The Buddha and his son, Rahula
(source: wikimedia commons)
A lot of people don’t realize that the Buddha had a child.
In fact, I own a book called If The Buddha Had Kids. And when I first heard about mindful parenting as a new mother, I thought, “The Buddha would have felt a lot differently about this whole living in the moment crap if he’d had children!”
But the Buddha was a father. According to the Pali Canon, the son of the Buddha {or rather, the son of Siddhartha, for he was not yet the Buddha, the “awakened one”} was born on the very night that Siddhartha left his father’s palace in search of enlightenment and an end to suffering.
Upon the birth of his child, Siddhartha proclaimed, “A rahu [fetter] is born, an impediment has arisen.” The child was therefore named Rahula, or Fetter. {Another legend has it that he was named after a lunar eclipse (rahu) that occurred near the time of his birth.}
But many scholars attribute his son’s name, and Siddhartha’s departure on the night of his birth, to the recognition that the child -– and the attendant responsibilities of a householder –- would impede the search for enlightenment. His son would, in the words of religious scholar Karen Armstrong, “shackle him to a way of life that had become abhorrent.” He would form deep attachments that would cause deep suffering.
Siddhartha left during the night, without saying goodbye to his wife or even seeing his newborn son’s face, for his wife’s arm obscured the baby as they slept. While his actions may horrify us today, Siddhartha knew his wife and son would be well-cared for in his family’s palace – he wasn’t abandoning his wife in an isolated home in the suburbs.
This aspect of the Buddha’s life has always struck me as ironic in the context of mindful parenting, which is the practice of bringing mindful awareness {derived in part from the teachings of the Buddha} to parenting. Siddhartha would not return to see his son for seven years. He didn’t parent during those tough early years, the very years when his teachings so formatively shaped my parenting.
Even if parents today don’t name their children things like Shackle or CuteLoudCreatureThatSticksToMeLikeVelcroAndDoesn’tLetMeGoToTheBathroomByMyself, we can probably understand the likening of a child to a fetter, a restraint. Our carefree, child-free days are gone, and we now must reorganize our schedules, our sleep, our homes, and our lives around the needs of an eight-pound creature who demands our constant attention and vigilance.
As much as we love our children, we may also mourn the passing of our former life. We may feel trapped and confined. We might start reading and relating to books like I Just Want to Pee Alone and Go the F*ck to Sleep.
Though the Buddha’s reasons for feeling fettered by a child were different, I sometimes find this part of the Buddha’s story oddly comforting. Karen Armstrong, in her biography of the Buddha, describes Siddhartha’s disillusionment with the “petty tasks and pointless duties” that “sullied everything. Increasingly he had found himself longing for a lifestyle that had nothing to do with domesticity…” I know I’ve been there, fed up with household chores that can seem pointless and petty. It makes me feel better to know that EVEN THE BUDDHA WAS OVERWHELMED BY FAMILY LIFE.
While twenty-first century parents may also occasionally feel a desire to escape, we are not likely to take off and live with wandering ascetics for five years. But that doesn’t mean the Buddha’s parenting story is irrelevant. As modern parents, I think we can revisit this story of “a rahu is born,” seeing our children as fetters of a different sort, not as creatures that impede and shackle us, but that anchor us.
Our children anchor us to the present moment
Our children are much better at living in the present than we are. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg describes parenting as having “the potential to illuminate the most mundane moments of our lives.” Ruttenberg encourages us to look for those moments of “radical amazement,” that sense of absolute wonder and awe of the world that children actively cultivate and that many adults have long since abandoned.
I’m often amazed by the things that amaze my children, but are commonplace to me, like seeing a woodpecker pecking on a tree. The first time my daughter helped me cook dinner, she was fascinated by an onion.
Children tether us to the present: they bring us back to that state of wonder and newness and curiosity about the world that facilitates our moment-to-moment awareness. Our children are our mindfulness teachers.
Our children restrain our egos
My husband and I are successful, professional, multi-degreed adults. I know a lot about history and government and anthropology and psychology. So why can’t I answer my fourth-grader’s questions? Why don’t I remember the process by which trees release oxygen? {Something about chlorophyll? or is it chloroform?} Why can’t I remember what an idiom is?
I am amazed at how much I learn, and re-learn, now that my children are in school. I learn cool facts about dolphins and zebras, and the solar system, and cactuses {cacti?}, and Taylor Swift and Musical.ly… Clearly, I don’t know it all. But I love that my children tie me to a life of continual learning.
Our children are tethered to us
Part of the process of becoming a parent is accepting that our lives have changed. We are tethered, tightly (and literally) at first, with birth being the first of many separations. Soon holding them all the time gives way to them crawling, walking, running, dancing, and swimming. They go to playdates and preschool and elementary school and pretty soon they’re teenagers who want us to walk a minimum of 10 yards behind them.
Perhaps it’s not so much that children are our fetters as we are their anchors, the safe haven from which they gradually explore the world. They drift away in calm waters but find their way back during the storms. Though my children are still young, I already sense how soon my longings to have time to myself will turn into longings to have more time with my teenagers who are preparing to sail away.
The Buddha eventually returned to visit his family when his son was seven, the age my son is now. For all the rough moments during those early years, I cannot imagine the last decade without my now-not-so-little buddhas. I am fettered, tethered, and anchored to these delightful creatures.
You won’t find me wandering in the forest any time soon. I’m pretty sure my path to enlightenment is right here.
*****Top photo credit: Picture of Wallpainting in a Laotian monastery, from Wikimedia Commons
Bottom photo credit: Hintha, from Wikimedia Commons
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