TLDR: Reflections on craving, virtue, and coming home… from someone who watches maybe two movies a year.
I rarely watch movies. Maybe two a year, if a friend drags me. So when I grabbed the ‘normal’ non-IMAX for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, it was a genuine treat. I expected three hours of spectacle. What I did not expect was to walk out feeling like I had just attended a Dhamma talk.
Homer never met the Buddha. Homer’s poem, Odyssey, predates the Buddha by centuries. And yet a story about a man trying to get home kept pointing, again and again, at the same truths the suttas point at. Perhaps that is what happens when a story survives 3,000 years: only the parts that are true about the human condition make it through.
Don’t worry, I will keep this spoiler-light for a plot that is 3,000 years old (a bit of old news).
Here is what I saw as parallels between the Dhamma & Homer’s poem.
The sirens, and the river no one crosses
A quick primer for those who did not grow up with Greek myths. In the old lore, the Sirens are creatures who sit among the rocks and sing to passing sailors. The song is so irresistible that men steer their ships straight into the rocks to get closer to it. No one who hears it survives. The sirens do not attack anyone. They simply sing, and the sailors destroy themselves by drowning.
Let that sink in. The danger was never the sirens but rather the wanting.
And what do they sing about? Not treasure. As I understood from the film, the Sirens sing to you about all the things you wanted to be, and all the things you wish you had never wished for.
“That what you most want is what you most cannot have. And that what you most cannot have… is what you already had, and lost.” Odysseus
I sat there in the dark feeling thoroughly blown away.
Because that is taṇhā (craving): the thirst that runs beneath everything we chase. The Dhammapada puts it plainly: “There is no river like craving” (Dhp 251). Rivers at least reach the sea. Craving reaches nothing. It just keeps flowing, from the thing we want, to the next thing, to grief over the thing we lost.
Reflecting deeper on this part of the movie, Sirens are not out there on some rock. They sing every time I open my phone, every time I replay an old memory of who I used to be. The song is always the same song of transient praise that makes us feel pleased for the moment, but it never lasts. And just like in the lore, no one is steering our ship into the rocks except us.
Tie yourself to the mast
Here is what struck me most about Odysseus. He does not believe he can out-willpower the song. He knows that in the moment of temptation, he will fail. So he prepares before the moment: he has himself bound to the mast.
That, to me, is sīla (virtue, which includes keeping the moral precepts and a wholesome mind). We do not keep precepts because we are strong. We keep them because we know exactly how weak we are when craving strikes. The ropes are not a punishment. The ropes are not punishment. Tying them is what you do once you know that about yourself.
A climber’s rope is a restriction too. It stops you going where gravity wants to take you. But no climber resents it, because the rope is what lets them get up on the rock in the first place. Without it you stay on the ground, or you climb so carefully you never find out what you can do.
Sīla works on me the same way. The precepts let me go near the things that used to wreck me: desire, anger, other people. And other people get the safety too. When I do not lie or take or harm, they do not have to brace for me.
And the mast itself? For me, the mast is kalyāṇamitta (spiritual friendship): the wise friends and teachers we bind ourselves to. The Buddha went as far as telling Ānanda that admirable friendship is not half of the holy life but the whole of it (SN 45.2, Upaḍḍha Sutta).
I have felt those ropes hold. Ajahn Anan, one of my wise teachers, in Q&A sessions, has a way of pointing out your flaws so gently and so precisely that you cannot wriggle away from them.
And Ajahn Sumedho once reminded me not to be so willful in the practice… to smile more, to be gentle with myself. To build the path not with strictness but with softness held in khantī (patient endurance), which the Buddha called the highest austerity (Dhp 184).
I used to think discipline meant tightening my grip. Now I think it means choosing a good mast, and letting the ropes do their work.
Polished armour, soft body
Then there is Agamemnon. In his armour he looks magnificent. (Some viewers joked he looks like Batman, and honestly, fair.) He won the war. He wears victory like a second skin.
But remember what the lore says his victory cost. To win the gods’ favour for the war, Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter. He traded his child for glory. And after surviving ten years of battle, the great king was not felled by any enemy spear. He died in his own bedroom, at home, where no armour could help him.
