‘One day a beggar knocked on the doors of a great king. By chance, the king himself opened the door. He saw the beggar: the beggar was not an ordinary beggar, he was almost luminous. He had such grace, such beauty, such a mysterious aura, that even the king felt jealous. He asked, “What do you want?” still pretending – “I have not taken any note of you” – “What do you want?”
‘The beggar showed the king his begging bowl and he said, “I would like it to be filled.”
‘The king said, “That’s all? With what do you want it to be filled?”
‘The beggar said, “Anything will do, but the condition is that you have to fill it; otherwise, don’t try.”
‘It was a challenge to the king. He said, “What do you mean by it? Can’t I fill this small begging bowl? And you don’t say with what.”
‘The beggar said, “That is irrelevant. Anything will do, even pebbles, stones, but fill it! The condition is: I will not leave the door if you start filling it; unless it is filled, I will remain here.”
‘The king ordered his prime minister to fill the begging bowl with diamonds; he had millions of diamonds: “This beggar has to be shown that he is encountering a king!” But soon the king became aware that he had been deceived. The begging bowl was as extraordinary as the beggar, more so in fact: anything dropped into it would simply be gone, would disappear. It remained empty. The treasures were thrown into it, but they all disappeared.
‘By the evening the whole capital had gathered. The king was now becoming almost desperate: the diamonds finished, then the gold, and then the gold was finished, then the silver, and then the silver was finished…. The sun was setting, and the king’s sun had also set. His whole treasury was empty, and the begging bowl was still the same, empty, not even a trace! It swallowed all his kingdom. It was too much!
‘Now the king knew that he had been trapped. He fell at the feet of the beggar and said, “Forgive me. I was wrong to accept the challenge. This begging bowl is not an ordinary begging bowl. You deceived me – there is some magic in it.”
‘And the beggar laughed and he said, “There is no magic in it: I have made it out of the skull of a man.”
‘The king said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean? If it is just made out of the skull of a man, how can it go on swallowing my whole kingdom?”
‘And the beggar said, “That’s what is happening everywhere: NOBODY is ever satisfied. The begging bowl in the head always remains empty. It is an ordinary skull, just like everybody else’s.”’ (Osho, ‘The Guest – Talks on Kabir’, 1981, p. 223-224)
World Cup Car Wash
In 2003, Ben Cohen was part of the only England team to have won the Rugby World Cup. Cohen commented on that great triumph: ‘It meant everything, winning a World Cup.’
It is easy to imagine the thrill of being part of that team when Jonny Wilkinson nailed that drop goal in the dying seconds of the match!
We can imagine the euphoria, knowing that the world is falling at your feet, knowing that people will forever say: ‘That guy won the World Cup!’
Remarkably, one might think, the magic begging bowl in Cohen’s head sees it differently:
‘The bigger issue for me was that I just didn’t get a skill set or a life skill, and now I think, well, OK, winning a World Cup doesn’t really bring me anything. It’s not like it’s a degree, you know.’
This is pretty astonishing: winning the World Cup ‘didn’t really bring… anything’… unlike a degree! It echoes a comment made by hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst who helped win the football World Cup for England in 1966:
‘There was a tremendous feeling of anti-climax when we got home… I cut the lawn because I hadn’t been home for ages. Then I washed the car. It was pretty much like any other Sunday afternoon… It might sound a bit pretentious, but for me it had been another football match, albeit a very important one… It’s just like another day at the office. People may find that hard to believe but that’s how I recall it, and so do many of my teammates at the time.’ (Geoff Hurst, 1966 and All That – My Autobiography, Headline Book Publishing, 2001, p.18)
Cohen’s regret: ‘I probably wish I’d got a skill set and a steady job.’
To his credit, he understands how his begging bowl would have responded to that course of action:
‘Then I probably would have looked the other way and thought “I wish I could have been a sportsman”. But the reality is I would probably rather have been over [on the nonathletic side], because it’s going to suit me for the rest of my life, instead of a portion of my life. When you sort of get [to retirement] you think: “I’m in my 30s, who am I?” And at that point you think, I am lonely here, this is sink or swim.’
He added:
‘We’re all in a huddle and it’s happy days, “yeah great, we can do this”. Then you turn around 180 degrees and it’s f—— lonely. You go, “I’m out on my own, where do I go now?” And then you think “oh s—, am I fit for purpose?”. That whole journey needs to be a transitional phase into coping skills and deconditioning into civvy street.’
Being part of a World Cup-winning rugby squad sounds like a life lived at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from ‘f…… lonely’. It sounds like the ultimate social life: life-long friends bonded by glory, limitless grateful fans and admirers.
Spare a thought for golfing great Scottie Scheffler, who has been world number one for a total of 167 weeks and whose begging bowl has received total career earnings in excess of $195m. Echoing Hurst, after winning this year’s US PGA Championship, Scheffler asked:
‘Showing up at the Masters every year it’s like, “Why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win The Open Championship so badly?”’
