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Gautama Buddha

Gautama Buddha was a South Asian spiritual leader believed to have lived between approximately 563 BCE and 483 BCE. Born as Siddhartha Gautama (Sanskrit: "descendant of Gautama whose aims are achieved / who achieves aims effectively") he became "the Buddha" after embarking on a quest for spiritual meaning. He is universally recognised by Buddhists as the Supreme Buddha (literally Enlightened One or Awakened One) of our age. He is also commonly known as Shakyamuni or Sakyamuni ("sage of the Shakya clan") and as the Tathagata ("thus-come-one").

Gautama is the key figure in Buddhism, and accounts of his life, discourses, and monastic rules were summarized after his death and memorized by the sangha. Passed down by oral tradition, the Tripitaka was written about four hundred years later.

Buddha's life

Few of the details of the Buddha's life can be independently verified, and it is difficult to determine what is history and what is myth. Therefore this article will describe the life of Siddhartha Gautama as told in the earliest available Buddhist texts.

Conception and birth

Siddhartha Gautama was born in Lumbini (a town situated in what is now Nepal, near the Indian border) under the full moon of the sixth lunar month, in the spring. His father was Suddhodana, a chief among the Shakyas, a warrior tribe. His mother was Queen Maya, one of Suddhodana's wives. The day of the Buddha's birth is widely celebrated in Buddhist countries as Vesak. Gautama was born a prince, destined to a life of luxury.

According to legend, before his birth, Gautama had visited his mother during a vision, taking the form of a white elephant. During the birth celebrations, a seer announced that this baby would either become a great king or a great holy man. His father, wishing for Gautama to be a great king, shielded his son from religious teachings or knowledge of human suffering.

Marriage

As the boy reached the age of 16, his father arranged his marriage to Yashodhara, a cousin of the same age. In time, she gave birth to a son, Rahula. Although his father ensured that Gautama was provided with everything he could want or need, Gautama was constantly troubled and internally dissatisfied.

The Four Sights

At the age of twenty-nine, Gautama was escorted by his attendant Channa on four subsequent visits outside of the palace. There, he came across the "four sights": an old, crippled man, a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and finally a wandering ascetic. Gautama realized then the harsh truth of life—that death, disease, age, and pain were inescapable, that the poor outnumbered the wealthy, and that even the pleasures of the rich eventually came to nothing.

The Great Departure

Thus inspired, Gautama determined to leave his home, his possessions and his family at age 29. He chose to become a monk.

Abandoning his inheritance, he dedicated his life to learning how to overcome suffering. He pursued the path of Yogic meditation with two Brahmin hermits, and although he achieved high levels of meditative consciousness, he was not satisfied with this path.

Gautama then chose the robes of a mendicant monk and headed to northeast India. He began training in the ascetic life and practicing vigorous techniques of physical and mental austerity. Gautama proved adept at these practices, and was able to surpass his teachers. However, he found no answer to his problem and, leaving behind his teachers, he and a small group of companions set out to take their austerities even further. After nearly starving himself to death with no success (some sources claim that he nearly drowned), Gautama began to reconsider his path. Then he remembered a moment in childhood in which he had been watching his father start the season's plowing, and he had fallen into a naturally concentrated and focused state in which time seemed to stand still, and which was blissful and refreshing.

Enlightenment

After discarding asceticism and concentrating on meditation, Gautama discovered what Buddhists call the middle way—a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. He accepted a little buttermilk from a passing goatherd, Sumedha. Then, sitting under a pipal tree, which is now known as the Bodhi tree, he vowed never to arise until he had found the Truth. He, at the age of 35, attained Enlightenment; by some traditions, this occurred in approximately May, and, by others, December. Gautama was from then on known as "the awakened one", the Buddha.

He stated that he had realized complete Awakening and insight into the nature and cause of human suffering, along with steps necessary to eliminate it. His understanding manifested the Four Noble Truths, and the state of supreme liberation—possible for any being—was called Nirvana.

According to one of the stories in the Āyācana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya VI.1), a scripture found in the Pāli and other canons, immediately after his Enlightenment, the Buddha was wondering whether or not he should teach the Dharma. He was concerned that, as human beings were overpowered by greed, hatred and delusion, they would not be able to see the true dharma which was subtle, deep and hard to understand. A spirit, Brahma Sahampati, however, interceded, and asked that he teach the dharma to the world, as "there will be those who will understand the Dharma". With his great compassion, the Buddha agreed to become a teacher.

At the Deer Park near Benares in northern India he set in motion the Wheel of Dharma by delivering his first sermon to the group of five companions with whom he had previously sought enlightenment. They, together with the Buddha, formed the first sangha, the company of Buddhist monks.

