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Siddhartha Gautama Life Leading Up To His Awakening

Siddhartha Gautama Life Leading Up To His Awakening Siddhartha Gautama: Life Leading Up To His Awakening It is thought by many that the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was born having this title and did not have to endure any hardships throughout his life. Despite these thoughts, Siddhartha Gautama was not born the Buddha, but had to find his own way to achieve enlightenment and become the Buddha. Before and after Siddhartha’s birth, Siddhartha’s mother and father knew that their son was special and had two paths in life that could lead Siddhartha into being a great king or a Buddha, a remover in the world of the veil of ignorance. In an attempt to steer Siddhartha’s life to the path of the great king, his father, King Suddhodana Gautama, used health and beauty to shelter Siddhartha from the outside world of suffering, pain, and death. Only after twenty-nine years did Siddhartha want to venture out beyond the walls of his sheltered world and into the city, but little was it known that Siddhartha would get his first glimpse of the world of suffering through the four sights (Smith 84). Once Siddhartha has renounced all worldly things, his begins his long, hard journey towards enlightenment, which ends while Siddhartha sits underneath the Bodhi tree. Before Siddhartha’s birth, his mother, Queen Maya, had a dream where a radiant white elephant entered her womb as she sat on a divine couch prepared for the queen by the gods. Queen Maya awoke and summoned sixty-four eminent Brahmins and the Brahmins examine her dream and told Queen Maya, “A son is to be born to you. And if he lives the household life, then he become a universal monarch, but if he leaves the household life and retires from the world, he will become a Buddha, the awakened one (Mitchell 14-15).” After ten lunar months, Queen Maya gave birth to a son, but not in the usual way. The son, as Donald S. Lopez writes it, emerged from under the right arm of Queen Maya and unlike other newborns, the child was able to walk and talk immediately. A lotus flower blossomed under the infant’s feet at each step, and then the child announced that this would be his last lifetime (37). King Suddhodana Gautama, the infant’s father, summoned Asita, a Brahmin of dignified mien, to see the child. While holding the infant, Asita began to weep and sighed deeply; this caused King Suddhodana distress, so King Suddhodana asked Asita, “Why has the sight of my son caused you grief and pain?” Asita, as in Paul Carus’s writes, answers King Suddhodana’s question thoroughly: “ The King, like the moon when full should feel great joy, for he has acquired a wondrously noble son. I do not worship Brahma, but I worship this child; and the gods in the temples will descend from their places of honor to adore him. Banish all anxiety and doubt; the omens manifested indicate that the child now born will bring deliverance to the whole world. The wheel of empire will come to him. He will either be a king of kings to govern all the lands of Earth, or eh will become a Buddha. He is born for the sake of everything that lives. His pure teaching will be like the shore that receives the shipwrecks. His power of meditation will be like a cool lake; and all creatures parched with the drought of lust may freely drink from it. The king of the law has come forth to rescue from bondage all the poor, the miserable, and the helpless.” (12) After hearing Asita’s words, Queen Maya and King Suddhodana name the child Siddhartha, which means he who achieves his aim. With the insight about Siddhartha given to both Queen Maya and King Suddhodana Gautama, King Suddhodana decides to try and steer Siddhartha’s life onto the path to become a king of kings. The king built three palaces for Siddhartha, one for winter, one for summer, and one for the rainy season. Each palace was surrounded by vast gardens and parks filled with clear-ponds and exquisite flower-scented bowers, and the palaces were filled with beautiful women young and healthy to keep Siddhartha entertained (Mitchell 20). Having been given the best of everything, Siddhartha still had not found true happiness in worldly pleasures. In an attempt to counteract the result of Siddhartha’s unhappiness, King Suddhodana, as Paul Carus suggests, sent to all his kinsfolk, commanding them to bring their daughters that the prince might select one of them to be his wife (14-15). But the kinsfolk replied, “Siddhartha is untrained at manly arts. What could he do if war were to break out, could he protect his wife? We will not send our daughters (Mitchell 21).” Siddhartha, discontent with the reply, asked King Suddhodana to invite the kinsfolk test the prince’s strength, physically and mentally. In the test, Siddhartha proved himself manly in all the exercises, both body and mind, and that no youth or man rivaled the young prince, sixteen at this point in time. Siddhartha’s show of physical and mental prowess led to his choosing of a wife. Siddhartha chose Yasodhara, Siddhartha’s cousin, the daughter of the King of Koli (Carus 14). After bewedding Yasodhara, Siddhartha and Yasodhara lived together for about thirteen years. At twenty-nine years old, Siddhartha and Yasodhara produced a son, but