pleasure. It was a temptation scene involving voluptous women, flaming rocks, (which sounds like a lousy combination to me) and (tempoarily) ended with Mara challanging Gautama's right to do what he was doing. Legend has it that he touched his finger to the ground, and the earth thundered, 'i hear you witness'. Mara fled. (as would I) Siddhartha, entered a deep meditation. The great awakening had arrived. Herecalled all his previous rebirths, gained knowledge of the cycle of births and deaths, and with certainty, cast off the ignorance and passion of his ego which bound him to the world. Thereupon, Siddhartha had attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. His own desire and suffering were over and, as the Buddha, he experienced the highest degree of God-consciousness called Nirvana... " He believed he had found the answers to the questions of pain and suffering. He finally realized the essential truth about life and about the path to salvation. He realized that physical harshness of asceticism was not a means of achieving Enlightenment and Nirvana. His message now needed to be proclaimed to the whole world. Gautama was gone, and had been replaced by the Buddha. Mara was waiting with one last temptation. Who would understand a truth as profound as what Buddha had discovered? Why not wash your hands of the whole mess and be done with your earthly body and slip into a perpetual state of Nirvana? Buddha made a great act of self-sacrifice. He turned back determined to share his enlightenment with others so that all living souls could end the cycles of their own rebirth and suffering. In the end the Buddha responded, "there will be some who understand". An understatement if i ever heard one; 2500 years later, 150 to 350 million followers around the world follow the teachings of one man, (how ever distorted his original ideas may have become) I believe the heart of his ideas are still the core of the religion. It wasn't long ...
