Gautama Buddha

Life of the Buddha

The accounts of the life of the Buddha remained by the oral tradition and were not put in writing for the first time a few hundred years after its death. The Buddhist writings mix metaphysical and legends concerning the life of the Buddha. Certain episodes, such that where it alleviates a furious elephant that his/her cousin Devadatta would have released on him to kill it and replace it with the head of the community of the monks, can be acceptable for the reader materialist, others, such its conversations with the gods or its instantaneous teleportation with the Śrī Laṅkā, is not them. Stripped its aspects metaphysics or magic, a summary of its life could be as follows (the famous legendary aspects are however indicated between hooks):

Context

Buddhism is born in the context from vedic India : Veda are very respected books. India is marked by a system of castes.

Various Masters develop their vision of the Nirvāna, and present a means of reaching it.

Various notions of the Hindouisme will be seen altered in Buddhism; like the concept of Reincarnation, Karma, the Dhyana S, the statute of gods like Brahma.

Old Buddhism considers various schools, being born at the same moment as him, of which the Jaïnisme, only of these schools having survived nowadays.

Brahmajalasutta enumerates various contemporary sights of Buddhism.

Life with the palate

Siddhārtha Gautama is born with Kapilavastu, a village on the buttresses of the the Himalayas, in the Caste of the Kshatriya, warrior-aristocrats. His/her father is Śuddhodana, the chief of Kapilavastu, and his mother the queen Māyādevī.

The account of its birth gives place to a famous legend: it would have been born in a wood crowned not far from the city from his father, with Lumbinî with the Nepal, during a displacement of Māyādevī near his parents: according to the legend, his/her mother (of which the name means “illusion”) would have conceived Siddhārtha in dream, penetrated with the center by an white elephant with six defenses. It is upright, on the road which led it in his/her parents, that it would have given birth to, hung to a branch of tree, while the brahmanic divinities made rain petals of flowers on it. As soon as born, the child would have put himself upright and “would have taken possession” of the Universe while turning to the cardinal points, then would have taken seven steps towards north. Māyādevī would have died one week later, entrusting his/her son to his sister and Co-wife Prajapati Gautami with whom Siddharta could owe his usual name of Gautama.

At sixteen years, he marries the young princess Yaśodharā who gives him a son, Rāhula. All the traditions agree on the fact that it is contemporary of the two kings of the Magadha, Bimbisâra and of his/her Ajatasatru son.

It passes all its childhood protected in the enclosure from the family palate, the respect of the Hindouisme and raised as a warrior, according to his caste. His/her father indeed, who had been informed that his/her son would be either large a kṣatriya, or a Buddha, prevents by a life of facility that it thinks on the difficulties and the suffering of the men, so that it does not become wise.

Revelation

At 29 years, whereas he walks out of the enclosure of the palate, he discovers the endemic suffering of his people which had been hidden to him hitherto and the ditch which separates it from the luxury of its aristocratic life.

The legend reports that these are four meetings which change its life: an old man makes him become aware of the suffering of the time which passes and the forfeiture of the growing old body; a patient teaches him that the body suffers also independently of time and a corpse which one led to roughing-hew death in all its sordid character reveals him. Lastly, a hermit shows him what can be wisdom.

Practices

He rejects title and palate then and begins a life of Ascèse, according to the lesson of several hermits renonçants, of the Saṃnyāsin or the Sâdhu, and undertakes austere méditatives practices.

The Bouddha was influenced by the concepts of its time. It had as a Master the Brahmane Arada Kalama, but what it learned - to control the seventh dhyana, the sphere of nothing - did not seem him sufficient. It went to Rajagrha and took as second Master Udraka Ramaputra, who taught the eighth dhyana to him, the sphere of neither perception nor not-perception. There still, the Buddha estimated not to have found the way towards the nirvana.

During six years, it practiced the austerities with five other meditating ascetics. It failed to die of abstinence and decided to find another way; his/her friends thought that he forsook the practice.

Awakening

Six years later, whereas it is in the village of Bodh-Gayā, noting that these practices did not lead it to a greater comprehension of the world, it gives up them and accepts hands of an young girl of the village, Sujāta, a bowl of rice pudding, putting thus fine at its mortifications and concentrates on the Méditation and the average Voie, that which consists in denying excesses, comparable with the “nothing too” delphic: in kind, it is a question of refusing laxism like the excessive austerity. The five disciples who followed it give up it, judging this act like a treason of its share.

Siddhartha Gautama assied then under a pipal ( Ficus religiosa ) and makes the wish not move of this place before to have reached the Truth.

There still, several legends tell how Māra, demon of death, frightened capacity which the Buddha was going to obtain against him by delivering the men of fear of dying, try to leave it its meditation while launching against him the hordes of alarming demons and its daughters tempting. In vain: it is in a famous posture remained in the Buddhist iconography that Siddhārtha takes the ground with witness of its merits passed, reaches the awakening and denies simply the démoniaques presences without fighting them, in all serenity.

Actuation of the wheel of the law

Gautama Buddha, after having reached the awakening, hesitates to teach: he wonders whether such a word will be heard. The tradition utilizes a Naga which convinces it to make benefit humanity from its knowledge.

