Originally Posted by
Stephanie
As for the Buddha abandoning his family... it wasn't as if they didn't have a huge support network, he wasn't leaving them destitute. He had things that were more important to him than being there with his family... and I can respect that. Procreation and biological nurturance versus establishing a teaching that has immeasurably changed the world for the better... we all like to think that nothing is more important than our families, but I don't agree. If my father abandoned me in order to be able to devote himself to the furtherance of humanity, I could quite easily forgive him that... it's a very different scenario than abandoning a family to pursue some hedonistic end.
Of course all of this has the benefit of hindsight... the Buddha didn't know what impact his leaving his family home would have. But even if he had failed... I can understand that level of commitment, of drive... it's sometimes the biggest beef I have with the practice atmosphere at Treeleaf, that people don't have that kind of passion, that they would be willing to leave everything to know the truth. Thank goodness the Buddha was not so lukewarm about his question that he put it on the shelf for the sake of raising Junior. It's an example I can learn from... as someone who is always putting this practice, this great matter, on a shelf in order to focus on some worldly issue.
It actually makes me think of Luke 14:26 ("If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple"), which always used to confound me as a strange teaching. But I understand it now, at least in the context of my own Zen practice... if you're not willing to put everything on the line to know the truth, you are doomed to make compromises and justifications that will get in the way of your knowing it.
I don't think it's necessary to leave one's family... but I think the willingness has to be there.