The Life of the Buddha

The Truth or Dharma of Buddhism was first articulated by the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Guatama, a 6th to 5th century b.c.e. son of a warrior king, who renounced everything that his father intended for him: wealth, wife, son, and rule, in order to undertake a quest for the truth that leads to the ending of suffering. After a seven year sojourn in the forest, Siddhartha discovered this truth and thus became "Buddha," which means "awake." No longer was his understanding clouded by the slumber of ignorance as to the way things really are. The veils of what Indian religion would call "maya," or illusion were lifted and the Buddha became capable of living out the life of freedom from suffering IN relationship to the world, though not of the world, and only at the young age of 34 years old. While the Buddha is not the only Buddha who has ever existed, nor will he be the last, according to some of the Buddhist teachings, he is the Buddha for this aeon.

So what did the Buddha discover and what compelled him to search for it? Whenever you go into a Thai Buddhist Temple or Wat, you will see the story of the Buddha's life painted in mural form around the temple walls. Here are some of the basics of the story along with a few of the paintings that I photographed at two prominent temples in Chiangmai: Wat Prathap Doi Suthep and Wat Chiangman.

One night, Queen Maya had a dream that an elephant carrying a lotus entered her side. She became pregnant. As she traveled through the Garden of Lumbini, to return to her maternal home for the birth, her son was born as she touched the limb of a tree. Born from her side, he came into the world without bringing her any physical pain and he took seven steps across the lotus pads, immediately upon entering the world, as he announced that this would be his last lifetime. His parents named him Siddhartha, which means "He who accomplishes his aim." At his birth, wise men came to his bed side and predicted that he would have a wonderful future, either as a great king, as was his father, or as a compassionate saviour. In order to become king, the boy would need to be shielded from all suffering. As the son of a wealthy, warrior king whose father wanted desperately for him to follow his own rule and to avoid the prediction at his son's birth that he could become a "compassionate savior," Siddhartha was granted every possible gift. His father insured that wherever his son might travel, he was shielded from pain and suffering. He would send footmen ahead to clear the way. He built his son numerous palaces, married him off to the most beautiful daughter of a cousin from a neighboring kingdom, provided him with concubines, all educational and artistic opportunities, and sensual pleasures of drink and sex, all to insure that his son would follow in his stead.

One day, however, the young Siddhartha encountered four passing sights: a sick man, an elderly man, a corpse, and a monk who was begging for food. It was through these sites that Siddhartha came to understand that common plight of all humanity, even his own condition: we suffer. By this time, the young Siddhartha had married his wife, Yasodhara (also known as Gopa, Princess Bimba, and Golden One), who very quickly bore him a male heir, the greatest gift an Indian wife could provide for her husband. He loved his wife and his child deeply, but with each passing day he felt the chains of his existence in the palace binding him even more. In fact, he named his son Rahula, which means "fetter." One night, as his wife and newborn son lay sleeping, he bade his silent good-bye at the door, ordered his footsman, Chandra, to ready his steed and to accompany him to the edge of the forest. At the forest edge, Siddhartha cut off a lock of his hair, gave it to his horseman and told him to take it to his father, indicating that he would return, once he found the truth for which he searched: the way to eliminate suffering.

At first, Siddhartha tried a practice common among the Indians, asceticism, whereby he denied his body all basic needs and wants for the purpose of giving all his energy to the pursuit of truth. He became emaciated. He traveled from teacher to teacher, sitting at their feet as a disciple, but in each teacher he could only recognize a part of the truth. Finally, from exhaustion and hunger, he collapsed in the forest. A little girl, named Sujata, who was going into the forest to feed the gods, found him lying on the ground. She helped him to sit beneath a Pipala or Bodhi (Bo) tree and gave him a meal of rice and milk. From that point on, Siddhartha disregarded the path of asceticism. As he sat beneath the tree, he began to understand the Truth he sought, a truth that was somehow a mid-point between the two extremes to which he had devoted himself: absolute pleasure and self-torture. As he contemplated the nature of existence from this vantage point beneath the tree, he came to understand the Truth, which he went on to describe as the Middle Way, or the Four Noble Truths. As he sat, he was tempted by the demon Mara who sent all sorts of frightening things to dissuade him from the truth. The Earth Goddess rose up out of the earth and flooded the earth, destroying the evil tempters. The Buddha went out to preach the Truth he had discovered through experience to his ascetic friends.

The Buddha preached this truth and quickly gathered disciples (bhikkhus or male monks) and eventually female monks (bhikkhunis) around him. (Click here to learn more about the roles of women in Buddhism) He returned to the palace and preached to his own family, and his young son, Rahula, joined the Sangha as well. The monks lived a mendicant existence, begging for their food, absolutely homeless, until they were offered land by King Bimbisa. They decided then that they would stay put during the three months of the rainy season. The Buddha traveled thoughout the Indian countryside for over 40 years, preaching the Dharma and calling his hearers to follow on the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. He did have some detractors, most notably some men from his wife's family--a cousin in particular by the name of Devadatta--who tried to send a wild elephant to crush the Buddha. The elephant would not follow through, however, and Devadatta was later swallowed by the earth. Subsequently, all those who seek to thrwart the dissemination of the truth of life are called by Buddhists, Devadatta or Devadatta's children. The Buddha's earthly life was finally ended with the eating of a meal, offered to him by Cunda the Blacksmith. As he lay dying, he told his disciple, Ananda, to be sure to tell Cunda that he had received two great meals in this lifetime: the one which brought him to earthly nirvana and the one which will take him to cosmic nirvana. Thus, Cunda was not to grieve at the death of the Buddha.