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By Kumar Punithavel
[monsoonJournal.com]
Buddhist, celebrate Vesak festival, on the full moon in May. This year the month of May has two full moons. It is the first full moon on the May 2nd is celebrated as Veask. This day is the anniversary of Siddhartha Gaudama the founder of Buddhist religion was born, gained enlightenment and finally died. Lord Buddha was the Protestant of Hindu religion and reformed the religion so much it ended with an entirely new face and was called Buddhism. The Sanskrit word root budh denotes both to wake up and to know. Thus he was called the Buddha meaning the awaken one, and his religion which lays the path to become Buddha became Buddhism. Swami Vivekananda refereed to Lord Buddha as the greatest Hindu reformer. When Hinduism was at its lowest ebb after the ages of Upanishad, he championed reform to the religion. The Hindu society at that time was corrupt with cast, where empty rituals and sacrifices were given greater importance. Lord Buddha rebelled against this hypocrisy and said “All this must stop. This is not religion”. He observed that “The teacher, but points the way, the work has to be done by your self”. He believed it to be utter foolishness to expect to gain anything by getting some one else to perform some ritual and sacrifice. Especially at that time the Hindu priests performed many rituals where helpless animals were sacrificed.

[More Pictures, Vesak 2007, In and around Colombo, SriLanka] 

Birth

Siddhartha Gautama was born to Suddhodana, king of Sakiyas around B.C.560. Gautama was his Sir name. At sixteen he married a beautiful neighboring princess, Yasodhara, who bore him a son named Rahula.

When Siddhartha was born his father summoned fortunetellers to find out what the future held for his heir. All assembled agreed that this was no usual child. There was but one ambiguity. If he remained with the ways of the world, he would unify India and become her greatest emperor, a chackaravarthi. If on the other hand, he forsook the world, he would become not a world conqueror but a world redeemer. Faced with this option, his father who himself was a king determined to steer his son toward the former destiny.

The excursions

But after three excursions with his charioteer Channa, he realized how hopeless human life is. On his first excursion, he saw a frail old man. When he asked Channa what made the old man so weak and feeble, he was told that this was the eventual fate of all human beings, including him. On the second journey, he saw a sick person; the response to his inquiry was that illness could strike any one at any time, even the strongest and healthiest is not excluded to this fate, and there was nothing could be done to prevent it. The third time he left the palace he saw a corpse being taken to the cremation ground. When he asked what it was, he heard about death – an every day event in human life, said Channa, since death itself was inevitable.

Siddhartha decided to go beyond the unhappiness of this worldly life which was full of miseries and sorrows. He left his home, wealth, dominion, power, father, his beautiful wife and the only infant child Rahula. He lived among many hermits, and performed severe austerities. He performed control of breath and fasting. Little by little, though, Siddhartha, who was by now all skin and bone began to understand that he was not getting anywhere. Though he gained many psychic powers he was getting no nearer to his goal of perfect understanding of human misery.

Middle Path

At this time Siddhartha remembered a childhood incident where some dancing lasses were passing joyfully singing. His memory of the song brought real help to his troubled mind. The song itself had no real deep meaning in it, but for him it was a message full of profound spiritual significance. The song it self was;

Fair goes the dancing when the Sitar is tuned, Tune us the sitar neither low nor high,

He realized that he should not go to extremes in torturing the body by starvation, and that he should adopt a middle path.

One day he was seated under a large banyan tree with its trunk as support to his back, close to the hermitage of Kassapa. From there he could see a panoramic view of the river and the land beyond. He was lost in thought and was meditating. He realized how futile it was to find the solution by the problem. It was early in the morning, he saw a beautiful woman accompanied by two similarly beautiful women coming towards them.

The three women were dumfounded to see the handsome figure of Siddhartha seated under the tree. The woman was Sujatha, the daughter of a very rich merchant. She was in the habit of visiting this majestic banyan tree every morning on the full moon to offer obligations of milk rice to the Gods inhabiting in the tree. Seeing the handsome figure of Siddhartha she thought that the God had appeared in person to receive her obligations.