Look closer at that armour; it is polished. Gleaming. It has clearly not seen battle in a long time. It represents a king that does not fight his own wars. And underneath all that bronze is the same soft, ageing, vulnerable body every one of us carries.
Two reflections hit me at once here.
The first is anatta (not-self). We build a solid-looking self out of victories, titles and reputation, and it is brittle precisely because it looks so solid. We build a strong self-image (just like Agamemnon’s armour) and go out and present it to the world. The world is suitably impressed, cowed, and responds in fear or praise to that image; but the inner work remains undone. When the self-image is shed, we are laid low by our kamma, past misdeeds and hindrances.
The shinier the armour, the more we forget the body inside it. Agamemnon armoured everything except the one place life actually reached him.
The second is more uncomfortable, because it is about people like me. Polished, unused armour is also what Dhamma knowledge looks like when we collect it but never apply it. The Dhammapada compares someone who recites many teachings but does not practise them to a cowherd counting other people’s cattle (Dhp 19). I have shelves of Dhamma books. Some of them are… very well polished.
Armour only protects you if it gets used and not kept for ceremonies. The same is true of the teachings.
Athena, the voice that will not let you forget
In Greek lore, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, and Odysseus has always been her favourite. In the film, she is less a rescuer and more a conscience. She appears at the moments when Odysseus is closest to losing himself: when pride swells, when he drifts from the man he is supposed to be, when the cost of his choices lands on the people around him.
She does not fight his battles for him. She reminds him of who he is, holds his failures up to him without flinching, and points him back towards home.
Watching this, I kept thinking of hiri (moral shame) and ottappa (fear of wrongdoing). The Buddha called these two qualities the guardians of the world (AN 2.9), because without them, he said, humanity would fall into chaos.
We tend to hear “shame” as something toxic. But hiri is not self-hatred. It is the small and quiet inner voice that says this is beneath you, the way a goddess might say it: with dignity, expecting better of you. Ottappa is its partner, the wise wariness about consequences. Together they are not there to crush us. They are there to guide us back, every single time we drift. Athena never abandons Odysseus, no matter how far he strays. Neither do these guardians abandon us.
The guardians of the world do not scream or shout. They whisper, and then they wait for you to turn around. Or in Zendaya’s (actress who plays Athena) case, she just sulks.
The bow only you can string
You probably know the fable’s most famous test, so this gives nothing away: there is a great bow, and suitor after suitor tries to bend it to string it. None of them can. It answers to one person alone. Odysseus loses everything (wealth, fame, people, time) except this quality of his, a skill & a defining practice of his, that he returns to and honour.
It reminds me that one is heir to one’s kamma, owns it and is borne of it. Another person (the various suitors) cannot take your place and bear it for you, for it is “yours” alone.
I keep returning to that image as a question for the practice. The sutta this website is named after reminds us that the Buddha taught only a handful of leaves out of an entire forest (SN 56.31): a small set of essentials, because that is all we truly need. But even within that handful, each of us seems to have one leaf that fits our hand differently than anyone else’s. For one person it is mettā (loving-kindness) that comes naturally. For another, khanti (patient endurance). For another, cāga (generosity) that flows without effort.
I rarely watch movies. I am glad I watched this one, because it sent me home… in more ways than one… with a single question I now pass to you:
What is the one wholesome quality in your practice that you are familiar with, return to naturally, and perhaps you, and only you, can bring it out to the fullest extent for yourself?
TLDR: Obsession turns a familiar romantic fantasy into horror: what if the person you want finally chooses you completely? Through Bear’s wish, the film shows how craving can turn love into possession.
There is a scene early in Obsession that feels embarrassingly relatable for a married woman like myself who once chased boys.
Bear, short for Baron, stands in a gift shop, holding a cheap novelty toy, and makes a wish. He wishes that Nikki, his childhood friend and coworker, would love him “more than anything in the world.”
It is the kind of wish most of us have made in some form at some point of time. Somewhere in the private theatre of our wanting, we have all pointed at one person and thought: if only they would choose me completely, my world would be complete.
What follows in director Curry Barker’s Blumhouse horror film is a precise and brutal unpacking of what “my world would be complete” actually costs and why craving, taken to its logical end, doesn’t satisfy. It destroys.
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you are intending to watch the movie!
