The Life of the Buddha

 

 

Siddhartha Gautama, the sage of the Sakya clan, founded are ligion that is in many ways the most anomalous of those surviving in the world today. He claimed access to no divine wisdom, no unique intuition, no worldly or spiritual authority, and no super-human status of any kind. The philosophy he taught subverts common-sense notions about what the nature of the world is and uproots the very beliefs that people tend to cherish the most:the existence of God,the reality of theself,thepromiseofanafterlife, and the availability of happiness. In their place he taught reliance on personal understanding and the pragmatic uselessness of merebelief. He taught that all phenomena are impermanent and nothing can be counted on to endure; that there is no soul to be found at any time, in any thing, anywhere; and that the fundamental quality of life, even when it seems pleasant, is radically unsatisfactory. And yet, the religion that has grown out of Gautama’s teachings has become a major world religion known for its equanimity, its compassion, and, even, its joy.

 

Gautama was born in northeastern India in what is modern day Nepali neither 566or 448BE.and died eighty years later. Gautama’s father Suddhodana was a minor king, the head of the Sakyas. Legend holds that Gautama was so remarkable asa child that soothsayers predicted that he would one day become either a universal monarch or an “awakened one,” a “Buddha.” 

Legend relates that one day, shortly after the birth of Rahula, Gautama requested to see the city that he had never before seen. Unable to dissuade him, his father had runners clear the streets of all unpleasant sights and then allowed Gautama to be taken out in a chariot. Serendipitously, or, as some legends hold, at the will of the far-seeing God, the young prince was exposed to four shocking sights which the runners had missed. First, Gautama saw a decrepit man, gray-haired, broken-toothed, and bent with age, by the side of the road. Since he had seen few humans other than his family and his 40,000 dancing girls, he asked his charioteer in astonishment what sort of creature the man was. That is what happens when people get old, explained the driver. The next day, the prince asked to go out again. Though his father doubled his efforts to clear the streets of all unpleasant sights, a sick person was missed. On seeing the person lying by the side of the road, racked with disease, Gautama again turned to his charioteer in surprise. That is illness, he was told. The following day he embarked on another tour on which he was exposed to the sight of a human corpse, and thus learned of the fact of death. Legend or not, this story portrays an important element of the Buddha’s later teachings: while the facts of age, sickness, and death are known to us, it is still easy to forget them,and a direct confrontation with their reality isoften a novel and disturbing insight.¹ Unless one is aware of suffering, one will never seek to improve one’s condition, a fact of which the Buddha was to make much use.

The prince made one more excursion into the city the next day, and, again, he was exposed to something he had never before seen — a saffron-robed renunciant with a shaven head, a begging bowl, and, most importantly, a tranquil and serene demeanor. That night, after returning to his palace, he realized that all of his previous pleasures were now but hollow delights. He waited until Yasodhara and Rahula were asleep, took one last look at his son lying in his wife’s arms, kissed them both, and left. Such an exit was seen by some of the later writings as setting a precedent for the renunciant monastic disciplines the Buddha later organized, and the seeming callousness of it is mitigated by the claim that he had to leave his family for the future benefit of all beings, that is, so that he could attain his enlightenment and then teach it to others.² It is also pointed out that he was clearly not abandoning his family, for his son later became one of his greatest disciples. However, the sense of solitude, spiritual desperation, and determination portrayed by this episode is not lessened.

 

It was with such a sense of determination that Gautama embarked on the next stage of his life. He had seen the suffering from which he had been sheltered for so long, and then he had seen proof in the form of the renunciant that such suffering can be conquered. He now set himself the goal of learning how to conquer it. He saw that his many years of living in opulence had not taught him the way to enlightenment, so he now tried the opposite path. For six years he practiced renunciation and asceticism. He first practiced raja yoga in an attempt to conquer suffering through meditation and the control of consciousness. Gautama soon surpassed his teachers by attaining states of elevated awareness higher than the ones of which they were capable, but did not feel that he had reached his goal yet. He left his yoga teachers and joined a group of ascetics to practice rigorous physical austerities. His strong sense of determination led him to practice self-mortifications so severe that he nearly died. 

By the time he could barely stand up and all of his hair had fallen out, Gautama realized that asceticism was not going to bring him to his goal, either. He recollected that he had once spontaneously experienced a certain meditative state that could provide a path to awakening, and decidedtogiveit onelasttry.Hetook food,leftthegroupof ascetics,and sat under a tree, determined to gain enlightenment or die. As he began to meditate, the legendary demon tempter, Mara, assailed him first with visions of beautiful women and then with violent storms in an attempt to prevent Gautama’s immanent enlightenment. Gautama ignored Mara and entered deeper into meditation. He passed through state after state of consciousness until he achieved the enlightenment he had so long sought, nirvana. He was now a “Buddha,” an “awakened” one. Reflecting on what he had found, he saw himself as presented with a difficult choice, which is sometimes portrayed as being Mara’s final assault. He could either selfishly enter parinirvana, the state of “nonreturning” liberation, or he could postpone the final, ultimate freedom and return to the world to teach. The latter option seemed pointless, for the awakening that he had experienced was so profound, so subtle, and so “beyond the sphere of reason” that he feared it would be pointless to try to teach it to anyone else. The deciding factor was the Buddha’s enlightened insight into the oneness of all beings, which led him to sympathize with the suffering of others. He felt compassion and realized that he must return, even if for the sake of only one person’s understanding. Thus began the ministry of the Buddha.

 

The biographies in the canonical texts, the sutras, give only sparse information of the Buddha’s life following his nirvana. A likely explanation for the greater emphasis on his earlier life than on his later is that the core teaching of the Buddha is the “path” to follow, the process one must go through to realize nirvana for oneself. Thus, the Buddha’s personal search for awakening is more important than what he did after he had found his goal. The general picture conveyed by the few details available is that he spent the rest of his life wandering around the Ganges basin area on foot, with few possessions, teaching his ever-growing group of disciples. Much of his teaching method would have been seen as subversive by the society around him. He taught in the local languages and dialects, spurning the Sanskrit which by this time was already associated exclusively with the educated, elite priestly caste of Hinduism. He taught with no distinction, associating with all classes and castes of men and women. He also shunned both the isolation of the forest and the community of the cities, preferring to reside and teach in the outskirts of the urban areas. After wandering and teaching for forty-five years, the Buddha prepared for his death.He asked his followers if they had any last questions.When no one spoke, he told them “All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your salvation with diligence!” and entered parinirvana, the final liberation.