She was yet afraid, but gathered enough courage to go near Siddhartha and made her offering. On his part Siddhartha thought it was his wife Yasothara had come disguised with two of her maidens to entrench him. He accepted the offering without looking up thinking he should not give any room for temptation. Siddhartha partook in his meal of milk rice and went down to the river Neranjara to wash the bowl. It was the dry season and the river was flowing low. He waded to knee deep and washed his hands and face on the ice cold water flowing from the tall Himalayas. When he put the bowl down to wash, it started flowing down. He had to rush to grab the bowl. It struck to him that the whole world is going with the tide. If he too goes with the tide he cannot find the true reason. He thought ‘If I too go with the tide I cannot find the true reason. I cannot depend too much on tradition. I need not follow any teacher. I should be able to find the solution to the problems of existence on my own, on my own striving, on my own exertion’. With this thought he crossed the river and came to a high ground where there was a majestic Pipul (Bo tree) tree in the centre of a grove. He sat down under the cool shade on that Vesak full moon day with strong resolve not to get up till he realizes the true cause of human misery. The rest was history as people would say.

Four noble truths

He realized the four noble truths and the eight fold path to reach nirvana, to be away from all suffering.

The first noble truth was that life is Dukkha, usually translated as suffering. It was not a case of pessimism, but realism. Even when one gets what he wants he is aware that he cannot have it for ever; so he suffers not only in the anticipation of the desire but also in anticipation of their loss. If he does not get what he wants he suffers, this time from dissatisfaction and thawed longing. It was Lord Tennyson who sang well the situation

What am I? An infant crying in the night;

A fundamental built in anxiety and suffering is part of human experience, in other words. If we set goals for ourselves and fail to reach them, we become miserable; and if we do reach them, we want more. Enough is never enough.

The second noble truth goes deep into the roots of the first one which is the dukka or sorrow. He based this on the sense of ego. In its simplest form it is the thirst or desire (tanha) is the cause for dukka. This thirst can be described as a fundamental nature. We are in-wired with longing for something outside our selves. It can be gross manifestations like greed, lust and miserliness to more subtle and seemingly benign like wanting to do good to the world or to know the truth. He realized the truth as mentioned in ‘Laws of Manu’ Ch4: 160; everything that depends on others (gives) pain, everything that depends on oneself (gives) pleasure.

The third noble truth defines the way to get out of this. The key to escape Buddha said, lay in control (nirodhana); control over the craving or thirst (tanha) for attachment. If attachment was first rooted out, he said, and then the thirst itself would be extinguished. Once that is achieved, a state of nirvana could be reached, a state in which there would be no further suffering.

The fourth noble truth takes the form of what is known as the Holy or Noble eightfold path:

They are

1. Right understanding.

2. Right orientation or thought.

3. Right speech.

4. Right action.

5. Right livelihood.

6. Right effort.

7. Right mindfulness.

8. Right Concentration.

Lord Buddha was different from other religious leaders in that he was skeptical about the concept of God as a personal being who created the universe by deliberate design. This made many people believe he was an atheist. But he did believe in a God head in his declaration; “There is, O monks an unborn, neither become nor created nor formed…. Were there not, there would be no deliverance from the formed, the made, the compounded (2)*. This is in line with the tradition of Hindu Philosophy of Advaida.
Lord Buddha was totally against speculation of any sort. He was not prepared to speculate about where we came from or where we are going. He had a famous parable about a poisonous arrow; If a man is wounded by a poisonous arrow and taken to the surgeon should he first find out who shot the arrow, what cast and creed the archer was or ask what material the bow was made, what material the bow string was made. Should he find out what material the arrow was made and what type of poison he had on the arrow? Before knowing the answer to all these questions the man would die.

Similarly it is not the view that the world is eternal, that it is finite, that the body and soul are distinct, or that the Buddha exists after death, that a religious life depends. What ever the views on these matters may be, there is sickness, old age and death. There is sorrow grief and lamentation……. I have not spoken to these views because they do not conduce to absence of passion, or calm and Nirvana he said.

He observed that he had explained about suffering, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering, and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering for this is useful. He totally refused in idle talk about how world was formed or created. What sort of a person God is etc.

He refused to use Sanskrit as his language of teaching. He wanted to guide every man to realize liberation and guided them in their own language, and wanted to reach their goal in their own effort. He said “Buddha’s only point the way. Work your salvation with diligence”. He cared for no cast or creed. He observed “Let persons of intelligence come to me, honest, candid and straightforward; I will instruct them, and if they practice as they are taught, they will come to know for themselves that supreme religion and goal, the of Buddha hood.

Reference:-

(1) Lord Buddha by Swami Sivananda.

(2) The Worlds Religion by Huston Smith

Contact Kumar Punithavel: kumarpunithavel@yahoo.com