Fatherly Fears

   I was reading about King Sudhodana this week, who is the father of Gautama Buddha. What I learned from the readings this week is how loving this father is toward his son, even though he is quite terrified to see his son potentially leave his kingdom to become a monastic or a hermit. Gautama Buddha, so the prophecy is told, has two possible destinies: one is to become a great ruler over all of India, while the other is to completely abandon the kingdom altogether and become a home-leaver (ultimately, the Buddha). King Sudhodana's fears are that his son will not inherit his throne when his father dies. And even though it is prophecied that the son could be a great spiritual leader who could heal all sentient beings' suffering, the father would much rather see his son take the crown and rule the kingdom well.
    Much of this story strikes me as a kind of parable. In a sense, all humans might be said to live in two worlds. The first world is the one we are born into, and it's predominantly about acquiring the things we need to be comfortable and contribute to a greater society. All humans have a 'kingdom' of their own: a school, a workplace, a community center with which they frequent. And quite often the only thing that would stop a person from going on expanding one's kingdom like this would be death or the prospect of illness. Now, the other world is something like a timeless world, in which there is no birth or death, and there isn't the suffering that comes from desiring to preserve this "I", or this kingdom. But the challenge is that because I am so identified with my worldly kingdom, the thought of leaving it for something that is formless, is quite frightening. It is like a kind of leap of faith to go over to this other way of being, that isn't attached to 'mine' or even perpetuating a certain kind of society.
    The social perspective might be expressed somewhat like this: if everyone were to decide right now to take the Buddhist path toward nirvana, what would happen to the human population? One person in the class today suggested that the entire human race would be wiped out, if that were to happen, because people would simply stop wanting to be born as human, much less anything. Not only this, but people would stop procreating. Her conclusion was that it is therefore best for the human race if people adopt a variety of different perspectives and beliefs.
     I myself tend to disagree with the idea that humans would wipe themselves off the planet if they were all Buddhists. The reason I say so is that there really isn't a world to be destroyed in the first place. It's a creation of mind and collective karma, and so it would not make sense to try to separate the mind from phenomena and say that phenomena will 'disappear' someday. What I am saying is: I don't think that samsara is a physical realm or a substantial realm that is separate from nirvana. The two realms are just different ways of seeing and being. It wouldn't make sense to say that one has to leave behind the physical world to attain a spiritual world, since they are ways of seeing the world. It would be like saying: I just killed someone in my dreams! How is that possible that someone in your dreams could die in your hands? After all, the person is only part of a dream, as is the dreamer. But once it is ascertained that the world is just this (impermanent), then there ceases to be any need to annihilate or change into something else.
    Question is: was Buddha's father right to feel afraid?