Gautama Buddha, also
known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply the Buddha, was an ascetic and sage, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is believed to have lived and
taught mostly in the eastern part of the Indian
subcontinent sometime between the
sixth and fourth centuries BCE.
Gautama taught Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the
severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement common in his region. He later taught
throughout other regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala.
Gautama is the primary figure
in Buddhism. He is recognized by Buddhists as an enlightened or divine teacher who attained full Buddhahood,
and shared his insights to help sentient
beings end rebirth and suffering. Accounts of his life, discourses,
and monastic rules are believed
by Buddhists to have been summarized after his death and memorized by his
followers. Various collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down
by oral tradition and first
committed to writing about 400 years
later.
Scholars are hesitant to make
unqualified claims about the historical facts of the Buddha's life. Most accept
that he lived, taught and founded a monastic order during the Mahajanapada era during the reign of Bimbisara (c. 558 –
c. 491 BCE), the ruler of the Magadha empire, and died during the early
years of the reign of Ajasattu,
who was the successor of Bimbisara, thus making him a younger contemporary of Mahavira, the Jain tirthankara. Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddha's lifetime
coincided with the flourishing of influential Śramaṇa
schools of thoughts like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism, and Ajñana. Brahmajala Sutta records sixty-two such schools of thought.
It was also the age of influential thinkers like Mahavira (referred to as 'Nigantha
Nataputta' in Pali Canon), Pūraṇa
Kassapa, Makkhali Gosāla, Ajita Kesakambalī, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, as recorded in Samaññaphala
Sutta, whose viewpoints the Buddha most certainly must have been acquainted
with. Indeed, Sariputta and Moggallāna, two of the foremost
disciples of the Buddha, were formerly the foremost disciples of Sañjaya
Belaṭṭhaputta, the skeptic; and
the Pali canon frequently depicts Buddha engaging in debate with the adherents
of rival schools of thoughts. Thus, Buddha was just one of the many śramaṇa
philosophers of that time. There
is also evidence to suggest that the two masters, Alara Kalama and Uddaka
Ramaputta, were indeed historical figures and they most probably taught Buddha
two different forms of meditative techniques. While
the general sequence of "birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening
and liberation, teaching, death" is widely accepted, there is less
consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies.
The
times of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain. Most historians in the early
20th century dated his lifetime as circa 563 BCE to 483 BCE. More recently his death is dated
later, between 411 and 400 BCE, while at a symposium on this question held in
1988, the majority of those who
presented definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE
for the Buddha's death. These
alternative chronologies, however, have not yet been accepted by all historians.
The
evidence of the early texts suggests that Siddhārtha Gautama was born into the Shakya clan, a community that was on the
periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Indian
subcontinent in the 5th century BCE. It
was either a small republic, or an oligarchy,
and his father was an elected chieftain, or oligarch. According to the Buddhist tradition,
Gautama was born in Lumbini, now
in modern-day Nepal, and raised
in the Shakya capital of Kapilvastu, which may have been either in what is
present day Tilaurakot, Nepal or Piprahwa, India. He obtained his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon in Sarnath,
and died in Kushinagar.
No
written records about Gautama were found from his lifetime or some centuries
thereafter. One Edict of Asoka,
who reigned from circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE, commemorates the Emperor's
pilgrimage to the Buddha's birthplace in Lumbini.
Another one of his edicts mentions several Dhamma texts, establishing the existence of a
written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the Maurya era. These texts may be the
precursor of the Pāli Canon. The oldest surviving Buddhist
manuscripts are the Gandhāran
Buddhist texts, reported to have been found in or around Haḍḍa near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan and now preserved in the British
Library. They are written in the Gāndhārī
language using the Kharosthi script on twenty-seven birch bark manuscripts and date from the first century BCE to
the third century CE.
Siddhartha was brought up by
his mother's younger sister, Maha
Pajapati. By tradition, he is said to have been destined by birth to the life
of a prince, and had three palaces (for seasonal occupation) built for him.
Although more recent scholarship doubts this status, his father, said to be
King Śuddhodana, wishing for his son to be a great king, is said to have
shielded him from religious teachings and from knowledge of human suffering.
When he reached the age of 16,
his father reputedly arranged his marriage to a cousin of the same age named Yaśodharā (Pāli: Yasodharā). According to the
traditional account, she gave birth to a son, named Rāhula. Siddhartha is said to have
spent 29 years as a prince in Kapilavastu. Although his father ensured that
Siddhartha was provided with everything he could want or need, Buddhist
scriptures say that the future Buddha felt that material wealth was not life's
ultimate goal.
