Chapter 3
The Life of Buddha
The legend of the life of Buddha has many variations. Even the date of
his birth is disputed. In China, he is believed to have been born in 947
BCE, but elsewhere the most commonly given date is 563 BCE. At
birth, he was given the name Siddhartha, and his family name was Gautama.
He is also called
Sakyamuni, which means “the sage (
-muni) of
the Sakya clan.”
Buddha is a title, not a name. It means “one who is
awake.” To the Buddhists, a Buddha is no longer a person. It is a different
category of being—not a mere god, but a being superior to a god.
The following account is a popular version of Buddha’s life, focusing,
as do the Buddhist texts, on Siddhartha’s early life and his heroic
quest for enlightenment. The oldest Buddhist texts were written in the
first century BCE in Pali (an ancient language of northern India close to
the language that Siddhartha spoke), although the oldest copy of a Pali
manuscript that we actually have today is about five hundred years
old.1 These stories are more concerned with symbolic significance than
an accurate account of Siddhartha’s life. Later a more complete biography
was written in Sanskrit.
In the Pali texts and the subsequent Sanskrit texts, we learn not only
of Siddhartha’s life, but also of his past lives and of the twenty-four
Buddhas who preceded him in other ages. At one time in a past incarnation,
Siddhartha was a Brahman named Sumedha, an ascetic who
came into the prescience of the first Buddha, named Dipankara. Like
all Buddhas, Dipankara had the power of clairvoyance, and seeing
Sumedha in the midst of the assembled crowd, he announced that one
day Sumedha would also become a Buddha. This event set Siddhartha
on his spiritual path, and led to his eventual Buddhahood. In the following
547 incarnations, Siddhartha experienced life as a lion, a snake,
and other animals, as well as a human. During this process he purified
himself and perfected the ten virtues: generosity, morality, renunciation,
intelligence, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, benevolence,
and equanimity. He became a
Bodhisattva, a title that refers to a person
on his or her way to becoming a Buddha, and he incarnated in
Tusita Heaven with the gods.
Tusita Heaven is a paradise above Mount Meru in the sacred center
of the world. The beings that live there are gods, but in Buddhist theology,
the gods are not immortal. Although their lives are so long that
they seem immortal to us, they, too, will suffer death. Of the six worlds
shown on the Wheel of Life mandala, Tusita is the best place in which
to incarnate. Realizing that his time there was ending, Siddhartha knew
that it was time to incarnate in the world of men and to take the final
step that he had been preparing for throughout all of his past lives: to
become a Buddha.
Siddhartha was born on the full moon in Wesak (our month of May),
although the Chinese fix his date of birth on our modern calendar as
April 8. He was born in Kapilavastu, a principality that no longer exists
but which included an area that is now encompassed by northern India
and Nepal. His father and mother were Suddhodhana and Maya, the
wealthy rulers of Kapilavastu. They were members of the Ksatriya caste
(the noble or warrior class).
Before Siddhartha’s birth, Maya had a dream in which she was visited
by a white elephant with six tusks. In the dream, the elephant impregnated
Maya by piercing her side painlessly with one of his tusks. Ten
lunar months later, Siddhartha was born. After his birth, it is said that he
immediately stood and a white lotus rose under his feet from which he
surveyed the ten directions. He then took seven steps toward each of the
cardinal directions, and declared this to be his final birth. In some versions
of the story, Suddhodhana and Maya had not yet consummated
their marriage when Maya became pregnant. Therefore, Siddhartha’s
birth, like that of Jesus, was from a virgin. Seven days after Siddhartha’s
birth, Maya died of joy and ascended to Tusita Heaven. Maya’s sister,
Mahaprajapati, married Suddhodhana and raised Siddhartha.
A short time later, a seer named Asita, a saintly old man from the
Himalayas, came to visit the child and confirmed that two possible destinies
awaited him. If Siddhartha embraced a worldly life, he would
grow to be a
chakravartin (literally, “a wheel-turner”), a great emperor
over a unified India. If he embraced asceticism, he would become a
world savior—a Buddha. Asita was sure that Siddhartha would take
the religious path.