The Film In Short
Bear (Michael Johnston) is a mild-mannered music store employee pining for his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). He knows confessing his feelings will complicate things. Their mutual friends Ian and Sarah have already warned him not to make things weird. But he can’t help himself.
After the wish, something changes. Nikki returns his feelings… but not in any healthy sense. Her eyes glaze. Her speech fragments. She becomes manic, clingy, volatile. She begins committing acts of horrific violence against herself and others, as if her own self is rebelling against being hollowed into a vessel for someone else’s fantasy.
Bear eventually learns that the real Nikki is suffering somewhere else, in Hell, while her possessed double cuddles with him on the couch. And he stays. He chooses to keep the copy. He tells himself it’s complicated, that he loves her, that he’ll fix it. He does not fix it. The film’s ending brings him exactly the punishment his cowardice and craving have earned.
Wishes that are technically granted can be spiritually catastrophic. The genre has always known what Buddhism teaches: desire fulfilled on its own terms tends to devour itself.
There is no fire like passion, there is no grip like ill will, there is no net like ignorance, there is no river like craving.
The commentary explains that last image plainly: a river can flood and recede. Craving (tanha) never does. It cannot be satiated because it is not actually pointing at what it claims to want. Bear does not really want Nikki. He wants the feeling of being chosen absolutely. He wants the ache of longing to stop. He wants proof that he matters. Nikki is, in the film’s own logic, a stand-in, and the moment she becomes fully “his,” she stops being a person and starts being an object.
This is what tanha does. It takes a real human being and flattens them into a solution. And solutions, unlike people, are not supposed to have bad days or want things of their own.
Sirima’s Body
The ancient story of Sirimā offers a similar parallel.
Sirimā was a courtesan in Rājagaha, renowned for her beauty. A monk once heard her described by another and fell so deeply in love that he stopped eating for four days. He could not function. He lay with his bowl of rotting rice and could not move.
Then Sirimā died.
The Buddha asked the king to leave her body in the charnel ground. Four days later, bloated and decomposing, she was unrecognisable. The king proclaimed that anyone could have her for free. No one came forward.
The monk who had pined for her from a rumor, who had nearly destroyed himself over a description, attained Stream Entry at that moment. He saw it. The beauty he had been craving had never been in her body.
It had been in his mind, projected outward, mistaken for something real.
Bear’s wish conjures the same illusion with supernatural literalness. He gets the projection. He gets Nikki-as-fantasy. And the actual Nikki, the full person with her sharp humor and her own needs and her refusal to be an object, disappears into Hell.
What Tenzin Palmo Was Pointing At
Tenzin Palmo, a renowned nun, writes: “We think that if we love somebody, the measure of our loving is that we want to hold on to them. But that’s not love, that’s just self-love, attachment. It’s not genuinely loving the other person — wanting them to be well and happy. That’s wanting them to make us well and happy.”
She describes love as the sun: it shines without conditions, without target, without grip. Some people close their doors. The sun shines anyway.
Bear’s love is the opposite. It is a closed fist. He needs Nikki to reflect something back at him. When she does so perfectly, totally, at the cost of her soul, there is no joy in it. There is only dread, because even Bear, at some level, knows it isn’t real.
The Wish We Keep Making
Obsession is horror, but it is not really about a cursed toy. It is about the ordinary magic we perform every time we locate our entire happiness inside another person.
The Buddha did not say craving was shameful. He said it was a river. It flows and it flows and it does not stop, and if you build your house on its bank and believe the water will fill you, you will drown.
The practice is not to stop loving. The problem is the fist. The practice is to notice when longing tips into possession, when care becomes control, when “I love you” starts to mean “stay exactly as you are as mine so I will never feel abandoned”
Bear got his wish. He got everything he wanted. He lost everything that mattered.
The toy only did what tanha always does.
Wise Steps:
Watch for the moment care becomes control, because the how I love you can slowly turn into stay exactly as mine so I never feel abandoned.
Practise non-grasping love, because Tenzin Palmo’s teaching makes clear that love wants the other person to be well while attachment wants them to make us well.
TLDR: Be mindful of the underlying metaphors that shape your view of relationships. Relationships are not transactions to be balanced out, but collaborative artworks that are infinitely deep. Give selflessly with no expectation of return. Ironically, this is also how you are rewarded with beautiful and deep connections.
