I was thinking about the Mahājanaka Jataka again: In it, The Bodhisattva is a king who, strolling through the royal gardens comes to two mango trees, one with fruit and the other barren. He pulls a mango off the fruited tree and eats it, it was delicious, and he made a note to himself to hit-up the tree again after his walk so he could have some additional fruit before he headed back to the palace. At the end of his walk, the king comes to the same trees only now, the barren tree remains pristine and green, but the fruited tree has become battered, leafless, broken and devoid of all fruit. He asks the Royal Gardner what happened, and the Gardner explains, out of respect, village folks wait for the king to eat the first fruit of a tree, but after that has been had, it’s a free-for-all. The once fruited tree had been damaged by the villagers coming to pillage the fruit. The barren tree, with no fruit to be taken, remained undisturbed. The king, seeing this decides to renounce the world: If you don’t have shit to take, you don’t have to worry and stress about your shit getting taken.

Recently, I had moved to a new place in CT, only it hadn’t worked-out and I quickly moved out. It had been so difficult, a short-succession move-in/move-out, and it made me start considering this Jataka, considering the worry and care I have for my belongings and how that stress could be solved by not having, not wanting, belongings at all.

For a moment, I really thought about the relief it would be to just walk on all of my stuff. The freedom it would be to not worry about rupa anymore. Then, for a second, I understood that you don’t need to walk from the stuff. You just need to stop being attached to it. This, I understood, is the letting go, the becoming a Sotapana. Knowing the costs of the stuff. Knowing what it is, and what it does, doing your duty by it and not being overly concerned.

I thought back to a trip I took to Hawaii decades ago…back them was my fashionista days, I dressed to the 9s each morning, boots and belts and hats galore. But in Hawaii, it was just shorts and a tee, and after a few days I started fantasizing about a move to Hawaii: I was desperate to escape the self-imposed burden of needing to dress-up each day. I had the keen sense that I couldn’t escape that burden of that self-created identity as long as I lived in SF. I feared what the people who knew my fashionista-self might think of me, the status I would lose. In Hawaii, where no one dresses-up I could be ‘free’. This of course is not freedom: This is just binding myself to a new identity I imagine will be somehow better and easier. Another becoming…

Years ago, at a retreat, Mae Yo and Neecha had a session on becoming a sotapanna. Something they taught came to my mind again, it got much clearer: They were saying that if you aren’t really a sotapanna, you can be not greedy all your life, but if circumstances change, you are greedy again. Like someone who has plenty of food, and is always willing to share, but then famine strikes and they stop sharing. The cause for greed is not uprooted, its just that the circumstances don’t support the manifestation of the greed, at that moment. Circumstances change, and back comes the greed, because the seeds of it had been there all the time.

As I considered the new house again, I considered the stress: Stress over moving to it. Stress over decorating. Stress over having it too long. Stress over maintenance… I realize I am so absorbed, so stuck on my stuff, it is a source of unbounded stress. I say I understand these things do not belong to me, do not define me, but I obsess over them. All to make an environment I like. For sensual pleasure. Even despite the temporariness, the accompanying pain. This is the stress of greed.

The Mahājanaka Jataka is actually the story in which the Bodhisattva perfects the parami of renunciation. In truth, I am not much of a renunciation fan (I do like my creature comforts after all) and this particular story has always felt a bit uncomfortable, like an indictment of my own insufficiency. Still though, the sense of it, the allure, the promise of less suffering by going the way of that barren tree has begun to weigh on my mind a bit. Perhaps renunciation is less about sacrifice and more about freedom.