The Buddha lived in India in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The world's fourth largest religion has an estimated 500 million followers and was founded by him.
"Buddha" is a Sanskrit word that means "one who is awake" The Buddha is seen by many Buddhists as a man who attained spiritual enlightenment, a state of mind in which all traces of personal suffering have been extinguished.
The story of his life is not singular. The stories of the Buddha's life and teachings can be varied.
Paul Harrison is the chair of the Department of Religious Studies and co-Director of the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies. Buddhism has more scriptures than any other religion. All that was transmitted by memory. The historical Buddha is hard to pin down despite all that has been written about him. Through the records left by his followers, we know about the Buddha. We don't have any confirmation of his life. We don't have anything else to go on.
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It has been difficult for scholars to distinguish the facts of the Buddha's life from those of legend.
Harrison said that the stories portray an idealized picture of the Buddha. It's hard to say what he taught or what that was. We have what his followers thought he taught, but how much of it is what he said and how much is what they remember. It is currently debated in the field.
The town of Lumbini in southern Nepal is believed to be where Siddhartha was born. The ancient Indian kingdom of Kosala was centered in what is now northern India and included parts of Nepal. According to the World History Encyclopedia, Siddhartha was raised in a palace in the southern part of Nepal or northwest India. Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants and traders), and the Shudra were the social classes of the caste system in India.
There are many stories about Siddhartha. When Siddhartha was born, his mother received a prophecy that he would become a powerful ruler or a renowned spiritual leader. Shuddodana decided his son needed to be cloistered in the palace in order to bring about the former. At the age of 16, Siddhartha married a woman, and later they had a son.
Sara Jaye Hart told Live Science thatSiddhartha was raised in a privileged environment. He would be considered a part of the 1% today.
This was not going to last. Siddhartha became one of the world's most influential religious leaders because of an experience he had when he was 29 that changed his life forever.
Siddhartha's encounter with four people outside the palace grounds is known as the "four sights" in Buddhist lore. According to the stories, Siddhartha came across four people in a row, in some versions, he encountered them on separate days. The first was an old man; the second was a sick person; and the third was a corpse.
Siddhartha's sheltered existence hadn't prepared him to see such sights, so he looked to his charioteers for answers. Channa said that the first three people are the consequences of a normal human existence. The last person was a spiritual renunciate, someone who had given up worldly comforts in favor of seeking spiritual salvation through meditation, begging and asceticism.
The prince decided to explore the world and find answers to life's questions after these encounters. He was interested in the subject of human suffering. He wanted to find a way to alleviate the suffering of humans. It was this seemingly endless cycle of death and rebirth that bound one to life, as many people believed during this time.
Hart said that the story of Buddha was about a person who had a profound early mid-life crisis and decided he wanted to know more than his upbringing would give him.
Siddhartha decided to leave his current life behind, including his wife and son, and go into the world. He cut his hair in a gesture of renunciation of his privileged upbringing. According to the World History Encyclopedia, he joined a group of ascetics who practiced a severe form of self- discipline that included meditation, fast and physical abuse of the body. Siddhartha was with them for a long time and studied their disciplines.
During this time, he mastered the yogic practices. He was dedicated and even obsessive in his dedication. He ate only a single grain of rice a day as part of his diet.
He realized that this form of abnegation was not helping him answer his questions. Siddhartha left his friends.
According to legend, he encountered a young girl after he emerged from the forest. The girl took pity on him and gave him some food. Siddhartha was able to continue his spiritual quest because of the food.
He learned a profound lesson from his experience with asceticism. Hart said that he went on to develop a philosophy that was neither asceticism nor indulgence.
Siddhartha was determined to find a way to end the cycle of death and rebirth, even though he was not satisfied. He sat under a tree at Bodh Gaya, in the modern Indian state of Bihar, and promised not to leave until he became enlightened. In some stories, he sat in deep meditation for seven days and nights, and was beset upon by a demon named Mara. Mara tried to prevent Siddhartha from attaining enlightenment by putting obstacles in his way. Siddhartha was still devoted to his goal.
Legend says that his efforts paid off. He knew he had conquered the cycle of death and rebirth when he found himself in the blissful state of enlightenment, a state of mind that gives one insight into the true nature of reality. He became known as the Buddha. The tree under which he sat was called the Bodhi Tree.
After attaining enlightenment, Siddhartha spent the rest of his life traveling around northern India, teaching his insights to a community of devotees. The Buddha believed in the " Four Noble Truths", which were taught by Siddhartha at his first sermon. Hart said that dukkha is a Sanskrit word that is often translated as "suffering." She said that it is perhaps better understood to mean a sense of unhappiness with the nature of existence.
Dukkha is a word that means a wagon wheel that isn't quite centered. There is a "not-quite-rightness" about the world that causes suffering.
The second and third Noble Truths state that dukkha has a cause and that desire is the cause. Hart said that the nature of human desire is that it won't be fulfilled. The Buddha told us that.
The Noble Eightfold Path is provided by the fourth Noble Truth. The list of mental and spiritual practices is meant to help someone reach the correct moral frame of mind.
The age of Siddhartha Gautama's death is believed to be 80. He died at around 400 B.C. Siddhartha fell ill after eating a meal from a village blacksmith in northern India, but he didn't know it was contaminated. The blacksmith came to the dying man's side and expressed his grief that he had accidentally poisoned the great man. In one version of the story, Siddhartha caused the food to become spoiled and told him not to grieve but to be happy because the meal would allow him to enter nirvana. Before his death, Siddhartha told his monks to follow his teachings. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the dharma is a Sanskrit word that is used in a Buddhist context to refer to the Cosmic Law.
After the death of Siddhartha, Buddhism spread throughout Asia, especially in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and parts of Southeast Asia. Buddhism spread to other parts of the world. Buddhism became an important religion in India under the rule of King Ashoka. Ashoka sent emissaries to promote the religion. The influence of Buddhism waned in India after Ashoka's death.
The Buddha's teachings and life story were transmitted through oral means. According to the conventional thinking, nothing was written about the Buddha until the first century B.C.E.
The sutras are different lengths written in either Pali or Sanskrit and are the earliest written materials. The Triple Basket is said to be the most famous of these because of the Buddha's teachings. There are many anecdotes about his life after he stopped being a prince. The accounts of the Buddha's early life can be found in texts written in the second century B.C. The Buddhacharita was written in Sanskrit as a poem. The main sources of Buddha's biography are these.
The Buddha is revered the world over for his spiritual insights, practical philosophy of life and meditative practices. He is praised as an important thinker and major influence on world history by Buddhists and non- Buddhists.
You can either see the Buddha as a religious figure who started a profound, world-changing religion 500 years before Jesus, or you can see him as a philosopher and teacher who gave each and every person, regardless of belief or religious affiliation.
The PBS documentary, The Buddha, is a good place to start learning about Buddhism. National Geographic has a section about Buddhism. You can learn about Buddhism's beginnings from Paul Harrison.
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