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The Life of Buddha



The story of a Prince, Siddhartha Gautama,

who searched until he found Enlightenment,

then sharing his path, The Way, with others.



Birth of Buddha



Born a prince, Siddhartha Gautama grew up along the Rohini River in

the southern foothills of the Himalayas. His father the king, Suddhodana Gautama, settled at Kapilavastu and had a great castle built there and

ruled wisely, winning the joyful acclaim of his people.


For twenty years the King and Queen, named Maya, had no children.

But one night dreaming a strange dream, she saw a white elephant

enter her womb and she became pregnant. The King and people were

joyful with anticipation of birth of a royal child. As was the custom, the

Queen returned to her parent's home for the birth, and on her way,

in the beautiful garden of Lumbini in the spring sunshine she took rest.


All about her were Ashoka blossoms and in delight she reached out

her right arm to pluck a branch and as she did so a prince was born.


All expressed their heart-felt delight with the glory of the Queen

and her princely child; Heaven and Earth rejoiced. This was April 8th.


The joy of the King was extreme and he named the child, Siddhartha,

which means, "Every wish fulfilled."



The hermit's prediction,
Great King or Buddha Savior



In the palace of the king, however, delight was quickly followed by sorrow, for after several days, the lovely Queen Maya suddenly died. Her younger sister, Mahaprajapati, became the child's stepmother and brought him up with loving care.

A hermit, called Asita, who lived in the mountains not far away, noticed a radiance about the castle and interpreting it as a good omen, came down to the palace and was shown the child. He predicted,

"This prince, if he remains in the palace, when grown up,
will become a great King and subjugate the whole world. But if he forsakes the court life to embrace a religious life, he will become a Buddha, the Savior of the world."

At first the King was pleased hearing the prophecy, but later he started to worry about the possibility of his only son leaving the palace to become a homeless recluse.



Siddhartha's nature



At the age of seven the Prince began his lessons in the civil and military arts, but his thoughts more naturally tended to other things. One spring day he went out of the castle with his father and together they were watching a farmer at his plowing. He noticed a bird descending to the ground and carrying off a small worm which had been turned up from the earth by the farmer's plough.
He sat down in the shade of a tree and thought,
"Alas, do all living creatures kill each other?"

He, who had lost his mother so soon after his birth, was deeply affected by the tragedy of these little creatures.

This spiritual wound deepened day by day as he grew up; like a little scar on a young tree, the suffering of human life became more and more deeply engrained in his mind.

The king was increasingly worried as he recalled the hermit's prophecy and tried in every possible way to cheer the Prince and to turn his thoughts toward other directions. The King arranged the marriage of the Prince at the age of nineteen to the Princess Yashodhara,
who was the daughter of Suprabuddha, the Lord of Devadaha Castle and a brother of the late Queen Maya.



There are two ways of looking
-a right way and a wrong way



For ten years, in the different Pavilions of Spring, Autumn and Rainy Season, the Prince was immersed in rounds of music, dancing and pleasure, but always his thoughts returned to the problem of suffering as he pensively tried to understand the true meaning of human life.

"The luxuries of the palace, this healthy body, this rejoicing youth! What do they mean to me?" he thought.
"Someday we may be sick, we shall become aged,
from death there is no escape.
Pride of youth, pride of health, pride of existence;
- all thoughtful people should cast them aside."

"A man struggling for existence will naturally look for something of value. There are two ways of looking -
a right way and a wrong way. To look in the wrong way means that, while he recognizes that sickness,
old age and death are unavoidable, he searches among the same class of empty, transitory things."

"To look in the right way means that he recognizes the true nature of sickness, old age and death, and searches for meaning in that which transcends all human sufferings. In this palace life of pleasures I seem to be seeking in the wrong way."



The path toward Enlightenment



Thus the mental struggle went on in the mind of the Prince until his twenty-ninth year when his only child, Rahula, was born. This seemed to bring things to a climax, for he then decided to leave his palace home and seek
the solution of his mental unrest in the homeless life of a mendicant. This plan he carried out one night, leaving the castle with only his charioteer, Chadaka, and riding on his favorite horse, the snow-white Kanthaka.

His mental troubles did not end and many devils tempted him saying, "It would be better for you to return to the castle and seek some other solution; then the whole world would be yours."
But he was able to silence these devils' voices with the realization that nothing worldly could ever satisfy him. So he shaved his head and turned his mendicant steps toward the south, carrying a begging bowl in his hand.

The prince first visited the hermit Bhagava and watched his ascetic practices; then he went to Arada Kalama and Udraka Ramaputra to learn their methods of attaining nirvana through meditation, but after practicing them for a time, he became convinced that they would not lead him to Enlightenment. Finally he went to the land of Magadha and practised asceticism in the forest of Uruvilva onthe banks of the Nairanjana River which flows by the Gaya Castle.



Buddhism teaches that our consciousness, with all its pure and unpure qualities, incarnates in new bodies, life-after-life. seeking liberation and enlightenment, attempting to uncover the pure Buddha Nature inherent in us.

Other spiritual traditions have similar notions about this sacred potential of our innermost being. Only instead of Buddha Nature, it might be called the Divine Indwelling, or the Holy Spirit, Divine Love, or Christ Consciousness.

Likewise, many of these traditions, in one way or another, teach us that this sacred potential can expand to pervade our entire being, if we will only engage wholeheartedly in spiritual practice.



Dr. Edward Bastian



www.Enlightenment.Network