As the child was growing, his father summoned a council of wise
Brahmans (members of the priest class). They determined that Siddhartha’s
destiny hinged on whether or not he beheld the four sights:
old age, sickness, death, and the life of the holy hermit. Suddhodhana
wanted his son to succeed him to the throne and become a powerful
ruler instead of an ascetic, so he kept Siddhartha in a beautiful palace
with sumptuous gardens and delightful young women to serve as his
attendants or as his courtesans. Some accounts say that the palace was
surrounded by three walls; others say that it was surrounded by four
gardens, one for each of the four directions. All accounts agree that the
sight or even the mention of death or grief was forbidden.
The young, charismatic Siddhartha excelled in the martial arts and
in his intellectual studies. He was the perfect example of his caste, even
surpassing the knowledge of his teachers. When he was sixteen, his
father encouraged his marriage to the beautiful princess Yasodhara. To
win her, Siddhartha had to enter a competition of martial arts. He won
by stringing and shooting a perfect arrow with his ancestral bow, a
bow that most men could not even lift. After this, Siddhartha became
enchanted by the delights of marriage, and his father felt secure that his
son, having been conquered by love, would follow the worldly path.
However, this enchantment did not last. The young man grew restless;
his life of sensual pleasure began to appear shallow and vain.
Motivated by a desire for greater knowledge of the world, Siddhartha
decided to leave the palace and prepared to visit the city in his chariot.
His father, worried about what Siddhartha would find there, had the
entire city swept clean of any unpleasantness. But the truth prevailed
after all. Siddhartha saw an old man, bent, trembling, and leaning on
a cane—the first of the four sights that had been predicted by the
Brahmans. The young man had never seen someone that old before,
and it taught him that decrepitude is the fate of those who live out
their lives.
On his second visit to the city, Siddhartha came across a man suffering
from an incurable disease. On his third visit, he saw a funeral procession
carrying a corpse. Through these experiences, Siddhartha
learned that all human lives eventually include suffering and death, and
that it is the fate of humanity to repeat this suffering again and again
during the seemingly endless rotations of the wheel of reincarnation.
On his fourth and final visit to the city, Siddhartha met a
sadhu, a
holy hermit, who wandered through the country carrying a begging
bowl. Despite his poverty, this man was calm and peaceful. It seemed
to Siddhartha that this man offered him a path out of the torment that
the other sights had caused him. He returned to the palace with hope.
After his son Rahula was born, Siddhartha realized that his obligation
to continue his royal line had been fulfilled. With great strength
and determination, he prepared to leave the palace and seek enlightenment
by becoming a sadhu. One night while his family slept, he rode
out on his faithful horse, Kantaka, determined not to return until he
reached his goal. He gave Kantaka to his equerry, cut off his hair, and
exchanged his splendid robes for those of a hunter.
Siddhartha’s quest for enlightenment moved through three phases.
First, he wished to attain wisdom. He sought out two of the foremost
Hindu masters of the day and learned all he could from their tradition,
including the discipline of meditation.
In the second phase, Siddhartha decided that the desires of his body
were holding him back. To crush his body’s interference, he joined a
band of ascetics. In that time, sadhus were known to practice severe
austerity, but Siddhartha outdid his teachers in every discipline and
gathered five disciples of his own. In a final effort to attain victory over
his body, he went on a prolonged fast. Eventually, he turned himself
into a living skeleton, but this still did not bring him to his goal. Siddhartha
saw that asceticism was as futile and as egotistical as sensuality
—neither would bring an end to suffering. He began to eat and build
up his strength. When a village girl named Sujata offered him a bowl of
rice and milk, he accepted it. After his meal, he bathed in the river. In
that time, several practitioners of Jainism had fasted themselves to
death in an effort to gain liberation and Siddhartha’s disciples hoped
that he would do the same. When he began to eat, his disciples left him
in disgust.
Now Siddhartha entered the third and final stage of his quest. He was
inspired to follow the Middle Way, a path of balance between the ...