My Journey Into Seeking ‘Balance’
I am not sure which came first – my fascination with order or my obsession with building card towers. Either way, this childhood hobby created an attraction to balance. I recall many Chinese New Year holidays where I would eye decks of poker cards and make mental notes to squirrel them away as building blocks for my castles and city blocks.
And though I certainly delighted in the splendour of a make-believe cityscape, my deepest absorption was reserved for the delicate balancing act of 2 plain poker cards, repeated ad infinitum.
Years later, this hobby faded away, leaving a faint but indelible psychological imprint. This shaped the way I arranged my academic life, family time and relationships.
My secondary school life was the first proving ground for this worldview. Friendships were cordial, positive and respectful. I excelled in group discussions, where everyone gets proportionate air time. I was a reliable team member in group projects, where I always put in my fair share of work.
Being a natural listener, I made sure to listen and speak in equal measures. I was an easy conversationalist who struck up many acquaintances. Favours were always reciprocated. All these made me an uncontroversial choice for the class monitor, and eventually the consortium council chairperson.
Everything stood in beautiful order, and I played my discrete role in this tower of cards to the tee.
When Balancing Everything Frays
And yet, these neat, clean lines showed signs of fraying. Somehow, I was deeply unsettled in more personal settings like stay-overs and class barbecues, where our roles and lines blurred into a confusing mix of funny personal stories, boyish mocking and crude jokes. This discomfort didn’t entirely stem from a growing sense of moral superiority.
Even as a council chairman, there was an invisible wall that separated me from the rest of my executive committee. This wall thinned during official meetings, thickened in informal work sessions and get-togethers. Was I drawing my boundary lines too thickly and sharply? Could they be drawn any other way?
Someone once told me that life will keep teaching you the same lesson until you learn it. In my case with relationships, the lesson first came in pricks and then bludgeons.
Who Should Pay for The Food?
We were at a Bishan hawker centre filled with the usual lunch crowd. I parked our bags down on a recently vacated table and signalled my girlfriend to buy our lunch. She hesitated a moment and then merged into the crowd. I sensed something was off but brushed it off.
Later, on our walk home, with eyes downcast, she remarked with a touch of resentment that she had paid for our meal.
“I footed the last few bills, isn’t it only fair that we split?”, I protested almost immediately. In my mind, our 2 poker cards had started tipping over, and her paying for our last meal tipped them back into poise. At that moment though, something else hung in the balance.
“Yes, that makes sense dear, but in our relationship, I had expected you to pay for the meals.”, she said softly.
That comment hit a deep, raw nerve, setting off an emotional quarrel about values and equality, a quarrel that did not resolve when we reached her house.
I turned away, fuming, without so much as a goodbye. She later called, apologised for the comment, and we agreed to an uneasy truce that we would split our couple expenses down the middle.
Like a hastily plastered band-aid, this agreement tided us through easy and safe couple activities over the next few weeks but tore apart in the face of the truly difficult issues.
When Seeking ‘Balance’ Spirals into Pain
We were talking about settling down, and the question of who was paying for the house naturally came into the picture. I wanted us to split the expenses proportionally to our income; she wanted me to shoulder the entire cost. This was the meal payment quarrel all over again, on a larger scale.
Almost immediately, the same disagreements erupted with greater fury. We argued for weeks, with frustration and mounting anger.
I was adamant about following the principle of fairness, of staying true to the idea of gender equality in treatment and contributions.
I was taken aback by her outdated concept that males should be the leader of the household. She wanted to be assured that I could provide for the family and felt insecure about her economic future because of her hip condition which might render her wheelchair-bound in a few decades. Above all, she sincerely believed that relationships shouldn’t be about transactions. The house of cards was coming apart.
In a moment of darkness, after what felt like our umpteenth call that ended in logical logjams and emotional breakdowns, I seriously wondered if I had made a wrong choice of partner.
Uncovering The Author of My Pain
What hurt me the most was how this recent row contrasted with the deep sense of connection and resonance we shared in every other aspect of our relationship. How could such an otherwise beautiful and stable relationship crumble so quickly just because of a crude matter of dollars and cents?
