Simple

The first and final secret

Wheat Field with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh (source)

Before becoming the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama studies under the greatest ascetics and meditation teachers of his time. He masters their techniques, and each teacher, in turn, offers to make him his successor. But Siddhartha always moves on, disappointed. His fierce search for liberation takes him to the brink of death, but even then he remains trapped in the labyrinth of his own mind.

What finally points the future Buddha the way, in the midst of exhaustion and despair, is a childhood memory:

“I recall once, when my father the Sakyan was working, and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree [that I experienced] rapture & pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation…’

“Then following on that memory came the realization: ‘That is the path to Awakening.’”

Mahāsaccaka Sutta; MN 36

The first and final secret of liberation, nirvāṇa, the Kingdom of Heaven, the good life, or whatever we like to call it, may be this: that it is simpler than anything we might imagine. As simple as a child resting in the shade of a tree.

Whenever we stray from what is simple—may we return,

Simeon

“The Bright Field” — R. S. Thomas, from Collected Poems 1945–1990

Suggested Reading

Selected Poems by R. S. Thomas

“RS Thomas was the greatest religious poet writing in English in the 20th century... His poems are an expression of his lifelong argument with himself, of his insistent search for God… His is an urgent, prophetic and unique voice.” (Amazon book description)

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