His sobering answer:
‘I don’t know because if I win it’s going to be awesome for two minutes, then we’re going to get to the next week and it’s, “hey, you won two majors this year; how important is it for you to win the FedEx Cup play-offs?”
‘It feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for like a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling.’
Doubtless to the horror of his corporate sponsors, Scheffler said he would not urge people to follow his path:
‘I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world because what’s the point? This is not a fulfilling life. It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.
‘There are a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfil them in life, and you get there, you get to number one in the world, and they’re like, “what’s the point?”’
From the heart of corporate media Mordor, the New York Times described ‘this version of Scheffler’ as ‘Nihilist Scottie’.
Before last year’s Paris Olympics, Scheffler had already broken hearts on Madison Avenue when he was asked how he felt about the potential glory of winning a gold medal and joining the pantheon of Olympic greats. His reply:
‘I don’t focus much on legacy. I don’t look too far into the future. Ultimately, we’ll be forgotten.’
Ronnie O’Sullivan, Nihilist Ronnie, has won the World Snooker Championship seven times. Widely considered the greatest player ever to have wielded a snooker cue, this was O’Sullivan’s answer to the question, ‘Worst life choice you ever made?’
‘Taking up snooker. In some ways, I wish I had a different job. I’m fortunate in many ways, because it’s been good to me, but I wish I’d been good at something else. Something more educational, maybe a scientist or something more interesting. I don’t think my job is interesting. It’s more of an entertainment, more of a brutality sport. I’d rather have had [sports psychiatrist] Steve Peters’ life. Or to inspire people in a different way, like helping to cure cancer.”’
While you and I were gazing out of office windows dreaming of being the best in the world at something, Cohen and O’Sullivan were dreaming of sitting in an office contributing to the public weal. For Hurst, it was ‘just like another day at the office’. Clearly, ‘this begging bowl is not an ordinary begging bowl… there is some magic in it’.
‘Signatures Made on Water’
The same discontent has, of course, haunted generations of tennis stars.
World number one and teenage heartthrob Björn Borg bagged five Wimbledon titles in a row, before being brutally dethroned in 1981 by arch-rival John McEnroe, who defeated him in both the Wimbledon and US Open finals. Devastated, Borg simply walked away from the sport, aged 26: ‘All I could think was how miserable my life had become.’
After retiring, Borg twice came close to dying from drug overdoses: ‘alcohol, drugs, pills – my preferred ways of self-medication’.
Presumably, becoming number one on the planet by committing regicide on the guy previously deemed the greatest ever player was enough to fill McEnroe’s begging bowl. Alas, he wrote of 1984, his greatest year in tennis:
‘Except for the French, and one tournament just before the Open in which I had been basically over-tennised, I won every tournament I played in 1984: thirteen out of fifteen. Eighty-two out of eighty-five matches. No one had ever had a year like that in tennis before. No one has since.
‘But on October 1, 1984, I was standing in the Portland airport, waiting to board a flight to L.A. for a week off, and suddenly I thought, I’m the greatest tennis player who ever lived – why am I so empty inside?’ (John McEnroe, Serious, Hachette Digital e-book, 2008, p. 228)
As discussed:
‘NOBODY is ever satisfied. The begging bowl in the head always remains empty.’
Having traumatised Borg in 1981, McEnroe was himself tortured by an emotional outburst that cost him a chance to win the 1984 French Open final against Ivan Lendl. McEnroe had been leading by two sets to love, sailing to victory:
‘It was the worst loss of my life, a devastating defeat: Sometimes it still keeps me up nights. It’s even tough for me now to do the commentary at the French – I’ll often have one or two days when I literally feel sick to my stomach just at being there and thinking about that match. Thinking of what I threw away, and how different my life would’ve been if I’d won.’ (McEnroe, p. 83)
Why did it mean so much so many years later? Who cares about a tennis match that took place in 1984?
‘I had two Wimbledons and three Opens. A French title, followed by my third Wimbledon, would have given me that final, complete thing that I don’t have now – a legitimate claim as possibly the greatest player of all time.’
This was fantasy at the time, even more so now. McEnroe ended his career with just seven Grand Slam titles. Since then, his achievements have been dwarfed by Novak Djokovic who has won 24, Rafael Nadal who won 22 and Roger Federer, 20.
Thus, the cruelty of the begging bowl: while the euphoria of any success quickly vanishes, leaving us empty, our failures burn and blister for years and decades. Osho captured it exactly:
‘Your pleasures were nothing, just signatures made on water.
‘And your pain was engraved on granite.
‘And you suffered all that pain for these signatures on water.’
McEnroe was quickly eclipsed by big-serving Boris Becker, who went on to serve 231 days of a two-and-a-half-year sentence in Britain’s HMP Wandsworth and HMP Huntercombe prisons. Jailed for crimes relating to his 2017 bankruptcy, Becker identified deeper causes when asked:
‘Have there been times when you wish you hadn’t won Wimbledon when you were seventeen?’