Our shared vision of a future family, the beautiful child we dreamed about, the cosy home we talked about all felt like naive lies we told ourselves.
Tall, black walls of emotional anguish enveloped me. Our house of cards was being demolished.
She called again, I answered.
“I had been thinking. If we can’t agree on such a fundamental belief, then perhaps, we might not be meant for each other,” I said quietly. She paused. In that heavy pause, the whole world ground to a standstill.
“Why would you…why would you say that?”, she managed a feeble reply, in between muffled sobs.
Right there and then, it struck me how much pain I was causing myself and her. It struck me that the way out of this impasse was not more incisive logic. It struck me that perhaps, just perhaps, I had dead-ended in a maze of my creation.
“Actually, you know what,”, I sighed a breath of relief, “I’ll pay for the house.”
The Givers, The Takers, and The Matchers
When I came across Adam Grant’s work about giving, it gave voice to my growing realization of how my metaphors for relationships had stretched beyond its limits.
According to Grant, there are 3 broad types of people, namely givers, takers and matchers. Givers derive immense joy from giving to others, takers burn bridges by asking for favours and not giving back, and matchers always seek to balance every favour and thing. If it is not already obvious, I was a true blue matcher.
Though matchers may seem the most pragmatic in this dog-eat-dog world, it is the givers who experience the most unbridled joy in their relationships.
Rethinking Balance and Seeing Artwork in Relationships
If anything, my most intimate relationships have taught me that this metaphor of balance between 2 people hinders deeper connection. This idea of balance creates a misconstrued duality between the self and others.
Perhaps a more enriching metaphor is that of a collaborative artwork, where every single brushstroke, regardless of who it came from, adds to the beauty of the infinite, ever-deepening whole. Give selflessly without any expectation of reward, and ironically, you will be rewarded with the most breathtaking and meaningful masterpiece.
If you are wondering, these days I generally pay for meals and she foots the other bills. This is not so much a calculated arrangement as an organic evolution in how we express our contributions to this piece of art we call our relationship.
We also don’t keep score anymore, but it does seem that somehow, we end up shelling out equal amounts at the end of the day. Maybe, just maybe, the 2 cards don’t need the straining attention of this recovering matcher to balance after all.
Wise Steps:
Review how you view and treat your relationships. Are you a giver, taker or matcher?
Evaluate if your relationships are where you want them to be. Are they a source of joy and beauty? If not, what are the underlying reasons?
In your most important relationships, think of 3 ways in which you can give selflessly, solely for the joy of the other party. Act on them as soon as you can.
TLDR: Vakkali’s story is about a monk whose devotion becomes a desperate need to see the Buddha – and what happens when that longing is refused. Read alongside Buddhaghosa’s retelling, it becomes a startling account of how being “met” where we are can open the door to liberation.
“Visions of Vakkali” (2020), a collaborative artwork between two Nepali artists, Ajit Sah and Bishowmber Basnyat, and a Singaporean student of Buddhist Studies, Dominic Chua.
I cried the first time I read about Vakkali, and the recollection of that still surprises me. I hadn’t expected to feel so close to a monk from the Buddha’s lifetime. I’d expected the usual sort of difficulty that Buddhist stories sometimes present: a doctrinal knot, an ethical puzzle, a footnote that sends you hunting for more footnotes.
Instead, the story got under my skin because it begins with something uncomfortably ordinary: a man who wants to look at another man, and cannot stop looking.
The Pali tradition gives us Vakkali in more than one narrative.[1] One is the Vakkali Sutta in the Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 22.87), an austere, severe story centred on an ill monk and a deathbed visit. The other comes through the later commentarial tradition, shaped most influentially by the 5th-century CE Pali commentator, Buddhaghosa. In his commentary on the Dhammapada, Buddhagosa draws out Vakkali’s longing more openly and the ending is significantly transformed.[2]
It’s easier to start with that later portrait, because it makes Vakkali’s desire plain.
Vakkali is remembered as a brahmin from Sāvatthī, trained in the Vedas, formed inside a world where you learn how to carry yourself and how to speak correctly. Then he sees the Buddha once and something in him breaks open. He follows the Buddha about, hungry for the sight of him. He ordains as a monk because proximity is the only solution he can imagine.
