 uddha, The Enlightened One, was born miraculously into the royal family of
the Sakyas. He lived an enclosed and indulged life in a guarded palace whose
rich gardens were surrounded by strong walls. His father saw to it that he
lived a life of unalloyed pleasure, for he did not want to lose his son. After
many years of this life, Siddharta expressed a desire to see the outside world;
his father arranged for him to visit a nearby town, which had been cleaned,
repaired and adorned so that his eyes would never fall on anything which might
distress him. But by chance Siddharta came upon an old man. The shock was
great for he had never seen advanced age before; he learnt with horror that
all living things grow wrinkled and impotent before they die. Siddharta
had never heard of death, nor of pain, sorrow, famine or disease. After
this incident his father doubled the number of palace guards. He arranged
a marriage in order to take his son's mind off what he had seen. Siddharta
became a father.
One night, unable to sleep, Siddharta wandered through the harem. He saw the
dancing girls, sleeping off their excesses. Some snored, some dibbled down
their chins, some lay open-mouthed, some talked in their sleep or ground their
teeth and muttered drunkenly. The contrast of what he saw now to the memory of
their disciplined, alluring dance movements struck the young prince with the
force of a revelation. It was like looking into a pit of corpses. Siddharta
made up his mind to leave the palace and seek the real world. To aid him,
the gods sent the guards into a deep sleep. Siddharta and his groom, Chandaka,
left the palace, the gods lifting the hooves of his favorite horse, Kantaka,
so that they would make no clatter on the marble terraces.
Our in the real world Siddharta cut off his long scented hair, changed his
rich robes for the working clothes of a passing huntsman, dismissed his groom
and horse, and sought out a group of holy men. He changed his name to Gautama
in the monastery.
Gautama found after a while that the monks were not able to satisfy his urgent
spiritual needs, so he became a wandering beggar. He began to practice terrible
self-torture, hoping to gain merit thereby. Before long he discovered that
asceticism was as much of a trap as worldliness. He turned from his privations
by accepting food from a young woman. His followers and companions left him
in disgust. Gautama then travelled to Bodi-Gaya where he sat under a tree
in meditation. The meditation grew into a profound experience. The demon
Mara tried to distract Gautama by sending to him his seductive daughters, but
they had no effect on the young prince. Mara then sent squads of disgusting
and deformed spirits who hurled themselves on the seated figure. But they
failed to move him or to interrupt his mediations. Finally Mara tried his
ultimate weapon, a fiery disc capable of splitting mountains; but the sharp missile
turned into a garland of flowers and hovered reverently over Gautama's head
like a halo. Mara fled, not a little annoyed. The prince remained steadfast
and the next morning he achieved blissful enlightment. He saw clear to the
root-causes of suffering, and knew how it was to be avoided, namely by reaching
a state of desirelessness. In the weeks of meditation which followed, Gautama
realized that he could either enter Nirvana or stay on earth to help his fellow
men, renouncing for a time his absorbtion into ecstatic awareness. Mara wanted
him to leave earth but Brahma implored him to stay.
Buddha decided to remain and began preaching his doctrines of mercy, nonviolence,
destruction of passions and desirelessness. Buddhism teaches that nothing has permanent
identity; all things are made of constituent elements constantly in the process of change.
It is this ephemeralness and mutability itself that is a cause of suffering. The religion founded by the Buddha spread over Asia, finding a more permanent home in
Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Burma, China, Japan, and southeast Asia than it did in his home country, India.
Buddha is also regarded by Hindus as a Hindu deity.
-- from A Guide to the Gods, by Richard Carlyon
The Buddha passed away at the age of eighty near Kushinagara, the capital of
the ancient kingdom of the Mallas in what is today the Indian state of Uttar
Pradesh. Lying down in a grove, between two shala trees, he preached his
last sermon: "All composite things are by nature impermanent. Work out your
salvation with diligence." The Mahaparinibbana Sutra, a standard Pali
canonical account, recalls the deathbed scene. The gods Brama and
Indra recited poems. Gods and men wept. "Too soon has the Happy One
passed away! Too soon has the light gone out of the world!" For his monks, the
moment of Buddha's passing is as Ananda described it: "Then there was
terror! Then stood the hair on end! Then he endowed with every grace,
the supreme Buddha, passed away!" Only the Arhats, the saints who had
passed beyond all worldly sorrow, retained their composure.
On the seventh day after his passing, eight chiefs of the Mallas came to
claim the body of the Blessed One. They bore his remains to a tribal shrine
outside the town gates and there cremated the body. Although the chiefs vied
for the honor of lighting the pyre, they were unable to do so until the monk Mahakashyapa
arrived and the pyre spontaneously burst into flames.
When the Buddha's death became known, seven other powers vied with the Mallas of
Kushinagara for possession of his relics. Tradition credits a brahman
named Drona with the Solomon-like wisdom of suggesting that the relics be
divided into eight parts.
Several days before the Buddha's death, Ananda, the Buddha's cousin and
closest disciple, asked him what should be done with his earthly remains.
The Buddha replied that like those of a king, the remains of a Tarhagata should
be enshrined in a stupa.
-- from Wisdom and Compassion: the Sacred Art of Tibet,
by Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman
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