Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:
Buddha as Archetype
[We can] view the Buddha as a fundamental archetype of humanity; that is, as the full manifestation of buddha-nature, the mind that is free of defilement and distortion, and understanding his life story as a great journey representing some basic archetypal aspects of human existence. By viewing the life of the Buddha... as a historical person and as an archetype, it becomes possible to see the unfolding of universal principles within the particular content of his life experience. We can then view the Buddha's life not as an abstract, removed story of somebody who lived twenty-five hundred years ago, but as one that reveals the nature of the universal in us all. This becomes a way of understanding our own experience in a larger and more profound context, one that connects the Buddha's journey with our own. We have undertaken to follow the same path, motivated by the same questions: What is the true nature of our lives? What is the root cause of our suffering?
~ Joseph Goldstein, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book.
I like this approach. Buddha was a human being just like any of us.
He undertook the same hero's journey that is available to each of us. Most simply, the journey has three phases:
1) Buddha left his life of wealth and comfort in search of truth (separation)
2) He sought teachers and masters to impart their wisdom to him, culminating in his realization of the Middle Path, and his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree (initiation)
3) Upon his illumination and realization of the truth, he began his career as the Buddha, teaching all who would hear the truth he had discovered (return)
Joseph Campbell broke it down even further in his monomyth:
Campbell's insight was that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years, all share a fundamental structure. This fundamental structure contains a number of stages, which includes
- A call to adventure, which the hero has to accept or decline
- A road of trials, regarding which the hero succeeds or fails
- Achieving the goal or "boon", which often results in important self-knowledge
- A return to the ordinary world, again as to which the hero can succeed or fail
- Applying the boon, in which what the hero has gained can be used to improve the world
Because the monomyth is an archetype, it is available to all of us. Each person can choose to follow this path, test the Buddha's injunctions, and discover their own truth about the nature of samsara.
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