Pathways to inner freedom

How Buddha, Ayyub, Chitraketu and other sages teach us to embrace aging, illness and death as pathways to inner freedom.

Do you wish to be free? Then learn to live in surrender. The stories of Buddha, Ayyub, Chitraketu and other sages show that liberation begins when we face suffering rather than flee from it. Aging, sickness and death are not enemies but teachers reminding us of what is eternal. True transformation requires active participation – not just understanding, but embodiment.

The Light That Remains

“Lord, grant me the wisdom of Symeon:
not to mourn what fades,
but to rejoice in what endures –
Your love, untouched by wrinkles.

For when the candle burns down
and grows smaller,
its light shines just as bright –
until the wick expires
and passes
into morning light
no human hand has made.

So too is fear of death
merely life
clutching itself
in a fist.
Open your hand –
what falls becomes wings.
What remains is breath.
And what never perishes
is the light
we have always been.”

Buddha

Siddhartha Gautama was born as a prince in a royal family (around the 6th century BCE in Nepal). His father, King Śuddhodana, heard a prophecy that Siddhartha would become either a great ruler or a spiritual leader. Because the king wanted his son to inherit his throne, he shielded Siddhartha from all misery in the world. He grew up in luxury, surrounded by beauty, health and pleasure, without knowledge of aging, sickness or death.

At a later age, Siddhartha nevertheless left the palace and saw things that changed his life forever. He saw an old man and realized that all people age. He understood that health is not permanent when seeing a sick man. When he saw a corpse, he discovered the inevitability of death. These confrontations shocked Siddhartha deeply. He realized that suffering was a universal part of life, and that his sheltered youth had given him an incomplete picture of reality.

Siddhartha left his comfortable life and went in search of truth and liberation from suffering. First he tried extreme asceticism (self-mortification, fasting), but discovered this didn’t lead to enlightenment. Eventually he found the Middle Way – no extreme luxury, but also no extreme self-torment. Under the Bodhi tree he attained enlightenment (Nirvana), realizing that suffering arises from desire and attachment, and that liberation is possible through wisdom, moral living and meditation.

This story shows how Buddha consciously sought out confronting experiences to understand the nature of life. His teaching emphasizes that true awareness only arises when we face the reality of suffering, not by running from it. It also illustrates the Buddhist idea that spiritual growth sometimes means leaving your comfort zone to discover deeper truths.

Ayyub

Ayyub was a wealthy and pious man, blessed with health, children and great riches. He lived in comfort and gratitude, always praising God for his blessings. His faith seemed unshakable, until Satan asked: “Does Ayyub not worship You only because You give him everything?” God allowed Ayyub to be tested. First he lost all his livestock and possessions. Then his children died in an accident. Finally his body was afflicted with painful sores until he could only lie on a mat. Even his wife left him. But Ayyub remained patient and said: “Everything we have comes from God, and everything we lose returns to Him.” After years of trial, God healed him and gave him more than he had ever lost. This story shows that true faith doesn’t depend on prosperity, but endures even in deepest suffering.

King Chitraketu

King Chitraketu was a powerful ruler who had everything his heart desired, but his greatest happiness he found in his only son. One day the boy died suddenly. The king was inconsolable; he refused to have the body buried and held it for days, overcome by grief. Then the sages Narada and Angira appeared. They said: “Why mourn what was never yours? The soul is eternal, only the body perishes.” Chitraketu didn’t understand until his deceased son appeared as a spirit and said: “Father, in previous lives you were my son. This cycle of attachment brings only pain.” At that moment the king let go of his attachment and found peace in realizing the eternal soul. This shows how suffering can liberate us from illusions about possession and identity.

John of the Cross

John was a fervent monk who always felt God’s presence in his prayers. Until he was imprisoned by his own brother monks. In his dark cell all spiritual comfort disappeared. He prayed, but felt only emptiness. “Have I imagined it all?” he wondered desperately. For months he struggled through this darkness, until he gained a profound insight: his desire for spiritual experiences had been selfish. True love for God needs no reward. In this ‘dark night of the soul’ he found a purer faith – based not on feeling, but on willpower and surrender. Just as Buddha taught that desire causes suffering, John discovered that our craving for divine experiences can sometimes be the greatest obstacle to true spirituality.

Shared Wisdom

Like Buddha, Ayyub, Chitraketu and John discovered that spiritual growth often begins when our comfort is taken away. Ayyub learned that true faith doesn’t depend on prosperity. Chitraketu saw how attachment causes suffering. John discovered that true mysticism sometimes must go through darkness. All three show that suffering, when faced, can be a gateway to deeper insight and liberation. Their stories remind us that the path to wisdom often leads through valleys of crisis, not around them.