Becker replied:
‘Yeah, of course. If you remember any other wunderkind, they usually don’t make it to 50 because of the trials and tribulations that come after…
‘I’m happy to have won three [Wimbledon titles], but maybe 17 was too young. I was still a child. I was too comfortable. I had too much money. Nobody told me “No” – everything was possible. In hindsight, that’s the recipe for disaster.’
Thus, the magic begging bowl’s reverse spin on St. Augustine’s famous plea: ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet!’
Grant me everything I ever dreamed of, but not yet!
In similar vein, the life of golfing megastar Tiger Woods was brought low by partying, single vehicle car crashes and sex scandals. Woods confessed:
‘I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them. I was wrong. I was foolish.’
Pop star Robbie Williams’ discography includes seven UK No. 1 singles, with all but one of his 14 studio albums reaching No. 1. Williams gained a Guinness World Record in 2006 for selling 1.6 million concert tickets in a single day. The BBC reported that Williams ‘paints a pretty poisonous portrait’ of his time in the band Take That:
‘There’s a pattern – boys join a boyband, boyband becomes huge, boys get sick. And I don’t think anybody gets to escape that.
‘I don’t know what it is completely about fame that warps. I just know that it does. I know that young fame, in particular, is corrosive and toxic. It should come with a health warning.’
Like Becker, Williams believes ‘young fame’ is a key problem. In reality, the problem is that no amount of fame, at any age, will appease the craving and discontent of the magic begging bowl. Biographer Lynn Haney commented on the failure of ‘success’ more generally:
‘Hollywood is filled with the most unhappy success stories in the world. Guys and gals who are making fortunes, being pampered and petted by any number of people, and basking in the idolatry of movie fans all over the world still manage to find in this pleasant situation big tears of sadness, moments of deep depression and that hangdog look that usually goes with complete failure. Why this happens, I’ll never understand.’ (Lynn Haney, Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life, Robson, 2002, p. 186)
If we are tempted to believe that the begging bowl can be filled with virtuous deeds, we might recall that the mysterious beggar in the story warns the king that, pebbles, stones or diamonds, it makes no difference what is thrown in. Award-winning photojournalist Don McCullin, veteran of numerous wars, commented:
‘“It’s been a cesspit, really, my life… I feel as if I’ve been over-rewarded, and I definitely feel uncomfortable about that, because it’s been at the expense of other people’s lives.” But he has been the witness to atrocity, I point out, and that’s important. “Yes,” he says, uncertainly, “but, at the end of the day, it’s done absolutely no good at all. Look at Ukraine. Look at Gaza. I haven’t changed a solitary thing. I mean it. I feel as if I’ve been riding on other people’s pain over the last 60 years, and their pain hasn’t helped prevent this kind of tragedy. We’ve learned nothing.” It makes him despair.’
Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO, which Spotify ranked fifth in its list of the top five most popular podcasts globally in 2024, having had more than one billion views and listens, said:
‘Entrepreneurs like me get a lot of likes and followers when we tell people to quit their jobs and chase their dreams. But here is the context that we nearly always miss. Entrepreneurship can be really, really boring… If you’re lucky enough to be successful, the problems will get bigger, not smaller…You will probably work 3x the hours you do now, have 10x the stress and a tiny probability of significant success. A recent survey found 87.7% of founders deal with mental health issues. That’s not a bug. It’s a feature of entrepreneurship.’
Bartlett’s conclusion:
‘You’ll struggle to switch off. Ever. Your phone will probably become a prison. And here’s the punchline: If you succeed, it all gets harder. More money = more complexity. More growth = more anxiety. More success = more people depending on you.’
Duff McKagan, the bassist in the globally famous band Guns N’ Roses, commented:
‘Survival means you live long enough to watch the world change, to watch the people you loved drift away, to watch your own body slow down while your heart still wants to live like it’s 1987.
‘I miss the days when everything felt infinite – the music, the friendships, the laughter backstage, even the chaos. Now, those moments feel like ghosts haunting me, reminding me of what once was.’
Bruce Springsteen wrote a song, ‘Glory Days’, about begging bowls haunted by the past in this way, a form of suffering that is written all over the faces of fading stars like Borg and Woods.
As McKagan suggests, even if we were globally recognised as ‘The Greatest’ we would still be tormented by the comparison between who we are ‘now’ and who we were ‘then’.
Conclusion
In reality, of course, the begging bowl of the human mind is not made toxic by magic; it is made toxic by thoughts of how our lives are lacking in some way. We missed some great opportunity – the great love, the great prize, the great achievement. Or we succeeded, loved and lost, and now have ‘nothing’. Those of us who never approach the lofty summits of achievement described above are no different – our happiness is also swallowed up by thoughts of what ‘could’ or ‘should’ be different.
In Part 2, we will discuss an antidote to the suffering of the human mind supplied by spiritual teacher Byron Katie’s strategy of self-inquiry, ‘The Work’. Strange and counter intuitive as it may seem at first sight, the fact is that it works.
