SIDDHARTHA

In a small country in what is now southern Nepal a clan called the Shakyas ruled. The head of this clan, and the king of the country, was Shuddodana Gautama. His wife, Mahamaya, was expecting their first child and as was the custom of the day, when the time came near for Queen Mahamaya to give birth, she traveled to her father's kingdom for the birth (this is still practiced in some places in India today). On the way she went into labor in the small town of Lumbini. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy whom she named Siddhartha. She died seven days after the birth and Siddhartha was raised by his mother’s sister, Mahaprajapati until he was seven.

King Shuddodana eager for his son to be a king like himself, decided to shield him from anything that might result in him taking up the religious life. And so Siddhartha was kept in one of their three palaces, and was prevented from experiencing much of what ordinary people consider common. Siddhartha enjoyed the lavish court life while his father shielded him from all of the troubles and worries of life.

Despite all the amenities of palace life, Siddhartha became restless and unsatisfied with fleeting pleasures. His inquiring and contemplative nature drove him to seek something deeper. One day, he left to see what life was like beyond the palace walls. During his foray into the real world he encountered what up until then had been hidden from him. He saw an old man, a diseased person, a corpse being cremated, and a sadhu (holy man, or hermit). Siddhartha realized for the first time that there is suffering in the world and that people ultimately have little control over their lives. It was the fourth sight, his experience with this holy man or Brahman priest, that provided the inspiration which led to a dramatic change in his life.

In about 533 b.c., on the night of his 29th birthday, Siddhartha gave up his life as a prince and secretly left the court. He traveled far and wide for the next five years or so; he became a penniless homeless vagabond. He led a life of self-mortification and spiritual study, becoming first a disciple of several then famous Brahman teachers, later attracting his own disciples. He was looking for a solution to the problem of suffering.

After a long and exhausting period of searching and self-mortification, he became disillusioned with the Indian caste system, Hindu asceticism, and the religious doctrines of his time. He gave up the ascetic life and lost all of his disciples as a result, but he continued his search for truth through the practice of meditation. In the spring of 528 b.c. while meditating under a Bodhi tree in Bodh-Gaya, Siddhartha experienced the Great Enlightenment, which showed him the way of salvation from suffering. He spent seven weeks meditating near the Bodhi tree and became a fully realized Buddha at the age of 35.

In the summer of 528 b.c. Buddha found his former disciples and in his first sermon he taught them what would become the foundation of Buddhism based on ascetic Hindu teachings. In the 45 years following his enlightenment, Buddha traveled around Northern India teaching the tenets of Buddhism. The whole thrust of his teachings is to cease suffering by desiring nothing. His Four Noble Truths are to be pursued by doing the works of the eightfold path. In 483 b.c. he died at the age of eighty as a result of food poisoning.

What is important to know about Buddhism in relation to Indian history is that its growth came about because of a shift in the religious climate in India (and Nepal, there was no India at the time). The reflective and ascetic meditations that had become common for the Brahman priests in his time were what made Buddhism so easily acceptable. In “Sacred part 2” I wrote about the Upanishads which were the latest of the Shruti texts, written in the time of the Buddhism reformation. As you read those texts you find many Buddhist ideas even though it is a Hindu text. Buddhism did not catch on immediately. It was not until King Ashoka in the late 300’s b.c. that it began to spread like wild fire. But before that happened there was another major historical event that took place. The Invasion of the Macedonian Army led by a military leader named Alexander…