The Maha-Saccaka Sutta narrates the very interior journey of the Buddha’s path to realization and this particular excerpt recalls when he was a boy sitting under a rose-apple tree while his father was working. The moment was one of the first times the young Siddhartha entered into a state of meditation and understood ‘the pleasure born from seclusion’.
“I thought: ‘I recall once, when my father the Sakyan was working, and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, then — quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful mental qualities — I entered and remained in the first jhana: rapture and pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought and evaluation.’
‘Could that be the path to Awakening?’
Then following on that memory came the realization:
‘That is the path to Awakening.’
I thought: ‘So why am I afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities?’
I thought: ‘I am no longer afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities, but that pleasure is not easy to achieve with a body so extremely emaciated. Suppose I were to take some solid food: some rice and porridge.’ So I took some solid food: some rice and porridge.”
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