We’re told that he spends almost all his time — apart from eating and bathing — absorbed in contemplating the Buddha’s external appearance, as though looking were the only way he knew to stay alive. It’s hard to read this as anything other than fixation: Vakkali had become besotted with the Buddha’s form, and he can’t seem to stop himself.
The Buddha responds with a rebuke that has become famous:
“Enough, Vakkali! Why do you want to see this foul body? One who sees the Dhamma sees me; One who sees me sees the Dhamma.”
There’s no gentleness in the phrasing. The Buddha refuses to let his physical body become the refuge Vakkali is trying to build for himself. If Vakkali wants refuge, he will have to find it somewhere other than bodily form.
Now for the sutta version. In SN 22.87, Vakkali appears as a very ill monk. The Buddha comes to visit him and asks him a sequence of questions that feels almost like a careful diagnosis: is the pain easing or worsening; is there restlessness or regret; is there any reason for self-reproach in his virtue? Vakkali says his conduct is blameless. So far so good. But then he reveals that what troubles him is not guilt. What troubles him is that he hasn’t been able to see the Buddha as much as he wanted. The Buddha replies with the famous rebuke and the “seeing Dhamma” line, directly in response to that longing.
In the sutta, the Buddha then leads him through contemplation of the aggregates, pushing Vakkali toward the kind of seeing that loosens clinging at its root.
Then comes the part that makes readers stop short. After the Buddha leaves, Vakkali takes his own life. The Buddha later declares that Māra, the deva who personifies death and temptation, cannot trace his consciousness — this is an old way of saying he has passed into final Nibbāna (often rendered “Nirvana” in English). This is why modern readers talk about the “Vakkali problem.” The first puzzle is ethical: how could self-killing possibly be justified, given the precepts and the tradition’s deep unease around taking life? That puzzle is real. It requires restraint in how we handle and interpret it.
But the second question is the one that gripped me: the Buddha visits Vakkali, teaches him, reassures him — and Vakkali still kills himself. What makes that sequence make sense?
Detail from “Visions of Vakkali” (2020)
Many readers treat the answer as simple: illness, pain, despair. Vakkali’s fixation on seeing the Buddha can look excessive, even embarrassing, and it’s easy to assume Vakkali’s wish to end his life arose solely from physical suffering.
For a gay reader, the emotional logic can feel clearer. I’m not suggesting Vakkali is “secretly gay,” and I’m not trying to sexualise the Buddha’s beauty.
The recognition is simpler: what it feels like when longing is met with refusal, when the wish to look is also the wish to be near, and that nearness is denied.
Many gay people learn early that desire can make you visible. It starts very small: a face you keep turning back to, a look that lingers, and then somebody notices. The correction often arrives as ordinary “help” — don’t stare, don’t be weird, don’t give people the wrong idea, you better be careful — said jokingly, but landing hard. After a while you begin to anticipate the shift in temperature before it happens, and you train your eyes accordingly.
Bring that experience to Vakkali and the sequence makes more sense. His devotion is organised around seeing the Buddha. The Buddha calls the body “foul” and denies Vakkali the comfort of clinging to his physical form.
When that comfort is taken away and nothing has yet taken its place, it can feel like the abrupt ending of a love affair — disorienting, unmooring, and edged with panic.
In Buddhaghosa’s version, the rains retreat is approaching and the Buddha is leaving Sāvatthī for Rājagaha. Vakkali wants to follow him into retreat but the Buddha tells him not to. Devastated, he goes to Vulture Peak intending to throw himself off. His distress centres on not being able to see the Buddha, and on being sent away from him.
Detail from “Visions of Vakkali” (2020), depicting the moment where Vakkali steps off the cliff and floats to the ground.
And then Buddhaghosa resolves the story in a completely unexpected way.
Sensing that Vakkali is about to throw himself off the cliff edge, the Buddha is moved by compassion. The narrative says the Buddha sends forth a radiant image of himself for Vakkali to see. Then,
The moment the monk saw the Teacher, the weight of sorrow that had oppressed him vanished.
Then the Teacher, as though filling the dry bed of a lake with a flood of water, caused great zest and joy to arise in the monk, and pronounced the following stanza:
Full of joy and faith in the Buddha’s teaching, the monk will reach the place of peace, the happiness of the stilling of the formations.
