PRINCE SIDDHARTHA’S DILEMMA still faces us today. We too immure ourselves in the “palaces” of what is familiar and secure. We too sense that there is more to life than indulging desires and warding off fears. We too feel anguish most acutely when we break out of our habitual routines and witness ourselves hovering between birth and death—our birth and death. We discover that we have been thrown, apparently without choice, into a world not of our making. However painful the exit from the mother’s uterus, it is mercifully forgotten. But in achieving consciousness, we realize that the only
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