The Buddha emphasized that he was not a god, he was simply enlightened. He stated: there is no intermediary between mankind and the divine; distant gods are subjected to karma themselves in decaying heavens; and the Buddha is solely a guide and teacher for the sentient beings who must tread the path of Nirvana themselves to attain spiritual awakening and see truth and reality as it is. The Buddhist system of insight, thought, and meditation practice was not revealed divinely, but by the understanding of the true nature of the human mind, which could be discovered by anybody.

For the remaining forty-five years of his life (or fifty by some accounts), the Buddha traveled in the Gangetic Plain of central India, teaching his doctrine and discipline to an extremely diverse range of people—from nobles to street outcaste sweepers, including many adherents of rival philosophies and religions. The Buddha founded the community of Buddhist monks and that of nuns (the Sangha) to continue the dispensation after his Parinirvana or complete Nirvana, and made thousands of converts. His religion was open to all races and classes and had no caste structure. On the other hand, Buddhist texts record that he was reluctant to ordain women as nuns: he eventually accepted them on the grounds that their capacity for enlightenment was equal to that of men, but he gave them certain additional rules to follow.

The Great Passing

At the age of eighty, the Buddha ate his last meal, which, according to different translations, was either a mushroom delicacy or pork, which he had received as an offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. Falling violently ill, the Buddha realized that his end was approaching fast. He told his attendant Ananda to prepare a bed between two Sal trees at Kushinagar, and then finally passed away. The Buddha's final words were, "All composite things pass away. Strive for your own salvation with diligence."

The Buddha's body was cremated and the relics were placed in monuments or stupas, some of which are believed to have survived until the present.

Personality and character

The Buddha as presented in the Buddhist scriptures is notable for such characteristics as:

Physical characteristics

Although the Buddha was not represented in human form until around the 1st century CE (see Buddhist art), his physical characteristics are described in one of the central texts of the traditional Pali canon, the Digha Nikaya. They help define the global aspect of the historical Buddha:

Interpretations may vary, and the reliability of the Sutras may be questioned, but these characteristics are generally indicative of an Indo-European body type. This can also be related to the tradition describing the historic Buddha as a member of the Indian Kshatriya warrior caste, for which Indo-European origins have also often been suggested (Aryan invasion theory).

Teachings

The teachings of the Buddha are covered in the articles on Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy. Many Buddhist sects disagree as to what the Buddha actually taught. There seems to be major agreement on these points:

• The Four Noble Truths: that suffering is an inherent part of existence; that suffering is caused by craving; that craving can be ceased; and that following the Eightfold Path will lead to the cessation of craving (and suffering).
• The Eightfold Path: proper understanding, proper thought, proper speech, proper action, proper livelihood, proper effort, proper mindfulness, and proper concentration.
• The law of dependent causation: that events are not predestined, nor are they random, but that events are caused by the actions that preceded them.
• Rejection of the infallibility of accepted scripture: teachings should not be accepted unless they are borne out by our experiences.
• Anicca: That all things are impermanent.
• Anatta: That the perception of a constant "self" is an illusion.

The Buddha in other religions

Hinduism

It is said in Srimad-Bhagavatam, an important Purana, that the Buddha is the ninth Lila avatar of Lord Vishnu, and that he took form as Siddhartha Gautama to guide the people of India away from ritual animal sacrifice, which was prevalent at the time. To this end he advocated Ahimsa, or non-violence toward sentient beings, a principle first found in the Upanishads.

Buddhists in general do not consider the Buddha to be God or an avatar of any god, and view such notions as Hinduism's (largely successful) attempt to "absorb" Buddhism. The general decline of Buddhism in India has been attributed to this "absorption" not only of the Buddha as a religious figure but of development in parallel Vedanta philosophy which began challenging Buddhism's logical and philosophically strong image.

Islam

Some Muslims believe that Siddharta Gautama is the same person who is referred to in the Koran as Dhul-Kifl, and that he was therefore a prophet of Islam. The meaning of Dhul-Kifl is unclear, but, according to this view, it means "the man from Kifl", where Kifl is the Arabic pronunciation of Kapilavastu, where the Buddha spent thirty years of his life. More common views, however, hold that Dhul-Kifl was a different person and not a prophet at all, or that he was the prophet called Ezekiel in the Bible.

Christianity

In the traditional Catholic calendar of saints, there is listed a Saint Iodasaph (also known as Ioasaph), son of a king of fourth century India. Iodasaph supposedly converted to Christianity, then lived a life of penance and meditation. Scholars have known for some time that Iodasaph is merely the Buddha converted into Christianity.

Gautama Buddha in modern popular culture

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