LM13
The Buddha
This Learning Module concerns the origins of Buddhism and the life of its founder, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Note that the Reading Assignments Page includes an account of the of the Buddha's first meeting with his father after the Buddha's enlightenment.
As always, the PHIL CAFE is available if you have questions about the course or want to share your observations. For example, are you suprised by the father's response? What is the purpose of the account of the Buddha meeting his father? I hope these are intriguing questions to you and that you'll find them worth pondering.
Buddhism is a term that comes from the Sanskrit language word "bodhi."
Bodhi means enlightenment. This enlightenment is called "nirvana" or extinction. What is extinguished is our desires, an extinguishing, a "blowing out" of the fires of desire. Nirvana, in other words, is a state of non-desires.
Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama Buddha ("Buddha" means the awakened or enlightened one) Shakyamuni (meaning "sage of the Shakya clan"). Many scholars put his dates at 563-483 B.C.E.
India in the fifth century B.C.E. was in a state of religious ferment. The caste system had hardened and the brahmins asserted their priestly rights and that meant that other classes, especially the aristocracy, felt threatened. This was also a time of enthusiasm for personal religious experience and that ushered in new schools of thinking, some of which opposed priestly religion.
The Buddha did not write down his teachings, nor did his early disciples, and the only written versions of his teachings were recorded several hundred years after his death, after centuries of oral transmission. In the first or second century C.E. the first biography appeared of Shakyamuni Buddha, attributed to the Indian poet Ashvaghosha. You have some of Ashvaghosha's writings in your textbook.
The basic teachings have come down from languages not spoken by the Buddha. The language he spoke was probably a version of Magadhi. The teachings are in two other languages, Sanskrit, and Pali, a language related to Sanskrit. In fact, you'll find the readings in the textbook sometimes use the Sanskrit version of words, and sometimes use the Pali version of words. For example, "dharma" in Sanskrit is "dhamma" in Pali. It's "nirvana" in Sanskrit and "nibbana" in Pali.
At least several centuries passed before an official biography of the Buddha was written, and in that time many devout legends grew up around the Buddha's early life. As a result it is difficult for scholars to separate the historical from the legendary. In using our sympathetic imagination, the important question to ask is not "did that really happen?" but "what is this or that story intended to show?"
Let's look next at Siddhartha's early life.
Siddhartha was born the son of a prince of the Shakya tribe in what today is Nepal in the lower Himalayan Mountains. Legend says his mother, Maya, dreamed that a white elephant (the holiest of animals symbolizing the soul of the Buddha) entered her side at the moment of conception of the future Buddha, and that Siddhartha was born miraculously from her side. The point of this story is not to relate a factual occurrence, but to suggest that the conception and the birth of the Buddha were in some fashion miraculous, well-suited to the teacher of enlightenment.
Siddhartha's mother died a week after childbirth and he was raised by his aunt. Vedic priests foretold he would either follow in his father's footsteps, inheriting his position and becoming a great king, or, if he were exposed to the sight of suffering, he would become a great spiritual leader, a world teacher.
Siddhartha's father wanted his son to succeed him and so he took measures to keep the boy from any exposure to suffering. Siddhartha was kept in the walled palace compound. He grew up in luxury, was married at an early age to a young woman his father had chosen, and had a son. Siddhartha was educated and trained as a warrior because he was, legend says, born into the kshatriya social class. Within the compound, life was pain-free and full of pleasure.
The turning point came in Siddhartha's life when he encountered suffering. One day Siddhartha disobeyed his father's command not to leave the royal grounds. On his visit to a nearby town he saw the suffering of ordinary life. He was moved by what have come to be called the four passing sights.
The first was an old man, crooked and toothless. The second was a sick man, wasted by disease. The third sight was of a corpse being taken for cremation. The fourth sight was a sannyasin, a wandering renunciant, who had no possessions but who seemed to be at peace. At the age of 29 Siddhartha realized his life had been no more than a pleasant prison. The suffering he encountered sent him into a depression that kept him from enjoying the carefree life.
That brings us to Siddhartha's search for answers about suffering and death.
Siddhartha escaped from the compound. Legend says he took a last look at his sleeping family and attendants and rode to the edge of the palace grounds where he gave his horse to his servant, removed his jewels, and cut off his long black hair. He put on simple clothes and went out into the world with nothing but questions.
