Gautama, the Buddha lead a life of purpose. Brought up in the lap of princely luxuray, his inbuilt compassion made him to pose himself a great question. "How can I help a common Joe on the street lead a life free of human suffering"? His quest led him to a life of single-minded contemplation of this question. His one-pointed focus on his life purpose finally resulted in his enlightenment of the solutionto it. 

Human perception of a never ending lack of sense gratification driven by their survival emotions keep them in perpetual motion in search of it sapping all his physical and mental energy.  It is this loss of psycho-physiological energy that makes Joe suffer and keep him suffering. What can Joe do to keep his mind from perpetually revisiting his deemed survival needs?

Survival needs creep up on a person autonomically without the person being aware of their doing so? How can a person stop them when he/she is not even aware of them.

"If Joe can get volitionally get involved in an life process which ordinarily is autonomic, he can perhaps learn learn to control automic bubbling of his survival emotions," he thoght. Is there such a process? Aha! ​There is the breath. It runs automatically 23/7 and I can also change it when I want. Can aware breathing be the solution? He followed up on this idea and found that it worked on him. Can it work on everybody? Whys not? He is like everyone else? Once he was so enlightened, he spent the rest of life diseeminating the findings of his research.

This article presents an enactment of the journey of his purposeful life in the hope that we learn from it. No question is too big for us to answer if we makeit a purpose of our life.

Click here for bigger view