Having pronounced this Stanza, the Teacher stretched forth his hand to the elder Vakkali and said,
Come, Vakkali! Fear not, look at the Tathāgata! I will lift you up like (one lifting) an elephant sunk in the mire.
Come, Vakkali! Fear not, look at the Tathāgata! I will free you just as the (eclipsed) sun is freed from Rāhu’s maw.
Come, Vakkali! Fear not, Vakkali! Look at the Tathāgata! I will free you just as the (eclipsed) moon is freed from Rāhu’s maw.
I’ve quoted the Dhammapada Commentary at some length because the passage has real poetic force. Earlier, Vakkali is told that the Buddha’s body is “foul” and that looking is useless. Here, the Buddha does the opposite: he invites Vakkali to look at him. Vakkali’s sorrow drops away, joy and faith surge, and he leaps; liberation is said to occur before he reaches the ground.
This does not undo the sutta’s point. The body cannot be the final refuge; “seeing the Dhamma” still matters more than seeing a person. What changes is how the story handles the human problem that has been driving Vakkali toward the edge. Buddhaghosa treats the gaze and the pull of the Buddha’s beauty as a force that has to be addressed, not simply dismissed.
The invitation to look becomes the turning point that lets Vakkali move toward liberation — without giving him permission to cling.
For gay Buddhists, that matters. So much of our formation involves learning to mistrust longing, and Buddhist language about craving can either free the mind or quietly reinforce shame, depending on the experiences that we’ve had. Vakkali’s story refuses easy answers. It shows longing in its most inconvenient form — obsessive looking, rebuke, separation, despair — and it also shows, at least in Buddhaghosa’s retelling, a moment where that longing is met without humiliation, long enough for liberation to become possible.
That is why I cried. Buddhaghosa’s retelling offered an ending I didn’t expect: neither indulgence nor a cold demand to “get over it,” but the Buddha compassionately appearing before Vakkali as he stood at the edge. It names a truth which many of us learn the hard way: sometimes you can neither let go nor move forward until you’ve been met. Vakkali is met through the very thing that had once been refused — his looking — and from that foothold the story finally lets him step toward liberation.
Bibliography
Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.87: Vakkali Sutta. Translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Accessed January 8,
[1] Piya Tan floats the possibility of “two Vakkalis” to account for differences between the Vakkali Sutta and Buddhaghosa’s later commentarial versions. Here, I treat them as two retellings of one story: later tradition keeps the same core tension (Vakkali’s need to see the Buddha) while reshaping the ending into a more teachable, less ethically jagged resolution.
[2] Buddhaghosa (traditionally dated to the 5th century CE) is arguably the most influential commentator in the Theravāda tradition, best known for systematising doctrine and meditation in works like the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification) and for shaping how later generations would read the Pali Canon. For many Theravādin Buddhists, his interpretations have become a standard lens for understanding the suttas. That matters here because the more dramatic Vakkali story comes to us through this commentarial stream, rather than from the early sutta collections alone. Reading Buddhaghosa alongside SN 22.87 shows how a later, highly influential Theravāda interpreter identified the story’s emotional and doctrinal stress points, and then shaped a resolution that he thought could carry the reader through them.
TLDR: This article looks at why we often struggle to say “no” or face uncomfortable conversations, even with loved ones. Drawing from his personal experiences and insights from the suttas, Wei Liang reflects on how people-pleasing can create stress and anxiety, and offers practical ways to meet expectations with greater kindness, wisdom, and ease.
Recognising the Burden of People-Pleasing
Have you found yourself saying “yes” when you really want to say “no”? On the surface, people-pleasing may look like kindness or generosity. But underneath, it can quietly drain our energy and fill our days with anxiety.
When every decision is shaped by how others might respond, we end up living in constant tension—always unsure if we are good enough, always measuring ourselves against shifting expectations.
The Buddha’s wisdom helps us see that being nice does not equate to acting in a beneficial way, and to reflect on how our need for approval can be a source of unhappiness when it depends on conditions outside our control.
When Niceness Get Tangled in Delusion
Sometimes, people-pleasing begins with beliefs that don’t line up with reality, what the Buddha calls delusion (moha).
