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James Rose

Buddha - A Story of Enlightenment

by Deepak Chopra

Hodder, HK$176

The past few decades haven't been among the most spiritually attuned in  history, especially in western countries. Rarely has the spiritual element of life been so under fire.

As such,  Deepak Chopra sets a bold agenda when he seeks to delve into the life of   Buddha. But this is  no epic treatment of a cosmic giant.  Chopra approaches the being many see as a god as a mere  mortal who achieved  something we all have the potential for.

Siddhartha Gautama, the  man who would be Buddha,  was born a prince sometime between the fifth and six centuries  BC in  what's now Nepal. His father,  Suddhodana,  pained by the loss  of Siddhartha's mother while  the child was a baby, resolved to protect his son from all worldly  pain. Siddhartha was pampered  and cosseted as a result.

Gradually, Siddhartha stumbled on examples of human suffering, which he  found intriguing and which spoke to him with a voice  he hadn't heard before: the voice  of shared pain.  In his mid-30s,  Siddhartha  decided to leave his  wife, Yashodhara, and  infant son and set off into the outer world as  a mendicant monk.

Things  went badly at first and Siddhartha struggled to maintain  his vows to himself and  continue  his expedition into the inner world of the human experience. He suffered greatly, pined for his family and came close to death more than once.

Eventually, Siddhartha gained enlightenment and came to realise that the potential to reach the highest state of human existence - Nirvana - is within each  one of us.  As such, Siddhartha, who eventually became known as the Buddha -  the Enlightened One - began to advocate a  revolutionary concept: we are all Buddha.

Buddha is an improvement on Chopra's earlier fiction. However, the pacing falters and the great themes struggle to rise above  the prose. Much is given to the  early life and adolescence of Siddhartha, yet much more could have been made of   his struggle  with himself and his demons on  the path to  enlightenment.

Although Chopra seeks to present the Buddha story as real  life, the characters move with  divine gravitas. The evil Devadatta  and Siddhartha's boyhood  friend Channa are among those whose motivations Chopra struggles to portray.

These characters are mere pinions to the larger cogwheel of Siddhartha and  the main character   lives and breathes through the  text. This is a man troubled by  pain, both his own and that of others, and who is a  seeker of solutions to humanity's ills.

All too humanly, Siddhartha waxes and wanes in this tale of  the soul, and Chopra  tracks the evolution of his growing beliefs - such as those now known in Buddhist texts as the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path - and his physical and mental approach to life and learning.

It's difficult to accept Buddha  as non-fiction, as the publisher describes it, yet its veracity and  its historical worth may not be  its most valuable legacies. For all seeking to better understand the human landscape, both external and internal, it stands as an important signpost.

By presenting the Buddha as a man complete with fears, desires and whims, Chopra allows readers to gain   insight into one of the world's great religions, and gain inspiration to see further, hear more clearly and act more wisely.  Buddha is a timely, inspiring and ultimately poetic guide to rising above the temporal and corporeal ties we all too often allow to bind us.



Buddha - A Story of Enlightenment