What the Buddha Knew About Inherited Pain

Siddhartha Gautama, let’s just call him Sid, was born into privilege. A palace. Servants. The best food. Every comfort you can imagine.

But his story begins with loss. His mother died shortly after he was born.
His father, consumed by grief and fear, tried to protect him from the harshness of life. Literally. He had people build walls around the palace so Sid wouldn’t see sickness, aging, or death.

That kind of control might look like love. But from a modern lens, it’s something else.

It’s what we now understand as early conditioning. When a child doesn’t have access to reality, to grief, to emotional attunement. When protection becomes disconnection. That too can leave a mark.

Looking Through a Modern Lens

Today, we know that the pain we carry isn’t just from what happened to us. It’s also from what never had space to be seen, felt, or spoken aloud.

And through the study of epigenetics, we’ve learned that this kind of inherited pain, what one generation doesn’t heal, can ripple forward through the next. Passed down not just in behaviors, but in nervous systems.

Buddhism has had a word for this for over 2,500 years:
karma.

Rethinking Karma

Karma doesn’t mean punishment.
It doesn’t mean “you had it coming.”

Karma means action, and the results of action.
The habits, patterns, and mental grooves that shape how we relate to life.

It includes our personal history and the collective conditions we’re born into.

Some of it we inherited.
Some of it we participated in.
Some of it we didn’t choose at all.

But how we meet those patterns now?
That’s where freedom begins.

“You are not responsible for the programming you received in childhood. But as an adult, you are responsible for healing it.”

Emily Maroutian

A Path of Healing, Not Blame

The Buddha didn’t teach us to shame ourselves for our conditioning.
He taught us to see it clearly, to recognize the stories the mind tells, and the roots beneath them.

He didn’t say, “Escape your pain.”
He said, “Be with it. Learn from it. Meet it with wisdom.”

That’s the path.

Not trying to erase the past, but learning how to hold it differently.
Not freedom from our wounds, but freedom within them.

And we don’t have to walk that path alone.

Because when we Sit and Feel together, we Heal together.

Joe

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The Buddha Was Just a Dude