I peered down at the gravel at my feet on the narrow road above the monastery. A gigantic blue worm was writhing there, it’s dimensions more like a snake than a worm. The creature was just going about its business in the rain-soaked forest near the shitake farm. I was just going about mine, I thought, when its strangeness stopped me in my tracks.

After years of debilitating ascetic practice Gautama sat down under a fig tree and got serious. He sipped at a bowl of rice offered from the heart of a random stranger, endured the ridicule and rejections of his closest friends, fluffed up a pile of dry grass upon which he sat down. He vowed not to move from that spot until he attained enlightenment or died.