> it's very curious that an epiphany centered around his failure to uphold his responsibilities to his loved ones resulted in his abandoning said loved ones for the remainder of his life.In the story, at least as I read it, Mu-nan was already headed for ruin. Gudo, the teacher, warned him: "If you keep on gambling and drinking you will have no time left to accomplish anything else, and you will cause your family to suffer too."
In a sense, Mu-nan was as good as dead already. If Gudo hadn't shown up, Mu-nan would have just kept on drinking and failing his family anyway. So from that point of view, I think he may have left his family better off by departing forever. He saw that following his teacher was the only path left for him, so that's what he did. If he had stayed with his family, his karma would have just taken him back into the place he had been before.
Most of the great Buddhist stories I've read fit this archetype: the hero has reached a point of no return, they've done terrible things, or they're stuck in a situation where there's no way out. At that point all they can do is find a teacher and follow their instructions. That usually means leaving everything and everyone behind, for better or for worse.
> What good are you, what worth have you, if you spend all your energy making yourself precious and ignore the world as it crumbles to dust around you?
I think this is a common misunderstanding of Eastern philosophy. I used to feel the same way too - it would make me angry because it seemed so passive, like just giving up.
But there's actually a lot of wisdom to the approach. If you haven't worked it out for yourself first, how can you ever be of service to anyone else?