Instantly,
the ascetic rose from his seat and recognizing in the young child the
80 signs that are pledges to a highly religious vocation, and
foreseeing with his supernormal vision the child's future greatness,
saluted him with clasped hands. The Royal father did likewise. The
great ascetic smiled at first and then was sad. Questioned regarding
his mingled feelings, he answered that he smiled because the prince
would eventually become a Buddha, an Enlightened One, and he was sad
because he would not be able to benefit from the superior wisdom of
the Enlightened One owing to his prior death and rebirth in a
Formless Plane.
After
seven days Queen Maya died, and her place as mother was taken by her
sister, whose devotion and love became legendary.
When
the young prince was in his twelfth year, the king called the
wiseBrahmans in council. They revealed that Siddhartha would
devote himself to asceticism if he cast his eyes on age, sickness, or
death ~ and, if he were to meet a hermit.
Wanting
his son to be a universal monarch instead, the king surrounded the
palace with a triple enclosure and guard and proclaimed that the use
of the words death and grief were forbidden. The most beautiful
princess in the land, Yasodhara, was found for his bride, and
after Siddhartha proved himself in many tournaments calling for
strength and prowess, when he was 16, the two were wed.
Siddhartha
was kept amused and entertained for some time by this privileged life
behind the palace walls until one day his divine vocation awoke in
him, and he decided to visit the nearby town. The king called for
everything to be swept and decorated, and any ugly or sad sight to be
removed. But these precautions were in vain for while Siddhartha was
travelling through the streets, an old wrinkled man appeared before
him. In astonishment the young prince learned that decrepitude is the
fate of those who live life through. Still later he met an incurable
invalid and then a funeral procession. Finally heaven placed in his
path an ascetic, a beggar, who told Siddhartha that he had left the
world to pass beyond suffering and joy, to attain peace at heart.
Confirmed
in his meditation, all these experiences awakened in Siddhartha the
idea of abandoning his present life and embracing asceticism. He
opened his heart to his father and said, "Everything in the
world is changing and transitory. Let me go off alone like the
religious beggar."
Grief-stricken
at the idea of losing his son, the king doubled the guard around the
walls and increased the pleasures and distractions within. And at
this point, Yasodhara bore him a son whom he called Rahula
(meaning "chain" or "fetter"), a name that
indicated Gautama's sense of dissatisfaction with his life of luxury,
while the birth of his son evoked in him much tenderness. His
apparent sense of dissatisfaction turned to disillusion when he saw
three things from the window of his palace, each of which represented
different forms human suffering: a decrepit old man, a diseased man,
and a corpse.Yet even this could not stop the troubling thoughts in
his heart or close his eyes to the realizations of the impermanence
of all life, and of the vanity and instability of all objects of
desire.
His
mind made up, he awoke one night and, casting one last look at his
wife and child, mounted his horse Kataka and rode off
accompanied by his equerry Chandaka. At the city gates
Siddhartha turned over his horse to Chandaka, then he cut off his
hair, gave up his sumptuous robes, and entered a hermitage where the
Brahmans accepted him as a disciple. Siddhartha had now and forever
disappeared. He became the monkGautama, or as he is still
called, Sakyamuni, the ascetic of the Sakyas.
For
many years Gautama studied the doctrines until, having felt the need
to learn more elsewhere, he traveled and fasted. His two teachers had
showed him how to reach very deep states of meditation (samadhi).
This did not, however, lead to a sense of true knowledge or peace,
and the practice of deep meditation was abandoned in favour of a life
of extreme asceticism which he shared with five companions. But
again, after five or six years of self-mortification, Siddhartha felt
he had failed to achieve true insight and rejected such practices as
dangerous and useless.
Resolved
to continue his quest, Siddharta made his way to a deer park
atIsipatana, near present day Benares. Here he sat beneath a
tree meditating on death and rebirth. Discovering that excessive
fasts destroy strength, he learned that as he had transcended earthly
life, so must he next transcend asceticism. Alone and weak, he sat
beneath the sacredBodhi tree of wisdom, and swore to die
before arising without the wisdom he sought.
Mara,
the demon, fearful of Gautama's power, sent his three beautiful
daughters to distract him. When that failed, Mara sent an army of
devils to destroy him. Finally Mara attacked Gautama with a terrible
weapon capable of cleaving a mountain. But all this was useless, and
the motionless monk sat in meditation.
It
was here that Siddharta attained a knowledge of the way things really
are; it was through this knowledge that he acquired the title
Buddha(meaning
"awakened one"). This awakening was achieved during a night
of meditation, which passed through various stages as the
illumination that Gautama had sought slowly welled up in his heart.
He knew the exact condition of all beings and the causes of their
rebirths. He saw beings live, die and transmigrate. In meditating on
human pain, he was enlightened about both its genesis and the means
of destroying it.
In
this first stage he saw each of his previous existences, and then
understood the chain of cause and effect. In the second he surveyed
the death and rebirth of all living beings and understood the law
that governs the cycle of birth and death. In the third he identified
the Four
Noble Truths:
the universality of suffering, the cause of suffering through selfish
desire, the solution to suffering and the way to overcome suffering.
This final point is called the Noble Eightfold Path, this being eight
steps consisting of wisdom (right views, right intention) ethics
(right speech, right action, right livelihood), mental discipline
(right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration), which
ultimately lead to liberation from the source of suffering.
When
day came, Gautama had attained perfect illumination, and had become a
Buddha. The rays emanating from his body shone to the boundaries of
space. He stayed in meditation for seven more days, and then for four
more weeks he stayed by the tree. Through his process of
enlightenment he discovered that all sentient beings in this
universal life possess buddhahold, and all are future potential
buddhas.
No comments:
Post a Comment