The Life of Gautama the Buddha
Gautama the Buddha was descended from the noble family of the Sakyas who shared in governing the small state of Kapilavastu near the powerful principality of Kosala. He grew up beneath the snowy summits of the Himalayas, which could be seen glittering in the distance throughout the year. As a boy and young man Gautama experienced the worldly happiness of his wealthy aristocratic world. His son Rahula was the fruit of an early marriage.
His happiness was shattered when he became conscious of the basic facts of existence. He saw old age, sickness, death. Horror and disgust at the wretchedness of the flesh are ill becoming to me, he said to himself, for I too shall grow old, sicken, and die… The consequence was his decision (which took traditional Indian forms) to leave his home, his country, his family, and his wealth, to seek salvation in asceticism. He was twenty-nine years old. One narrative runs: ‘As a young man in the bloom of his youth, in the first flush of life, the ascetic Gautama left his home and went into homelessness. Though his parents did not wish it, though they shed tears and wept, the ascetic Gautama had his hair and his beard shorn off and put on yellow garments.’
Instructed in the ascetic exercises of Yoga, he practiced mortification of the flesh for many years in the woods. ‘When I saw a cowherd or one who was gathering wood, I fled from forest to forest, from valley to valley, from peak to peak. And why? In order that I should not see them that they should not see me.’ For meditation demands solitude. ‘Verily, this is a lovely bit of earth, a beautiful wood; clear flows the river and there are delightful places in which to bathe; round about there are villages. This is a good place for a noble man striving for salvation.’ Here sits Gautama, waiting for the moment of Enlightenment, his ‘tongue cleaving to his palate,’ ‘clutching, squeezing, tormenting’ his thoughts.
But all in vain. His mortification brings no awakening. He comes to understand that the truth remains veiled in asceticism which is nothing more than asceticism, that empty constraint accomplishes nothing. Then he does something monstrous in the eyes of the Hindu faith; he begins to eat plentifully in order to restore his strength. Regarding him as a renegade, the ascetics with whom he has made friends break with him. He is alone, practicing pure meditation without asceticism.
One night as he meditated beneath a fig tree, the Great Awakening came to him. All at once a vision made everything clear to him: what is; why it is; how beings are caught up in blind lust for life; how they stray from body to body in a never-ending chain of rebirths; what suffering is, whence it comes, how it can be overcome.
His insight is uttered as a doctrine: neither worldly pleasure nor ascetic mortification of the flesh is the right way of life. The former is ignoble, the latter is rich in suffering, and neither leads to the goal. Buddha’s discovery is the Middle Path. It is the path of salvation. It starts from the belief, not yet illumined by understanding, that all existence is suffering, and that the essential is redemption from suffering. Then, by way of the decision to live righteously in word and deed, the Path leads to immersion in various degrees of meditation and through meditation to the knowledge of what was already present in the initial faith: the truth of suffering. It is only at the end that one attains clear knowledge of the Path one has traveled, Enlightenment. The circle closes, fulfillment is achieved. This enlightenment is the step from endless coming-into-being and passing-away to eternity, from worldly existence to Nirvana.
…After an inner struggle he decides to divulge his doctrine. He does not expect much, and later, when his preaching attracts throngs of people, he predicts that the true doctrine will not long endure. But he continues on his helping way. ‘In a world grown dark I will beat the deathless drum.’
His preaching begins in Benares, where he attracts his first disciples. He was to live for another forty years, wandering, teaching in the vast territories of northeastern India. Spiritually, nothing new happened in him. The core of his sermons was a finished doctrine; he varied an identical theme. Consequently, one can speak of this period only as a whole. Buddha taught in lectures, stories, parables, maxims; we hear of dialogues, of countless scenes and situations, of conversions. He preached not in Sanskrit, but in the vernacular. He thought in concrete images, but he made use of concepts taken over from Hindu philosophy…
The memory of Buddha’s death and the period preceding it has been preserved. The date of his death, 480 B.C., is regarded as certain. His last wandering is described in detail. At first he tried to get the better of his painful illness and cling to his life. But then he put his will behind him: ‘Three months hence the Perfect One will enter into Nirvana.’ Journeying onward, he casts a last glance back at the beloved city of Vesali. As they enter a little wood, he gives his last instruction: ‘Make me a bed between two twin trees, my head to the north. I am tired, Ananda.’ And he lay down as a lion lying down to rest.
When one of his disciples wept, he said: ‘Not so, Ananda. Do not mourn, do not lament. Have I not taught you that it is in the very nature of all things near and dear to us to pass away? How then, Ananda, since whatever is brought into being contains within itself the inherent necessity of dissolution, how can it be that such a being should not be dissolved?’
The disciples believe that with Buddha’s death the world will have lost its master. ‘Think not so. The doctrine and the order that I have taught you, they will be your master when I am gone. The Perfect One thinks not that it is he who should lead the brotherhood…I am now grown old, my journey is drawing to its close, I am turning eighty years of age. Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Rely on yourselves. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Seek salvation in the truth.’