The put moving of the wheel of the law indicates the first sermon of Gautama, in which it states the Four noble truths.
He affirms that he carried out the awakening or the total comprehension of the nature and the causes of the human suffering and of the stages necessary to its elimination. This illumination, possible for all the beings, is called the Bodhi and gives its new name to Siddhārtha: that which reached the bodhi is a Buddha.

Gautama Bouddha insisted well on the fact that he was neither a god, nor the messenger of a god and that the illumination was not the result of a process or a supernatural agent, but rather the result of one special attention to the nature of the human spirit, and that it could be redécouverte by no matter whom for his clean profit.
Two interpretations different from this assertion decide between old Buddhism and Mahâyâna Buddhism. First is that it is possible with each one, as a listener of the teaching of Gautama, to reach the awakening and to leave the Saṃsāra.
Second is that any sensitive being has in him the natural of Buddha, true nature of the spirit, sometimes called “seed of awakening”. This interpretation, which postulates the existence of an ontological or transcendent universal nature, is rejected by the orthodoxe theravada.

Teaching

The teaching of Gautama Bouddha is covered in the article Bouddhisme. The principal concepts are the impersonnality, the impermanency and the dissatisfaction of any thing, having to lead to the renouncement vis-a-vis the insatiable desire. It distinguishes a conventional reality and an ultimate reality, the latter being able to be discovered only by the personal achievement, the Illumination.

Gautama Bouddha presented its teaching like the redécouverte of a truth formerly taught by the Bouddha S of the past, of which Dipankara which prophesied to him that it would be the Buddha of our era. This truth will continue to be taught by the Bouddha S of the future, the next one being Maîtreya. (see the Twenty-eight Buddhas)

According to Buddhism mahâyâna, there are not only one teaching, but several actuations of the wheel of the law, since Sakyamuni taught initially will sûtras them of first wheel, then of second, then of third. These various periods of teaching correspond to different listeners; teaching is adapted to its public. However, there is one vehicle: “ekayāna”.

Sangha

During the forty-five remaining years of its life, he travels in the gangetic plain of the center of the India (the area of the Gange and its affluents), teaching his practice as regards meditation with a large variety of people, energy of noble to sweeping of the streets, and without forgetting the disciples of philosophies and religions. He founds the community of the monks and the Buddhist nuns (the saṅgha ) to perpetuate his lesson after his disappearance (regarded as the complete parinirvāṇa or “nirvâna”).

the pedagogy of the Buddha The Buddha was very attentive with its listeners in order to be harmonized with them. From where different methods of lesson:

It directly exposes its doctrines in the sermons.

It seems to leave the choice to its listeners:

“He insulted me. He beat me. ” If you lime pits, your hatred will not calm down.
“He insulted me. He beat me. ” If you lime pits not, your hatred will calm down.
In this world hatred does not alleviate hatred, but the absence of hatred does it: it is an eternal law

It teaches and comforts indirectly: a mother comes, in tears, to introduce her dead child to him so that it ressuscite. The Buddha accepts provided that it finds in the city a house where a similar misfortune did not arrive. She traverses the city and does not find any of course. But when it returns its sorrow started to calm down. She was not alone in her misfortune, and other unhappy mothers knew to find the words which calmed it.

Died

The Buddha died, according to the Buddhist tradidion, into 483 before our era. After its death divergences of opinions were expressed which, in the eight centuries space, led to very different schools. But the buddhist monks will become too rich, their message will lose his coherence.

Islam

“If you wish to see noblest of humanity, look at the king in the clothing of the beggar; it is him whose holiness is large among the men. ” - Abu Al-Atahiya, Arab Poet.

With the expansion of Islam, the Buddhist monastic class joined what one came from there to call “monastic Islam” - the Soufisme - which produced many poets and scientists. The order of Been enough Qalandariyah, Moslem mystical movement emerged at the 9th century because of Malamatiyya and bench with the Khorasan (Persian Eastern) at the 11th century, attracted many buddhist monks.

The ascetic practices of philosophy soufi evoke those of Buddhism. One can recognize a similarity between the Buddhist concept of purification of the spirit of all the bad things and the desire to merge with the immutable Nirvâna, and the vuslat (communion with God) of philosophy soufi.

“the mission of the Buddha was completely single, and is thus held completely separately among many the other religions of the world. Its mission was to make steal the birds of the idealism more close to the ground, because the food of their body belongs to the ground. ” - Hazrat Inayat Khan.

The Indian Moslem Maulana Abul Kalam Azad suggested in a comment of the Coran that Siddhartha Gautama would be the Prophète of Islam Dhū' l-Kifl referred in the sourates 21 and 38, as well as the biblical characters Ismaël, Idris (Enoch), and Elisee. He proposed to see in the Kifl of Dhū' l-Kifl , which in Arab means “owner of double share”, deformation of Kapilavastu where the Buddha passed its youth. Nevertheless, there is no direct proof to support this speculation, and according to other authors, Dhū' l-Kifl was only one man right and not a prophet, or then he was the prophet Ézéchiel mentioned in the Bible.

Christianity

The legend of the Buddha would be at the origin of that of holy Josaphat, whose name would come from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva.

Gautama Buddha in the popular culture

The person of Gautama Bouddha inspired many artistic creations apart from the Bouddhisme. This list counts only some of them; to also see Buddhist art.

Siddharta (1922) is a Romance of Hermann Hesse
Bouddha is a Manga of Osamu Tezuka published in a magazine of 1974 with 1984.

See too

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