BUDDHA JAYANTI
Buddha Jayanti is the day on which the world Guru, known as Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism, was born. He was born in a place called Lumbini, near Kapilavastu, Kosala Kingdom in modern day Nepal. His father was Suddhodana, the chief of the Shakya clan. His mother was Queen Maya.
He was born on the full moon day in the month of Vaishakha. It is said that he attained enlightenment thirty-five years later on the same day and took samadhi also on the full moon day of the month of Vaishakha. Actually his mother was on her way to some other place when he was born. It is said that on the night before his birth, she dreamt that a white elephant entered the right side of her uterus and indeed it is said that he was born from her right side. Various sources say that Maya Devi died at his birth or a few days or seven days later. It might have been seven days later since the party returned to the palace where the birth was celebrated on a grand scale. He was named Siddhartha. During the birth celebrations, the seer Asita announced that this baby would either become a great king (Chakravartin) or a very holy man. His father, King Suddhodana, wished his son to be a great king and kept him away from all religious teachings and knowledge of human suffering. He built three palaces for him, one for each season. He was brought up in princely luxury, forbidden from going outside the palace gates, shielded from every type of natural calamity, entertained by dancing girls, instructed by Brahmins, and trained in archery, swordsmanship, wrestling and swimming.
As soon as he reached the age of sixteen, his father arranged his marriage to Yashodhara who was his cousin of the same age. In due time, she gave birth to a son called Rahula. Siddhartha spent twenty-nine years as the prince of Kapilavastu, the capital of the state, now in Nepal. Although his father took great care to see that he was provided with everything he could want or need, Siddhartha felt that material wealth was not the ultimate goal of life. Though he knew that he was forbidden to go out of the palace, something kept prompting him and one day his karma, drew him inexorably into the world beyond the castle gates.
There in the streets of Kapilavastu, he saw three things which are accepted by all of us as natural, but which came as a tremendous shock to him, who for twenty-nine years of his life, had been deliberately kept in total ignorance of the basic truths of life – old age, disease and death.
Soon after the carriage came out of the gates he was shocked to see a human being who could not even walk. He couldn’t even believe it when his charioteer told him that it was indeed a very old human being who had to use a stick to walk. Next he saw someone who was coughing and tottering and being helped by two people on either side, who, according to his charioteer was very, very sick. Finally, he saw someone being carried on a stretcher which his charioteer informed him was a corpse! Nothing in his charismatic life had prepared him for such experiences. He didn’t even know the meaning of old age or death. He questioned his charioteer about these things and was shocked to hear that all human beings, in fact all creatures, human and animal were subject to sickness, old age and death. On his way back he passed a wandering ascetic walking peacefully along the road, wearing an ochre robe and carrying only a begging bowl. Then and there he resolved that he would also leave the palace and search for an answer to the problem of suffering.
These four scenes are referred to as the four sights, or the four heavenly messengers “devaduta.” Deeply depressed by these sights he decided to abandon his princely style of living and dedicate his life to learning how to overcome suffering, by living the life of an ascetic. At the age of twenty-nine, the prince left his palace, his possessions, and his entire family to take up the lonely life of a wandering monk.
No doubt it must have been a wrench for him to leave his young wife and newborn son but the scenes that he had witnessed had made such an indelible impression on his mind that he decided that his greater duty was to assuage the sufferings of humanity than cater to his own family who would be looked after in any case. It was his divine duty to discover a method by which human beings could overcome these unbearable sufferings. Thus, not long after he had witnessed these horrific scenes, he silently slipped out of his bedroom in the middle of the night with hardly a backward glance at his wife and baby son who were fast asleep. He rode to the edge of the forest and cut off his hair with his sword and changed his princely garments for the simple robes of a sadhu and set off on foot.
He wandered around for some years trying out various paths taught by different self-styled gurus but he was not satisfied with any of them.
Finally he settled down to learn from two teachers. One was called Arada Kalama. He had three hundred disciples. From him, he learned how to discipline his mind and to enter the sphere of nothingness. Arada Kalama recognised his greatness and asked him to remain and teach with him as an equal but somehow Siddhartha knew that this was not what he was looking for and left him. Next he joined another guru called Udraka Ramaputra. But his teachings also did not give him the liberation he sought for, so he left him and went on his own.
For six years Siddhartha practised severe austerities and concentration along with five other sadhus. He drove himself mercilessly, eating only a single grain of rice a day, determined to control his body and mind and attain liberation. His ribs stuck through his wasted flesh and he seemed more dead than alive. Again he realised that this was not the method. He decided to abandon this life and his five companions left him.
He washed himself in the Niranjana River and proceeded to the village and accepted a little rice pudding from a village girl named Sujata. Each day he started eating a little more and slowly his strength returned. Once again he set out in a desperate attempt to gain liberation. He proceeded to the state called Magdha, modern Bihar.