We might think, “If I’m nice enough, I won’t be hurt or rejected.” It feels comforting to believe that kindness is a shield. Or we might assume, “I can control how others treat me.” The truth is, we can’t. Someone’s negative reactions may have nothing to do with us at all.
Seeing this clearly is a relief. It means we can stop carrying the impossible task of managing how everyone feels about us.
When Approval Becomes a Craving
Wanting to be liked is normal, it’s part of being human. But needing to be liked is where things start to hurt. This is craving (lobha), which can manifest as a restless reaching for approval.
In a previous job, I craved being seen as a “good employee.” I would take leave not to rest and recharge, but to block out my calendar from new tasks so I could work on existing ones. Underlying this behaviour was a need to be valued and viewed as competent. In reality, I was letting my work dictate my self-worth, which led to unhealthy work-life boundaries, frustration, and resentment.
Reflecting on that experience, I now see that self-approval, rooted in our principles and values, honesty about one’s limitations, and not being defined by failures, lasts far longer than the fleeting satisfaction of approval from others.
When Avoiding Conflict Closes Doors
Sometimes, people-pleasing takes the form of aversion (dosa). This can mean avoiding situations and conversations that feel uncomfortable.
Conflict avoidance can look like preserving harmony, but often it just postpones a conversation we know we need to have.
I struggle with talking to my family about changes in my life, such as changing jobs. I justify not communicating by telling myself, “They don’t need to know. I’ll just be nagged at, even though I’m being responsible with my choices.” But deep down, I know I am clinging to what I perceive as a comfortable status quo.
Staying quiet feels easier in the moment, but it also means missing opportunities to build trust and communication with those we love.
Reflecting on the Distinction Between “Nice” and Beneficial Conduct
One beautiful example of the Buddha’s wisdom comes from the Abhayarājakumārasutta (MN 58). A prince once asked him, “Sir, may the Realized One ever utter speech that is disliked by others?”
The Buddha didn’t give a categorical yes or no. Instead, he drew a distinction between speech that is pleasing, and speech that is true, correct, and beneficial, with the latter being what matters.
He drew an analogy to removing a stick or stone from a child’s mouth. The child might feel discomfort in the short term, but you would still remove the object, out of compassion.
For me, this shifts the focus. Instead of asking, “Will they like me if I say this?” I can ask, “Will this help?” It becomes a gentler, wiser compass.
Reflecting on Praise and Blame as Unreliable Conditions
These are forces that push and pull us through life. If you’ve ever had your mood lifted by praise, only to see it crash with a single word of criticism, you’ve felt these winds.
Praise and blame can feel important: who doesn’t want to be liked? Words of affirmation, a smile, a pat on the shoulder—all these can feel addictive. But the Buddha’s point is that praise and blame, like all conditions, are always shifting. You can’t control them any more than you can control the weather.
When we remember this, it becomes easier to let praise pass without clinging to it, and to face blame without buckling under its weight.
Finding the Middle Way
Letting go of people-pleasing doesn’t mean we stop caring about others. It means asking ourselves: Why do we care? And how can we care in a way that’s beneficial?
Asking these questions allows us to reflect on the motivations behind our behaviour, empowering us to act with wisdom instead of simply reacting to external forces.
We can still be warm and kind, without being dishonest or ignoring our boundaries. We can speak truthfully and skilfully, even when it’s uncomfortable.
When we pause to check our intentions, and measure our choices against our values instead of someone else’s approval, we feel steadier.
When delusion, craving and aversion lose their grip, praise and blame become just weather—passing overhead. And kindness stops being a survival tactic, returning to what it truly is: a gift, freely given.
Wise Steps
We can begin applying the Buddha’s wisdom by noticing our tendencies to please, and taking small, steady steps to change how we interact with approval and critics.
Take a pause. Before agreeing to something, take a few mindful breaths. Notice whether your “yes” comes from care or from fear of disapproval.
Spot the winds. Each time you receive praise or criticism, silently note, This is just a passing breeze. See if you can let the impulse to hold on or to shrink away pass without reacting.
Speak one gentle truth. Once a day, share something honest that you might normally keep to yourself. You can start by sharing these words with yourself, and later with others if you feel ready. Choose kindness in your tone, but clarity in your words.
