The story of the Buddha and the way he discovered enlightenment is an ancient one, told countless times over many centuries. But when David Chernikoff narrates it, the story takes on new life.

I heard this deeply spiritual teacher speak in Denver at a conference devoted to the subject of aging. He is a psychotherapist based in Boulder, Colorado where he is connected with an organization called the Spiritual Eldering Institute.

Of medium height physically, this man has stature psychically, as his moving presentation proved. I found myself gently drawn to this person who clearly lives out his own teaching.

The workshop in which I took part aimed at transforming growing older into an experience filled with meaning. Too often older people are tempted to think of their own progress in years as a time without much positive significance. David Chernikoff is convinced that growing older can be a journey leading to enlightenment instead of a path to darkness and despair.

According to tradition, the prince Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha, was brought up in great wealth and comfort. The boy had servants waiting on him hand and foot, ready to do whatever he wished. Forty thousand dancing girls entertained him, his legend says, a sign of the opulence in which he lived.

His father, the king, was determined to protect his son from anything that would upset him. The evils of the world were banished from the boy’s sight; all he knew was upbeat, with nothing negative allowed to come to his attention.

The time came, however, when the young man wanted to see something of the world outside. His father reluctantly allowed him to go for a ride into the countryside but first sent servants out to prepare the way. They strewed flower petals along the paths the boy would follow and tried to make sure that his chariot would not come near any disturbing sights.

Despite these careful precautions, however, the young prince encountered four sights that were completely new to him and deeply unsettling. The first messenger was an old man, stooped over with age and moving with difficulty.

Next, Gautama saw another man, this one not old but afflicted with disease. This, too, came as a shock to the prince because no one like this had ever been admitted to the palace precincts.

Third, the young man came upon a corpse being carried to cremation, a new sight to a person never before acquainted with death.

Finally, the chariot carrying the prince encountered a monk who was begging his way across the landscape. That anyone would walk around with only the bare necessities was yet another new sight, another step in the prince’s education.

After this, Gautama’s life could never be the same. He soon left the palace and sat beneath a tree meditating upon the great truths that he had seen embodied. Never again could he live ignorant of old age, sickness, death, and poverty.

He went on to achieve enlightenment or what the Buddhists call nirvana, contact with the deepest reality. By contemplating the four messengers he learned who he himself was, and established contact with his own soul. In time, many people would become his disciples, these others also in search of their true identity.

In telling the classic story of the Buddha, David Chernikoff was suggesting that contemplation of these themes can “radically transform our experience of growing older.” At the same time, he helped us “to explore the nature of that which grows old and the nature of that which is timeless.”

This teacher spoke simply and, it seemed, directly from the heart. Basically serious, he nevertheless brought to his presentation a lively sense of the comic and sometimes evoked laughter from us in attendance.

At the same time, he urged us to apply the truths about the messengers to our own lives. “There is a time in our lives when we are visited by these heavenly messengers,” he asserted. Then he led us in an exercise by which we reflected on those crucial occasions.

He suggested that we ask two questions: “How did your experience of yourself change? “What did you learn about yourself and the world?”

Confronting openly the various messengers that come into our life, he suggested, is the best way to approach enlightenment,.

Richard Griffin