He traveled from guru to guru, from teacher to teacher, and learned meditation and discussed philosophy. But he found no satisfaction. His teachers agreed on some things and disagreed on others.
Begging for food and sleeping outdoors, Siddhartha spent six years looking for answers to the facts of suffering and death, the same issues that are taken up in the Hindu "Upanishads."
Together with a group of five nomadic seekers, Siddhartha set out to find the answers, practicing great austerity in an effort to purify himself spiritually.
Siddhartha collapsed from weakness, and was found resting under a sacred tree by a kind woman from the nearby town who had come to worship the spirit of the great tree. Siddhartha gratefully took the food she offered and realized that his asceticism had not given him the answers that he was looking for. His followers left him when they found that he had accepted food and had deliberately avoided the hot sun by sitting under a large shade tree. Siddhartha adopted what he called "the middle path" between extreme asceticism and self-indulgence, between the austerity of the search and the pleasures of the palace.
Siddhartha went to another tree, now called the Bodhi tree, probably an Indian fig tree, and, facing east, resolved to remain there in meditation until he had the understanding that he needed. Various traditions say he sat there for a week or for 49 days (a week of weeks).
He struggled with hunger, thirst, doubt, weakness, and some stories describe the work of an evil spirit, Mara, and his daughters who tempted Siddhartha with sensuality and fear. Siddhartha resisted all temptation.
During one entire night as he sat meditating under a full moon, Siddhartha entered increasingly deep states of awareness. Legend says he saw past lives, he understood the laws of karma that govern everyone, and finally achieved insight into release from suffering and death. At dawn he reached a state of profound understanding or enlightenment. This enlightenment or bodhi enabled him to become the Buddha, the "awakened one," from the Sanskrit word meaning "to wake up."
The Buddha traveled west and explained his awakening to his five former companions who reconciled with him and became the Buddha's first disciples. Later the Buddha met with his father. The poet Ashvaghosha tells the story of the meeting.
The Buddha spent the rest of his long life teaching, traveling from village to village in northeastern India, attracting many followers, especially among the warrior-noble class. Donors gave land, groves, and buildings to the new movement.
The Buddha began an order or "sangha" of monks and later of nuns. The Buddha's way was one of moderation, between the worldly life of a householder and the ascetic life of sannyasin, though the rules of the new monastic community, and how it would interact with the non-monastic world which provided food, had to be worked out over time.
Legend says when he was around 80 years old, the Buddha ate spoiled food offered by a well-meaning blacksmith and became very ill. He called his disciples and reminded them that everything must die, including the Buddha. His final words of advice: "So, Ananda, you must be your own lamps, be your own refuges. Take refuge in nothing outside yourselves. Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for refuge to anything besides yourselves." That is, use your own self-control to reach perfection and inner peace.
After this, so the story goes, the Buddha turned on his right side and died. The many images and paintings of the so-called reclining Buddha may be images of his serene moment of death.
What the Buddha discovered in his enlightenment eventually became the basis of a world religion with many branches. We will turn to those next time.
This first biography of the Buddha, which appeared in the first or second century CE (some 400 or 500 years after Siddhartha's death), is a "pious reconstruction" atributed to the Indian poet Ashvaghosha that offers the life of the Buddha as guidance for the Buddhist way.
Here is how Ashvaghosha describes Siddhartha's first meeting with his father after his son's enlightenment:
In due course the Buddha went to Kapilavastu, and preached the Dharma to his father. He also displayed to him his proficiency in wonderworking power, thereby making him more ready to receive his Dharma.
His father was overjoyed by what he heard, folded his hands, and said to him: 'Wise and fruitful are your deeds, and you have released me from great suffering. Instead of rejoicing at the gift of the earth, which brings nothing but sorrow, I will now rejoice at having so fruitful a son.
'You were right to go away and give up your prosperous home. It was right of you to have toiled with such great labours. And now it is right of you that you should have compassion on us, your dear relations, who loved you so dearly, and whom you did leave. For the sake of the world in distress you have trodden the path to supreme reality, which could not be found even by those seers of olden times who were gods or kings.
'If you had chosen to become a universal monarch, that could have given me no more joy than I have now felt at the sight of your miraculous powers and of your holy Dharma. . . .'
(Source: Edward Conze, trans., Buddhist Scriptures. London: Penguin, 1959, pp. 56-57.)