At the age of 29 Siddhartha
left his palace to meet his subjects. Despite his father's efforts to hide from
him the sick, aged and suffering, Siddhartha was said to have seen an old man.
When his charioteer Channa explained to him that all people grew
old, the prince went on further trips beyond the palace. On these he
encountered a diseased man, a decaying corpse,
and an ascetic.
These depressed him, and he initially strove to overcome aging, sickness, and
death by living the life of an ascetic.
Accompanied
by Channa and riding his horse Kanthaka,
Gautama quit his palace for the life of a mendicant.
It's said that, "the horse's hooves were muffled by the gods" to prevent guards from knowing of his
departure.
Gautama
initially went to Rajagaha and began his ascetic life by begging
for alms in the street. After King Bimbisara's men recognized Siddhartha and
the king learned of his quest, Bimbisara offered Siddhartha the throne.
Siddhartha rejected the offer, but promised to visit his kingdom of Magadha first, upon attaining enlightenment.
He left
Rajagaha and practised under two hermit teachers of yogic meditation. After mastering the teachings of Alara Kalama (Skr. Ārāḍa Kālāma), he
was asked by Kalama to succeed him. However, Gautama felt unsatisfied by the
practice, and moved on to become a student of yoga with Udaka
Ramaputta (Skr. Udraka Rāmaputra). With him he achieved high levels of
meditative consciousness, and was again asked to succeed his teacher. But, once
more, he was not satisfied, and again moved on.
Siddhartha
and a group of five companions led by Kaundinya are then said to have set out to take
their austerities even further. They tried to find enlightenment through
deprivation of worldly goods, including food, practising self-mortification. After nearly
starving himself to death by restricting his food intake to around a leaf or
nut per day, he collapsed in a river while bathing and almost drowned.
Siddhartha was rescued by a village girl named Sujata and she gave him some payasam (a pudding made from milk and jaggery) after which Siddhartha got
back some energy. Siddhartha began to reconsider his path. Then, he remembered
a moment in childhood in which he had been watching his father start the
season's ploughing. He attained a concentrated and focused state that was
blissful and refreshing, the jhāna.
According to the early Buddhist
texts, after realizing that
meditative dhyana was the right path to awakening, but
that extreme asceticism didn't work, Gautama discovered what Buddhists call the Middle Way—a path of moderation away
from the extremes of self-indulgence and
self-mortification, or the Noble
Eightfold Path, as described in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which is
regarded as the first discourse of the Buddha. In a
famous incident, after becoming starved and weakened, he is said to have
accepted milk and rice pudding from a village girl named Sujata. Such was his emaciated appearance that
she wrongly believed him to be a spirit that had granted her a wish.
Following
this incident, Gautama was famously seated under a pipal tree—now known as the Bodhi tree—in Bodh Gaya, India, when he vowed never to arise
until he had found the truth. Kaundinya and four other companions, believing
that he had abandoned his search and become undisciplined, left. After a
reputed 49 days of meditation, at the age of 35, he is said to have attained Enlightenment, and became known as the Buddha or "Awakened One"
("Buddha" is also sometimes translated as "The Enlightened
One").
According
to some sutras of the Pali canon, at the time of his awakening he realized
complete insight into the Four
Noble Truths, thereby attaining liberation from samsara,
the endless cycle of rebirth, suffering and dying again. According to scholars, this story of
the awakening and the stress on "liberating insight" is a later
development in the Buddhist tradition, where the Buddha may have regarded the
practice of dhyana as leading to Nirvana and moksha.
Nirvana
is the extinguishing of the "fires" of desire, hatred, and ignorance,
that keep the cycle of suffering and rebirth going. Nirvana is also regarded as the
"end of the world", in that no personal identity or boundaries of the
mind remain. In such a state, a
being is said to possess the Ten
Characteristics, belonging to every Buddha.
According
to a story in the Āyācana
Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya
VI.1) — a scripture found in the Pāli and other canons — immediately after his
awakening, the Buddha debated whether or not he should teach the Dharma to others. He was concerned that
humans were so overpowered by ignorance, greed and hatred that they could never
recognise the path, which is subtle, deep and hard to grasp. However, in the
story, Brahmā Sahampati convinced him, arguing that at least
some will understand it. The Buddha relented, and agreed to teach.
