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The Buddha
The teaching or tradition which
we call Buddhism arose from the Buddha's experience of Enlightenment more
than 2,500 years ago. It is thus with the Buddha that Buddhism began. It
is natural that we would ask "Who is the Buddha?" The first thing we have
to note is that the word "Buddha" is not a name, but rather a title. The
Buddha means "The Awakened One" or "He who Knows"
The one whom we call "the Buddha"
lived in Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalayas. His father, Shuddhodana
Gautama was King of a clan called the Sakya. The Queen was on her way to
her father's kingdom when she gave birth to the Buddha to be. He was given
the name Siddhartha.
As Prince Siddhartha grew up, he
was given, by the standard of those days, the best education and is said
to have performed exceptionally well in all areas. And at the age of 16,
he was married to Yashodhara. (It was customary to marry young.) As a prince,
we would expect him to live a luxurious life and he did. But despite his
well-to-do way of life, he was deeply dissatisfied. The Buddhist Scriptures
spoke of a kind of spiritual crisis, a turning point, when the Prince saw
the Four Signs (an old man, sick man, dead man and an ascetic). He was
deeply troubled by the suffering all people have to go through. They caused
him to reflect on the problem of suffering. He thus felt a need to find
the answer for himself. He also felt that he had to leave the palace and
luxurious life to find the answer. And this was what he did.
For the next 6 years, he travelled
from place to place seeking teachers who could show him the way. But as
none could, he decided to seek the answer by himself. There was then a
popular practice of extreme ascetisim. It is believed that one can realise
the truth by torturing the physical body. And that is what Siddhartha did.
However, after 6 years of hard practice, he could not find the answer.
Knowing that it was no the way to the Truth, he had the courage to give
it up.
Finally, he found himself a beautiful
spot beside a river and sat under the shade of a great Bodhi tree.There
he sat and made a resolution, "I will not rise from this spot until
I am Fully Enlightened". So day after day, night after night, he sat
in deep meditation. With his mind concentrated and controlled, he purified
his mind and looked deep into the nature of all phenomena. On Vesak night,
the night of the full moon of May, just as he was gazing upon the rising
morning star, full illumination, full Enlightenment arose.
The Prince Siddhartha Gautama, had
become The Buddha.
The Buddha wanted the first to whom
he would try and explain what had happened to him to be those five ascetics
who’d looked after him and then left when he stopped fasting. They didn’t
really want anything more to do with him, but when he eventually found
them in a deer park not far from Benares they were struck by the change
in him and agreed to hear him out. So they sat around, out in the open,
under the trees, and he talked and they listened.
First he spoke of his early life
and how he’d been very privileged and until he’d left home had had just
about everything he wanted - and a bit more, but had never been really
content and at peace. Then he reminded them of the terrible way he’d tormented
his body with breath control and fasting and how that hadn’t done much
for him either. Left by himself, he’d tried a middle way and that was the
first principle he wished to impress upon them - the avoidance of extremes,
the Middle Way. Then came Suffering: he drew their attention to the hurt
in life with its aches and pains, perpetual tension in the face of ceaseless,
unstoppable change, and our abiding selfishness. Not really understanding
why we’re here or what it’s all about we allow desire to put us at odds
with everything. We try to control, we want, and then we don’t want. Wanting
colours our relationship with everything. This thirst just leads to more
thirst, and never satisfied we suffer.
The Buddha went on to say that it
might be stopped and furthermore he concluded by explaining how, the practice
that can overcome this problem. Many times throughout his long life, before
passing away at the age of eighty.
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