Aging

In the Egyptian desert lived Symeon the Elder, an ascetic who had gone blind in old age. His body was broken, his skin wrinkled like old parchment, but his mind was as clear as desert air after a storm. One day the young and proud Queen of Alexandria came to him, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting in silk gowns.

She knelt and said: “Father Symeon, I fear aging. See how my beauty fades! Each year I feel my youth slipping away. How can I accept this?” The old monk turned his blind eyes to her and asked: “If your palace slowly crumbled, where would you be?” Confused, the queen replied: “I would move to a new palace, of course.” Symeon smiled: “Then why weep over this body, which is but a temporary dwelling? Your soul is already building a palace in heaven – where neither moth nor rust destroys.”

Then he leaned forward and whispered: “My eyes see no more light, but my heart sees God. My hands tremble, yet they still fold in prayer. This is the secret: aging is not decay, but transfiguration – like bread and wine in the Eucharist that don’t perish, but change into something sacred.”

In Orthodox tradition, the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), but not our true home. Symeon’s blindness symbolizes what St. Paul wrote: “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). Just as Christ’s cross turned death into life, Symeon teaches that decline can be a gateway – if we don’t cling to it.

Illness

In ancient Indian tradition lives the story of Ashtavakra, a sage who encountered suffering even before birth. When his father, the scholar Kahoda, recited sacred texts during pregnancy, the fetus corrected him from the womb. Insulted by this correction, Kahoda cursed his unborn child: “You will be born with eight (ashta) bends (vakra) in your body.”

Thus Ashtavakra came into the world – with a deformed body, every joint bent by the curse. His appearance invited mockery, but his mind was sharper than any scholar’s. At twelve, he heard his father had been thrown into a river after losing a debate to King Janaka’s court scholars. Ashtavakra traveled to the palace, where guards laughed: “What can a crippled boy do here?”

Before the king, Janaka tested him: “There’s a rope in this hall – tell me, is it straight or crooked?” Ashtavakra replied: “In a palace full of illusions, all is crooked. Only truth is straight.” Silence fell. The deeply impressed king had Kahoda’s drowning undone.

Later Ashtavakra wrote the Ashtavakra Gita, one of Advaita Vedanta’s most radical texts. There he teaches: “You are not the body that suffers, nor the mind that fears. Sickness and health are passing clouds – you are the unchanging sky.”

The lesson is that illness may be a physical experience, but needn’t become a mental prison. Ashtavakra’s deformities became his greatest strength – freeing him from vanity and leading to pure wisdom. Just as Buddha taught suffering stems from attachment, Ashtavakra shows liberation is possible even amid pain.

Think of people who say after serious illness: “It taught me what truly matters.” Or philosophers like Nietzsche who wrote: “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Ashtavakra’s story invites us to look beyond the body – to that in us which never falls ill, never ages, never dies.

Dying

A Sufi master once saw a man running terrified through the marketplace. “What’s wrong?” he asked. The panting man cried: “Death stands at the edge of town! He looked at me with empty eyes – I must flee!”

The Sufi walked on and indeed saw Death sitting on an overturned jug. “Why did you frighten that man so?” he asked. Death replied, surprised: “I was startled to see him here. I have an appointment with him tonight… in a city three days’ journey from here.”

The man had run straight toward his own appointment out of fear of death. His panic made him miss life – the sun, his chat with the Sufi, the smell of fresh bread. In Sufi tradition this teaches: “Who flees death runs straight to it. Who makes peace with it finds freedom.”

Transformation

This isn’t just about spiritual growth, but about our present transformation of body and mind – through acceptance, perspective and surrender to life itself. We age, we sometimes fall ill, and we ultimately die. That IS life – nothing less.

What we call aging, illness and dying may be life’s language as it reinvents itself – if we learn to listen rather than just resist. Perhaps true healthcare isn’t fighting these processes, but guiding transformative journeys.

“Save your soul, and a thousand around you will be saved.”

If you see the value in these wise lessons, how will you apply them? What does your transformation look like? Does it stop at understanding, or do you become a liberated witness to your own life?

Personal Note

It’s not easy – I know. When young, I never thought about aging and dying. Now older, having watched many depart this Earth, what first felt frightening – my own turn coming – no longer troubles me. I still find life delightful and want to enjoy it, yet we’re all also somewhat relieved when we can go home – especially after such a strange trip here.

Earth is a marvelous planet – too bad about the humans.

“Perhaps we’re not here to fix the world,
but to remind ourselves
we were once whole –
and beneath all this human fuss,
still are.”

Nico Cost (with a whisper of DeepSeek)