His last words were: ‘All accomplishment is transient. Strive unremittingly.’ Then, rising from one stage of contemplation to the next, Buddha entered into Nirvana.
- Karl Jaspers, in ‘Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus: From the Great Philosophers vol I.’
His happiness was shattered when he became conscious of the basic facts of existence. He saw old age, sickness, death. Horror and disgust at the wretchedness of the flesh are ill becoming to me, he said to himself, for I too shall grow old, sicken, and die… The consequence was his decision (which took traditional Indian forms) to leave his home, his country, his family, and his wealth, to seek salvation in asceticism. He was twenty-nine years old. One narrative runs: ‘As a young man in the bloom of his youth, in the first flush of life, the ascetic Gautama left his home and went into homelessness. Though his parents did not wish it, though they shed tears and wept, the ascetic Gautama had his hair and his beard shorn off and put on yellow garments.’
Instructed in the ascetic exercises of Yoga, he practiced mortification of the flesh for many years in the woods. ‘When I saw a cowherd or one who was gathering wood, I fled from forest to forest, from valley to valley, from peak to peak. And why? In order that I should not see them that they should not see me.’ For meditation demands solitude. ‘Verily, this is a lovely bit of earth, a beautiful wood; clear flows the river and there are delightful places in which to bathe; round about there are villages. This is a good place for a noble man striving for salvation.’ Here sits Gautama, waiting for the moment of Enlightenment, his ‘tongue cleaving to his palate,’ ‘clutching, squeezing, tormenting’ his thoughts.
But all in vain. His mortification brings no awakening. He comes to understand that the truth remains veiled in asceticism which is nothing more than asceticism, that empty constraint accomplishes nothing. Then he does something monstrous in the eyes of the Hindu faith; he begins to eat plentifully in order to restore his strength. Regarding him as a renegade, the ascetics with whom he has made friends break with him. He is alone, practicing pure meditation without asceticism.
One night as he meditated beneath a fig tree, the Great Awakening came to him. All at once a vision made everything clear to him: what is; why it is; how beings are caught up in blind lust for life; how they stray from body to body in a never-ending chain of rebirths; what suffering is, whence it comes, how it can be overcome.
His insight is uttered as a doctrine: neither worldly pleasure nor ascetic mortification of the flesh is the right way of life. The former is ignoble, the latter is rich in suffering, and neither leads to the goal. Buddha’s discovery is the Middle Path. It is the path of salvation. It starts from the belief, not yet illumined by understanding, that all existence is suffering, and that the essential is redemption from suffering. Then, by way of the decision to live righteously in word and deed, the Path leads to immersion in various degrees of meditation and through meditation to the knowledge of what was already present in the initial faith: the truth of suffering. It is only at the end that one attains clear knowledge of the Path one has traveled, Enlightenment. The circle closes, fulfillment is achieved. This enlightenment is the step from endless coming-into-being and passing-away to eternity, from worldly existence to Nirvana.
…After an inner struggle he decides to divulge his doctrine. He does not expect much, and later, when his preaching attracts throngs of people, he predicts that the true doctrine will not long endure. But he continues on his helping way. ‘In a world grown dark I will beat the deathless drum.’
His preaching begins in Benares, where he attracts his first disciples. He was to live for another forty years, wandering, teaching in the vast territories of northeastern India. Spiritually, nothing new happened in him. The core of his sermons was a finished doctrine; he varied an identical theme. Consequently, one can speak of this period only as a whole. Buddha taught in lectures, stories, parables, maxims; we hear of dialogues, of countless scenes and situations, of conversions. He preached not in Sanskrit, but in the vernacular. He thought in concrete images, but he made use of concepts taken over from Hindu philosophy…
The memory of Buddha’s death and the period preceding it has been preserved. The date of his death, 480 B.C., is regarded as certain. His last wandering is described in detail. At first he tried to get the better of his painful illness and cling to his life. But then he put his will behind him: ‘Three months hence the Perfect One will enter into Nirvana.’ Journeying onward, he casts a last glance back at the beloved city of Vesali. As they enter a little wood, he gives his last instruction: ‘Make me a bed between two twin trees, my head to the north. I am tired, Ananda.’ And he lay down as a lion lying down to rest.
When one of his disciples wept, he said: ‘Not so, Ananda. Do not mourn, do not lament. Have I not taught you that it is in the very nature of all things near and dear to us to pass away? How then, Ananda, since whatever is brought into being contains within itself the inherent necessity of dissolution, how can it be that such a being should not be dissolved?’
The disciples believe that with Buddha’s death the world will have lost its master. ‘Think not so. The doctrine and the order that I have taught you, they will be your master when I am gone. The Perfect One thinks not that it is he who should lead the brotherhood…I am now grown old, my journey is drawing to its close, I am turning eighty years of age. Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Rely on yourselves. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Seek salvation in the truth.’
His last words were: ‘All accomplishment is transient. Strive unremittingly.’ Then, rising from one stage of contemplation to the next, Buddha entered into Nirvana.
- Karl Jaspers, in ‘Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus: From the Great Philosophers vol I.’