Siddhartha still longed to give peace to the world. The child of Siddhartha and Yasodhara was named Rahula, but Siddhartha never his son ( Carus 14-15). After twenty-nine years of being sheltered from suffering, sickness, and death, Siddhartha wanted to journey out into the world. King Suddhodana was told by the Brahmins that if and when Siddhartha ventured away from the sheltered walls of the palaces and gardens, that the prince would see the world of suffering through the four sights (Mitchell 19). The four sights as told by Huston Smith says: One day, even though Siddhartha was to be shielded from any contact with suffering, an old man was over looked, when Siddhartha saw this old, decrepit man, he learned the fact of old age. On the second ride, Siddhartha encountered a body ravaged by disease; on the third journey, Siddhartha saw a corpse. Finally, on the fourth journey, Siddhartha saw a monk with shaven-head and ochre robe; and this day Siddhartha became aware of the life of withdrawal from the world. (84) Having been exposed to these things, Siddhartha went to King Suddhodana and asked for permission to leave the city and retire to the forest. But when King Suddhodana refuse, Siddhartha asked his father, the king, to promise never to die, become ill, grow old, or lose his fortune. Receiving the answer from King Suddhodana that those things were beyond his power, Siddhartha resolved to go forth in search of a state beyond birth and death. At this time was when Siddhartha’s and Yasodohara’s son was born, but Siddhartha did not wish to hold him for the prince deemed the child a fetter and the child was therefore named Rahula, meaning fetter (Lopez 38-39). With the yearning to partake in the life of withdrawal from the world, Siddhatha set forth on his journey towards attaining Nirvana. Siddhartha searches for a way that leads to enlightenment, trying several methods being taught by other ascetics. On such ascetic, Arada Kalama, taught Siddhartha the method of one-pointed concentration and deep meditation, but his method, ending at the Sphere of Nothingness, did not lead to the absence of passion, tranquility, higher knowledge, or Nirvana, therefore Siddhartha abandoned the method. After Abandoning many methods that were unfulfilling, Siddhartha joined a group of ascetics whom dedicated their lives to the most extreme forms of self-mortification. Surviving on one grain of rice and one drop of water a day, Siddhartha fainted while bathing in a river one day and came to the conclusion that mortification of the flesh was not the way to Nirvana (Lopez 39). Siddhartha, although scorned by the other ascetics for abandoning their ways, went on trying to find a way to attain Nirvana. Huston Smith writes, Siddhartha, one evening, sat down underneath a peepul tree, which has now come to be called the Bodhi tree, and vowed not to move from that spot until enlightenment is achieved (85-86). At this time the evil one, Mara, fearing that the Siddhartha will attain his objective begins to make his presence felt through doubts emerging from to back of Siddhartha’s mind. The Evil One, Mara, begins to attack in battalions and Siddhartha says to Mara, as Donald S. Lopez writes, “O Mara, lust is your first battalion, your second is called discontent. Your third is hunger and thirst, your fourth is craving. Your fifth is sloth and torpor, your sixth is known as fear. Your seventh battalion is doubt and your eighth is hypocrisy and cant (42).” At these words Mara attempted to frighten and drive Gautama away with a whirlwind, a cloudburst, a shower of meteors, and a dense blackness, but to no avail. The wind, which could have uprooted trees, did not even cause the edges of Siddhartha’s robe to flutter. The rain did not wet him: and the cinders that fell from the sky scattered themselves at Siddhartha’s feet and changed into flowers and incense. And the darkness vanished like shadow in sunlight when it reached the radiant figure of Siddhartha. Reaching forth with his right hand, Siddhartha touched the ground with his finger and a thunderous roar ensued causing the armies of Mara and Mara himself to disperse (Mitchell 42–43). The darkness cleared and Siddhartha arose, having attained enlightenment or rather had become awakened, was now and forever to be known as the Buddha. Although many think that Siddhartha was born with the title of Buddha and that he didn’t have to live through any hardships, this thought is wrong. This thought comes from misunderstanding other religions and/or trying to compare them to the religion of the person with that thought, which stem from them having a bias towards their own religion. The fact is Siddhartha was born with a destiny that consisted of two paths, to be a universal monarch or the Buddha. With one decision leading Siddhartha into becoming the Buddha. Bibliography: Works Cited Mitchell, Robert Allen. The Buddha: His Life Retold New York: Paragon House, 1989. Lopez Jr., Donald S. The Story of Buddhism: A Concise Guide To Its History and Teachings New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Incorporated, 2001. Carus, Paul. The Teachings of Buddha New York: St. Martins Press, 1998. Smith, Huston. The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Incorporated, 1991.

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