He had listened to many teachers, tried many methods and studied all the sacred texts. Now he realised that there was nothing to rely on, no one to turn to, nowhere to go. He walked on until he reached the holy place of Gaya. There he sat under a peepal tree, now known as the Bodhi tree at the place known as Bodh Gaya and vowed never to arise until he had found the Truth. He sat solid and unmoving, determined never to open his eyes until he had gained liberation. He sat as still as a mountain for six days. As he opened his eyes he saw the rising morning star, so it is said, and he realised that he had been vainly looking for something that had never been lost, neither to him nor to anyone else. There was nothing to attain, and therefore no longer any need to struggle to attain it!
“Wonder of wonders,” he is reported to have said, “enlightenment is the very nature of all beings, and yet they are unhappy and looking for it outside themselves!” So it was that Siddhartha Gautama became enlightened at the age of thirty-five, and came to be known as the Buddha, the Awakened One – Shakyamuni, the sage of the Shakyas! He then came to possess the Nine Characteristics, which are said to belong to every Buddha.
(The title “buddha” was used by a number of religious groups in ancient Bharat and had a range of meanings, but it came to be associated most strongly with the tradition of Buddhism and to mean an enlightened being, one who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance and achieved freedom from suffering. According to the various traditions of Buddhism, there have been “buddhas” in the past and there will be “buddhas” in the future. Some forms of Buddhism hold that there is only one “buddha” for each historical age; others hold that all beings will eventually become “buddhas” because they possess the “buddha” nature “tathagatagarbha.”)
For seven weeks he enjoyed the freedom and tranquillity of liberation. At first he had no inclination to speak to anyone. He sat and revelled in the Self. According to legend, Lord Brahma, came to him and requested him to teach, since there were those “whose eyes were totally clouded over.” Out of his deep compassion for these suffering people, the Buddha agreed.
He walked on to Varanasi to the place which is now known as the Deer Park and there he saw his five companions who decided to ignore him since he had broken his vows. Yet they found something so radiant about his presence that they rose and prepared a seat, bathed his feet and listened as the Buddha set in motion the Wheel of Dharma as it is called and delivered his first sermon to the five companions.
At this point, he is believed to have stated that he had realised complete awakening and insight into the nature and cause of human suffering which was ignorance, along with steps necessary to eliminate it. These truths were then categorised into the Four Noble Truths. The state of supreme liberation – which was a possibility for any human being – was called Nirvana.
The five ascetics who listened to the Buddha’s first discourse in the Deer Park became the nucleus of a community, a sangha, of men (women were to enter later) who followed the way of the Buddha which has been described in his Noble Eightfold Path.
These bikshus, or monks, lived simply, owning only a bowl, a robe, a needle, a water container and a razor, since they shaved their heads as a sign of complete renunciation. They travelled around north-eastern Bharat, practising meditation alone or in small groups, eating only what they got by begging for a certain period of time in the morning.
The first sangha, formed what came to be known as the Triple Gems – Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Their clarion call was, “Buddham sharanam gatchami, Dharmam sharanam gatchami, Sangham sharanam gatchami.” “I take refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma and in the Sangha.”
According to tradition, the Buddha emphasized ethics and correct understanding as basic to liberation or Nirvana as he called it. He blasted peoples’ notion of divinity and salvation that existed at that time. He stated that there is no need of an intermediary between mankind and the divine. Gods in heaven also come under the sway of karma. The Buddha is the sole guide and teacher for all sentient beings who must tread the four-fold path in order to attain the spiritual awakening called “Nirvana” and see truth and reality as it is. It was not the gods who had revealed this system to him. He had stumbled upon it by the understanding of the true nature of the mind and this can be discovered by anybody.
It must be understood that the Buddhist “Nirvana” is quite different from the “Nirvana” as given in Hindu texts. In fact, this is one of the basic differences between Hinduism and Buddhism. The Buddhist “Nirvana” is a state of “shunya” or “void,” whereas the Hindu “Nirvana” is a state of “purna” or “plenum.”
Of course, another basic difference between the two religions is that Buddha strictly refused to talk about any God. Those who followed his teachings would achieve the ultimate without the mediation of a personal deity was what he preached!
His teachings comprised firstly of the four noble truths.
1. All existence is characterised by sorrow (dukkha) since even happiness has a way of turning into suffering when we hold on to it. Dukkha alone is true and noble. It is a foundation, a stepping stone, to be comprehended fully, not to be escaped from or explained.
2. The experience of dukkha, of the working of one’s mind, leads to the Second Noble Truth which is the origin of suffering, traditionally described as craving, thirsting for pleasure, but also and more fundamentally as a thirst for continued existence as well as non-existence. Examination of the nature of this thirst leads to the heart of the Second Noble Truth, the idea of the “self,” or “I,” with all its desires, hopes, and fears.
3. It is only when this self is comprehended and seen to be insubstantial that the Third Noble Truth, the cessation of suffering, is realised.
4. The path to the cessation of suffering known as the Middle Path was the one advocated by him.
This is the famous eight-fold path.
1. Right understanding. 2. Right thought. 3. Right speech. 4. Right action. 5. Right livelihood. 6. Right effort. 7. Right mindfulness. 8. Right concentration.
