—but always.
coronavirus pandemic is a reality we most definitely
cannot deny or avoid. I find it useful to think about I believe that when you come face-to-face with your
COVID-19 as a “lightning bolt” moment—a moment of mortality—whether you’re meditating or not, whether
realization not unlike the Buddha’s first encounters with you’re calm or not—you’re actually practicing the
old age, sickness, and death. Buddha’s core teaching. Now that we’re putting on
masks and gloves and standing six feet apart, our fear
The story of the young Siddhartha Gautama, before of death is constantly activated. But these consistent
he became the Buddha, leaving his father’s palace and reminders that we are subject to impermanence can
encountering an old man, a sick man, and a dead man, serve as helpful reminders to practice Buddhism as the
reads like a fairy tale. It almost certainly isn’t literally Buddha did—by facing our fears of old age, sickness,
true, but it’s psychologically profound. When the and death with courage and the desire to alleviate our
Buddha was born, there had been a prophecy made that suffering and the suffering of others.
he would either grow up to be a great king or a great
spiritual leader. His father, a ruler himself, did not want The article is excerpted from a talk given by Lewis
his son to go down the spiritual path, so he prohibited Richmond in his Tricycle online course, Aging as a
the young Gautama from ever leaving the palace so that Spiritual Practice. Find out more about this six-week
he would never see anything that might distress him. exploration of growing older as a pathway to insight and
But eventually the Buddha’s curiosity compelled him to psychological growth at learn.tricycle.org. EH
sneak out from the palace grounds, along with his loyal
servant, Chandra.

The first thing he saw was a person who was sick. He
asked, “Chandra, what, what’s the matter with the
person?” And Chandra said, “Well, that person is ill.
They’re ill, that’s illness.” The same thing happened when
he saw an old person and corpse: two more moments of
the Buddha encountering our inescapable reality. Yet the
fourth person the Buddha saw was a monk with a serene
countenance, which awakened him to the possibility that
there is a way to see past these harsh truths of death,
disease, and aging.

With the coronavirus, we’ve partially returned to the
same world that the Buddha lived in, which is a world of
uncertainty, fear, and anxiety. It may seem like we’re in