What the Child Siddhartha Saw

As a child, Siddhartha one day looked out over some farmland. A man and his oxen were plowing a field. The birds were singing and the sun was shinning brightly.

"It's so beautiful here," Siddhartha thought. "The rows plowed in the field look like ripples on a lake."

He sat down and relaxed. But, as he watched the farmer and his oxen and looked closer at the plowed field he began to notice things he had not seen before.

Where the plow had cut rows in the soil, he saw the bodies of hundreds of small insects that had been killed by the bladed. He saw hundreds more running back and forth in confusion now that their homes had been destroyed.

He also noticed the birds were not just singing. They were watching and searching for food, swooping down to snatch up the frightened insects. And the smaller birds darted about in fear, terrified of the hawks who circled hungrily above them.

He notice the oxen labored heavily while trying to drag the heavy plow through the ground. The lash from the farmer's whip cut painful blisters into their sweating sides.

And the farmer, too, worked hard. Like the oxen, his rough and sun-burnt body glistened with sweat.

"Such a circle of misery," thought the young Siddhartha. "This farmer, his animals, the birds, and the insects all work all day trying to be happy and comfortable, to have enough to eat. But, in fact, they're constantly killing and hurting one another and themselves. How pitiful the world seems to me."

His young heart was filled with compassion for all the struggling creatures. It hurt his heat to see them all so desperately searching for happiness.

He walked into the trees and found a shading place under a rose-apple tree. He sat and began to meditate on what he had just witnessed. As he looked deeper and deeper into the nature of the struggling and the unhappiness he had witnessed, his mind became more concentrated and calm. He experienced a quietness unlike anything he had ever known before.

With his mind now at rest be began to consider, "Every living thing is searching for happiness. Yet most are so blinded by their ignorance and desires that they find nothing but unhappiness and even misery. Fear, disappointment, hunger, old age, sickness, death, these are the rewards they find for all their trouble and worry."

He sat longer.

"Now that I've seen this," he again thought, "I have no more interest in the small and the changeable pleasure of this world. I have to find something that will bring me lasting peace and happiness. But how can I be content to free only myself from this anxiety and stress? I have to figure out a way to help all other living creatures everywhere. I have to search for a way to end all this unhappiness and stress and then share it with everyone."