Topics: Peace & Spirituality The Divine
Let me tell you the story of the Successful Man. Once upon a time there was a man born into wealth. Then one day he realized he could have anything. And so he enjoyed every worldly pleasure and lived a lavish, comfortable life — the end.
This story feels incomplete because there was no challenge, no adversary, and thus no transformation. He was the same man in the beginning and the end. According to Genesis, Man needed to fail to learn — to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil1.
Siddhartha learned the hell of Hedonism by embodying it2. He was like the Successful Man, except when he found comfort he found Hell. Although he was taught by wise men the vanity of material pleasures, only then did he learn this. Knowledge can be taught; but wisdom must come from experience.