Gautama Buddha

::Siddhartha redirects here. For other meanings, see Siddhartha (disambiguation).

Buddha's life

Few of the details of the Buddha's life can be independently verified, and it is difficult to determine what is history and what is myth. Therefore this article will describe the life of Siddhartha Gautama as told in the earliest available Buddhist texts.

Related Topics:
History - Myth - Buddhist texts

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Conception and birth

Siddhartha Gautama was born in Lumbini (a town situated in what is now Nepal, near the Indian border) under the full moon of the sixth lunar month, in the spring. His father was Suddhodana, a chief among the Shakyas, a warrior tribe. His mother was Queen Maya, one of Suddhodana's wives. The day of the Buddha's birth is widely celebrated in Buddhist countries as Vesak. Gautama was born a prince, destined to a life of luxury.

Related Topics:
Lumbini - Nepal - Full moon - Lunar month - Spring - Suddhodana - Warrior - Tribe - Queen Maya - Vesak - Prince

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According to legend, before his birth, Gautama had visited his mother during a vision, taking the form of a white elephant. During the birth celebrations, a seer announced that this baby would either become a great king or a great holy man. His father, wishing for Gautama to be a great king, shielded his son from religious teachings or knowledge of human suffering.

Related Topics:
Elephant - Birth - Seer - Suffering

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Marriage

As the boy reached the age of 16, his father arranged his marriage to Yashodhara, a cousin of the same age. In time, she gave birth to a son, Rahula. Although his father ensured that Gautama was provided with everything he could want or need, Gautama was constantly troubled and internally dissatisfied.

Related Topics:
Arranged his marriage - Yashodhara - Rahula

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The Great Departure

Thus inspired, Gautama determined to leave his home, his possessions and his family at age 29. He chose to become a monk.

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Abandoning his inheritance, he dedicated his life to learning how to overcome suffering. He pursued the path of Yogic meditation with two Brahmin hermits, and although he achieved high levels of meditative consciousness, he was not satisfied with this path.

Related Topics:
Yogic - Meditation - Brahmin

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Gautama then chose the robes of a mendicant monk and headed to northeast India. He began training in the ascetic life and practicing vigorous techniques of physical and mental austerity. Gautama proved adept at these practices, and was able to surpass his teachers. However, he found no answer to his problem and, leaving behind his teachers, he and a small group of companions set out to take their austerities even further. After nearly starving himself to death with no success (some sources claim that he nearly drowned), Gautama began to reconsider his path. Then he remembered a moment in childhood in which he had been watching his father start the season's plowing, and he had fallen into a naturally concentrated and focused state in which time seemed to stand still, and which was blissful and refreshing.

Related Topics:
Mendicant - Monk - India

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Enlightenment

After discarding asceticism and concentrating on meditation, Gautama discovered what Buddhists call the middle way—a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. He accepted a little buttermilk from a passing goatherd, Sumedha. Then, sitting under a pipal tree, which is now known as the Bodhi tree, he vowed never to arise until he had found the Truth. He, at the age of 35, attained Enlightenment; by some traditions, this occurred in approximately May, and, by others, December. Gautama was from then on known as "the awakened one", the Buddha.

Related Topics:
Meditation - Middle way - Self-indulgence - Self-mortification - Sumedha - Pipal - Bodhi tree - Enlightenment - May - December - Buddha

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He stated that he had realized complete Awakening and insight into the nature and cause of human suffering, along with steps necessary to eliminate it. His understanding manifested the Four Noble Truths, and the state of supreme liberation—possible for any being—was called Nirvana.

Related Topics:
Four Noble Truths - Nirvana

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According to one of the stories in the Āyācana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya VI.1), a scripture found in the Pāli and other canons, immediately after his Enlightenment, the Buddha was wondering whether or not he should teach the Dharma. He was concerned that, as human beings were overpowered by greed, hatred and delusion, they would not be able to see the true dharma which was subtle, deep and hard to understand. A spirit, Brahma Sahampati, however, interceded, and asked that he teach the dharma to the world, as "there will be those who will understand the Dharma". With his great compassion, the Buddha agreed to become a teacher.

Related Topics:
Āyācana Sutta - Pāli - Canon - Dharma - Brahma Sahampati

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At the Deer Park near Benares in northern India he set in motion the Wheel of Dharma by delivering his first sermon to the group of five companions with whom he had previously sought enlightenment. They, together with the Buddha, formed the first sangha, the company of Buddhist monks.

Related Topics:
Benares - Wheel of Dharma - Sangha

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The Buddha emphasized that he was not a god, he was simply enlightened. He stated: there is no intermediary between mankind and the divine; distant gods are subjected to karma themselves in decaying heavens; and the Buddha is solely a guide and teacher for the sentient beings who must tread the path of Nirvana themselves to attain spiritual awakening and see truth and reality as it is. The Buddhist system of insight, thought, and meditation practice was not revealed divinely, but by the understanding of the true nature of the human mind, which could be discovered by anybody.

Related Topics:
God - Divine - Karma - Nirvana - Spiritual awakening - Meditation - Human - Mind

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For the remaining forty-five years of his life (or fifty by some accounts), the Buddha traveled in the Gangetic Plain of central India, teaching his doctrine and discipline to an extremely diverse range of people—from nobles to street outcaste sweepers, including many adherents of rival philosophies and religions. The Buddha founded the community of Buddhist monks and that of nuns (the Sangha) to continue the dispensation after his Parinirvana or complete Nirvana, and made thousands of converts. His religion was open to all races and classes and had no caste structure. On the other hand, Buddhist texts record that he was reluctant to ordain women as nuns: he eventually accepted them on the grounds that their capacity for enlightenment was equal to that of men, but he gave them certain additional rules to follow.

Related Topics:
Gangetic Plain - India - Outcaste - Sangha - Parinirvana - Caste

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The Great Passing

At the age of eighty, the Buddha ate his last meal, which, according to different translations, was either a mushroom delicacy or pork, which he had received as an offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. Falling violently ill, the Buddha realized that his end was approaching fast. He told his attendant Ananda to prepare a bed between two Sal trees at Kushinagar, and then finally passed away. The Buddha's final words were, "All composite things pass away. Strive for your own salvation with diligence."

Related Topics:
Cunda - Ananda - Sal - Kushinagar

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The Buddha's body was cremated and the relics were placed in monuments or stupas, some of which are believed to have survived until the present.

Related Topics:
Relic - Stupa

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