All types of phenomena exist only because of the existence of other phenomena in a complex web of cause and effect covering time – past, present and future. Because all things are thus conditioned and transient (anitya), they have no real independent identity (anatma). There is no constant atma in any creature. Teachings should not be accepted unless they are borne out by our own experience and are praised by the wise.
The Buddha’s teaching, however, was not only for the monastic community. He instructed his bikshus to bring everyone to him. “Go ye, O bikshus, for the gain of the many, the welfare of the many, in compassion for the world, for the good, for the gain, for the welfare of gods and men.”
For the remaining forty-nine years of his life, the Buddha is said to have criss-crossed many times the Gangetic Plain of north-eastern Bharat and southern Nepal, teaching his doctrine and discipline to an extremely diverse range of people – from nobles to outcaste street sweepers, including many adherents of rival philosophies and religions. He walked through the villages and towns of North Bharat, speaking in the vernacular, using common figures of speech that everyone could understand. He taught a villager to practise mindfulness while drawing water from a well and when a distraught mother asked him to heal the dead child she carried in her arms, he did not perform a miracle, but instead instructed her to bring him a mustard seed from a house where no one had ever died. She returned from her search without the seed, but with the knowledge that death is universal.
The Buddha founded the community of Buddhist monks and nuns (the Sangha) to continue the dispensation after his Parinirvana or “complete Nirvana.” He made thousands of converts. His religion was open to all races and classes and had no caste structure. However, Buddhist texts record that in the beginning, he was reluctant to ordain women as nuns. However, he eventually accepted them on the grounds that their capacity for enlightenment was equal to that of men (the Lotus Sutra, in Chapter 12, contains a description of the dragon king’s daughter attaining enlightenment in her present body). But he gave them certain additional rules to follow.
As the Buddha’s fame spread, kings and other wealthy patrons donated parks and gardens for his use and retreats. The Buddha accepted these, but continued to live as he had done from his twenty-ninth year onwards, as a wandering sadhu, begging his own meal, spending his days in meditation. Only now there was one difference. Almost every day, after his noon meal, the Buddha sat in one place and taught the noble truths to vast crowds. None of these discourses, or the questions and answers that followed, were recorded during his lifetime. It was done much later by his foremost disciple, Ananda.
The Buddha attained Nirvana in the town of Kushinagara, near modern Kashi, at the age of eighty. It is said that he had accepted a meal that someone had given him which had some stale meat in it. He was aware of it but since his vow was to eat whatever was given to him, he did not refuse. Some of the assembled monks were despondent, but the Buddha, lying on his side, with his head resting on his right hand, reminded them that everything is impermanent, and advised them to take refuge in themselves and the dharma – the teaching. For the last time he asked them whether they had any questions. No one spoke a word. At last he spoke for the last time: “Behold O bikshus! This is my last advice to you. Everything in the world is impermanent. Therefore, work hard to gain your own salvation.”
So saying, he breathed his last. He shone with a divine glow and celestial music started to play.
His body was cremated and the relics were placed in monuments or stupas, some of which are believed to have survived until the present day. For example, The Temple of the Tooth or “Dalada Maligawa” in Sri Lanka is the place where his upper right wisdom tooth is supposed to be kept.
The first rainy season after the Buddha’s Parinirvana, it is said that five hundred elders gathered at a mountain cave near Rajagriha, where they held the First Council. Ananda, who had been the Buddha’s chief disciple, repeated all the discourses or sutras he had heard and another disciple, Upali recited the two hundred and fifty monastic rules called the Vinaya, while Mahakashyapa, a third disciple, recited the Abhidharma, the compendium of Buddhist psychology and metaphysics.
These three collections which were written on palm leaves a few centuries later are known as the Tripitaka (literally “three baskets”). They became the basis for all subsequent versions of the Buddhist cannon.
This is the story of a remarkable personality who has left an indelible impression on the whole of humanity. It is interesting to note that he is one of the few great personalities in the world whose physical attributes have been described by no less a personage than his own wife Yashodhara to his son Rahula.
“Like the full moon is His face;
He is dear to Gods and men;
He is like an elephant amongst men;
His gait is graceful as that of an elephant of noble breed.
That, indeed, is your father, lion of men!
He is of Aryan (noble) lineage, sprung from the Kshatriya caste;
His feet have been honoured by Gods and men;
His mind is well established in morality and concentration.
That, indeed, is your father, lion of men!
Long and prominent is his well-formed nose,
His eyelashes are like those of a heifer;
His eyes are extremely blue; like a rainbow are
His deep blue eyebrows.
That, indeed, is your father, lion of men!
Round and smooth is his well-formed neck;
His jaw is like that of a lion;
His body is like that of the king of beasts;
His beautiful skin is of bright golden colour.
That, indeed, is your father, lion of men!”
This year, 2024, Buddha Jayanti falls on May 23rd – the full moon of the month of Vaishakha!
Buddham Sharanam Gatchami!
Dharmam Sharanam Gatchami!
Sangham Sharanam Gatchami!