The Enlightenment of the Buddha

The Buddha wasn’t just coming from the need to deal with a stressed-out mind. He wasn’t maladjusted because he had a bad childhood. He was coming from a very deep place of questioning. That kind of model is very different from the kind of searching for ease that you often find in Western Buddhism. His questioning came from a very deep place. When the Buddha attained enlightenment, he remembered eons of his past lives. When you think of things in that way, you get a sense of the hopelessness of this endless chain of rebirths. You can see the profundity of the Buddha’s questioning.