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The Buddha, the founder of the great religious philosophy
of Buddhism, lived in North India over two thousand and five hundred
years ago and was known as Siddhattha (Siddhartha
= one whose purpose has been achieved). Gotama (Sanskrit=
Gautama) was his family name. His father, King Suddhodana,
ruled over the land of the Sakyans at Kapilavatthu on the Nepalese
frontier. His queen was Mahamaya, a princess of the Koliyas.
On a full-moon day of May, when the trees were laden with leaf,
flower and fruit, and man, bird and beast were in joyous mood,
Queen Mahamaya was travelling in state from Kapilavatthu to Devadaha,
her parental home, according to the custom of the times, to give
birth to her child. But that was not to be, for halfway between
the two cities, in the Lumbini grove, under the shade of a flowering
Sal tree, she brought forth a son.
Lumbini or Rummindei, the name by which it is now known, is 100
miles north of Variinasi and within sight of the snowcapped Himalayas.
At this memorable spot where Prince Siddhattha, the future Buddha,
was born, Emperor Asoka, 316 years after the event, erected a
mighty stone pillar to mark the holy spot. The inscription engraved
on the pillar in five lines consists of ninety-three Asokan (brahmi)
characters, amongst which occurs the following:
'Hida Budhe jate Sakyamuni',
'Here was born the Buddha, the
sage of the Sakyans'. The mighty column is still to be
seen. The pillar, 'as crisp as the day it was cut', had been struck
by lightning even when Hiuen Tsiang, the Chinese pilgrim, saw
it towards the middle of the seventh century after Christ. The
discovery and identification of the Lumbini park in I896 is attributed
to the renowned archaeologist, General Cunningham.
Queen Mahamaya, the mother, passed away on the seventh day after
the birth of her child, and the baby was nursed by his mother's
sister, Pajapati Gotami. Though the child was nurtured till manhood
in refinement amid an abundance of material luxury, the father
did not fail to give his son the education that a prince ought
to receive. He became skilled in many a branch of knowledge, and
in the arts of war easily excelled all other. Nevertheless, from
his childhood the prince was given to serious contemplation. When
the prince grew up the father's fervent wish was that his son
should marry, bring up a family and be his worthy successor; but
he feared that the prince would one day give up home for the homeless
life of an ascetic.
According to the custom of the time, at the early age of sixteen
the prince was married to his cousin Yasodhara, the only daughter
of King Suppabuddha and Queen Pamita of the Koliyas. The princess
was of the same age as the prince. Lacking nothing of the earthly
joys of life, he lived knowing nothing of sorrow. Yet all the
efforts of the father to hold his son a prisoner to the senses
and make him worldly-minded were of no avail. King Suddhodana's
endeavors to keep life's miseries from his son's inquiring eyes
only heightened Prince Siddhattha's curiosity and his resolute
search for Truth and Enlightenment.
With the advance of age and maturity the prince began to glimpse
the woes of the world. As the books say, he saw four visions:
the first was a man weakened with age, utterly helpless; the second
was the sight of a man mere skin and bones, supremely unhappy
and forlorn, smitten with some pest; the third was the sight of
a band of lamenting kinsmen bearing on their shoulders the corpse
of one beloved for cremation. These woeful signs deeply moved
him. The fourth vision, however, made a lasting impression. He
saw a recluse, calm and serene, aloof and independent, and learnt
that he was one who had abandoned his home to live a life of purity,
to seek Truth and solve the riddle of life. Thoughts of renunciation
flashed through the prince's mind and in deep contemplation he
turned homeward. The heartthrob of an agonized and ailing humanity
found a responsive echo in his own heart. The more he came in
contact with the world outside his palace walls, the more convinced
he became that the world was lacking in true happiness. In the
silence of that moonlit night (it was the full moon of July) such
thoughts as these arose in him:
' Youth, the prime of life, ends in old age and man's senses
fail him when they are most needed. The hale and hearty lose their
vigour and health when disease suddenly creeps in. Finally death
comes, sudden perhaps and unexpected, and puts an end to this
brief span of life. Surely there must be an escape from this unsatisfactoriness,
from aging and death.'
Thus the great intoxication of youth, of health, and of life
left him. Having seen the vanity and the danger of the three intoxications,
he was overcome by a powerful urge to seek and win the Deathless,
to strive for deliverance from old age, illness, misery and death,
to seek it for himself and for all beings that suffer. It was
his deep compassion that led him to the quest ending in Enlightenment,
in Buddhahood. It was compassion that now moved his heart towards
the Great Renunciation and opened for him the doors of the golden
cage of his home life. It was compassion that made his determination
unshakable even by the last parting glance at his beloved wife
asleep with their babe in her arms.
Now at the age of twenty-nine, in the flower of youthful manhood,
on the day his beautiful Yasodhara, giving birth to his only son,
Rahula, made the parting more sorrowful and heart-rending, he
tore himself away - the prince with a superhuman effort of will
renounced wife, child, father and a crown that held the promise
of power and glory, and in the guise of an indigent ascetic retreated
into forest solitude to seek the eternal verities of life. 'In
quest of the supreme security from bondage-Nibbana'.
This was the great renunciation. Dedicating himself to the noble
task of discovering a remedy for life's universal ill, he sought
guidance from two famous sages, Nara Kimma and Uddaka Ramaputta,
hoping that they, being masters of meditation, would show him
the way to deliverance. He practiced concentration and reached
the highest meditative attainments possible thereby, but was not
satisfied with anything short of supreme enlightenment. Their
range of knowledge, their ambit of mystical experience, however,
was insufficient to grant him what he earnestly sought. He left
them in turn in search of the still unknown.
In his wanderings he finally reached Uruvela, by the river Neranjara
at Gaya. He was attracted by its quiet and dense groves and the
clear waters of the river. Finding that this was a suitable place
to continue his quest for enlightenment, he decided to stay.
Five other ascetics who admired his determined effort waited on
him. They were Kondanna, Bhaddiya, Vappa, Mahanama and Assaji. There
was, and still is, a belief in India among many of her ascetics
that purification and final deliverance from ill can be achieved
by rigorous self-mortification, and the ascetic Gotama decided to
test the truth of it. And so there at Uruvela he began a determined
struggle to subdue his body, in the hope that his mind, set free
from the shackles of the body, might be able to soar to the heights
of liberation. Most zealous was he in these practices. >
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