Prince Siddhartha
Siddhartha, the boy who would become the Buddha, was born sometime between 563 BCE and 483 BCE, though the exact date has been lost over the passage of time.
Born into the ruling family of the Sakyas, Siddhartha was destined to become a king. The Sakyas were an independent nation who made their home at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains, and Siddhartha’s father was King Suddhodana, ruler of the Sakya.
Shortly after the birth of his son, King Suddhodana ordered eight Brahmin scholars to predict his son’s destiny, most likely by means of Vedic astrology which was popular at the time. Tradition states that all but one of these Brahmins predicted that Siddhartha would become either a great king or a great holy man. The youngest Brahmin however predicted that Siddhartha was predestined to become a Buddha, or an Awakened One, and that there was no chance that he would ever serve as king.
This final prophecy disturbed King Suddhodana so much that he decided to carefully guard Siddhartha from any contact with religion, philosophy, and any other situations that would evoke compassion and possibly inspire him to search for a deeper meaning in life beyond the palace.
Siddhartha’s Existential Crisis
After 29 years of successfully sheltering his son from the complexities of life outside the palace, King Suddhodana finally lost his battle with destiny. One day Prince Siddhartha decided to take a walk down the streets of a neighboring town. Although King Suddhodana had ordered his guards to clear out all the sick and homeless who were usually loitering, they apparantly missed a few.
Siddhartha first came across a wrinkled old man and soon after he spotted a sick man writhing in pain. Finally, the young prince stumbled upon a funeral procession full of tearful mourners.
It is said that Siddhartha became overwhelmed by the realization that death and suffering were the end of all things. Wrapped in depression he finally saw the sight that would inspire his departure from royalty: a wandering ascetic. Having seen suffering on the faces of the old man, the sick man, and the funeral procession, Siddhartha was baffled as to why this wandering beggar had a face that seemed at peace. When he approached and asked the man why he was not sad in the face of so much suffering, the ascetic replied that he had left the world of suffering and joy to find a peace that was constant.
For the rest of that year, Siddhartha struggled with his desire to escape the life his father had put before him. This inner conflict would reach its peak when Siddhartha’s wife bore him a son. Realizing that fatherhood would now chain him ever more deeply to life in the palace, Siddhartha decided one night to run away and follow the path of the wandering ascetic he had met in the city months before. He resolved to return to his wife and son only when he had found peace – for surely he could not fully be himself til he had resolved the deep dissatisfaction that plagued him.
Becoming The Buddha
Not knowing what he would encounter, Siddhartha wandered into the forest a master of luxury ready to begin a life of poverty.
During the course of his seeking, Siddhartha trained under great ascetic masters of his time. He is said to have surpassed all the teachers he trained with, and mastered all the techniques he had been taught.
It was during this time that Siddhartha learned the technique of meditation that would become the cornerstone of his teachings. Although his accomplishments in meditation were great, the severe mortification of his body, which was a major aspect of asceticism at this time, was far too distracting for him to achieve any kind of constant peace.
The disillusioned prince appeared to have exhausted all the paths to truths that were available to him at the time. In reality, there was not much more for him to do other than return to his kingdom dissatisfied and proven wrong for having believed there was a truth that could trump the obsessive rhythms of death.
And so it came to pass that Siddhartha sat beneath a tree and refused to rise until he found truth. After 49 days of constant meditation Siddhartha was overwhelmed by the experience of truth, which he would later refer to as Nirvana. He was now a Buddha, or an Awakened One.
It is said that the Buddha debated whether it was worth communicating the truth he had discovered to others as he feared they would warp his words to fit their present level of evolution. The last thing he wanted was to deceive, even if indirectly. However, as the Dalai Lama often points out, compassion overcame the Buddha and he finally decided his enlightenment would be in vain if he did not try to guide others to the same realization he had attained.
The Buddha’s Teachings
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
Tradition states that after emerging from the enlightened state, the Buddha was able to understand the process by which individuals remain unenlightened in the cycle of distraction and ignorance known as Samsara. In order to experience Nirvana, freedom from ignorance, the Buddha taught that it was necessary for an individual to recognize and understand the four fundamental truths of human existence:
- Life is suffering
- Suffering is attachment to transient objects
- The cessation of suffering is attainable
- There is a path to end attachment
DEPENDENT ORIGINATION
The Buddha taught that when analyzed, it is found that there is a very specific process by which the human being becomes repetitively attached to impermanent phenomena.
This process of mental attachment follows a very specific order:
- Avidya (ignorance of the emptiness of identity)
- Samskara (volition based on identity/ego)
- Vijnana (consciousness of a past self/future self)
- Namarupa (the evolving personality)
- Sadayatana (ability to sense distinction in form)
- Sparsa (experiencing the sensation of forms)
- Vedana (belief in objects)
- Trsna (craving for objects)
- Upadana (obsession with unfulfilled craving)
- Bhava (desire to continue existing so as to fulfill craving)
- Jati (birth into a form that fulfills a particular craving)
- Jaramarana (death of that form)
This cycle is said to continue on and on until the individual becomes disillusioned with the fulfillment of sensory desires. Only when this disillusionment occurs does an individual finally experience the desire to seek a truth beyond transient phenomena.
EMPTINESS IS NIRVANA
The Buddha taught that over time, as a human contemplates the Four Noble Truths and the cycle of Dependent Origination, the realization of sunyata, or emptiness, naturally emerges in the mind. When this occurs, meditation is the prescribed practice. The practice of meditation combined with the contemplation of emptiness eventually produces the spontaneous experience of enlightenment known as Nirvana.
But what is this Emptiness that the Buddha wants us so badly to experience?
The following passage from the Dhammapada, traditionally considered a first-hand account of the Buddha’s teaching to his closest disciples, should shed some light on the concept of Emptiness:
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.
The key question then is: If I am not my past, and I am not my future, then who am I in the present moment?
The Buddha refused to give an answer to this question because any answer he gave could be refuted by its opposite. While this evasion to give a definite answer is said to have been frustrating to his disciples, in many ways the Buddha was providing the key to understanding Emptiness.
Emptiness is the lack of a self-concept. We are what we think we are, and since the human being spends almost all its time lost in thoughts of the past and the future, it rarely gets the opportunity to experience who it is regardless of who it thinks it is, or who it has been trained to think it is.
Western psychology has elaborated on the mechanics of self-conception in depth, and future posts in this series will certainly explore current Western theories of identity-formation. However, what makes the Buddha’s teaching of Emptiness so unique is the adamant refusal to posit what we are. Rather, the Buddha emphasized exploring what we are not. In this vein, he highly recommended the practice of non-conceptual meditation as the only means to experiencing the Emptiness that we really are.
The fruit of following the Buddha’s advice culminates when we can enter that subjective experience that is free from definition. According to the Buddha, to experience that emptiness of identity is to experience the overwhelming peace he referred to as Nirvana.
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References
The Dalai Lama (2000). A Simple Path. UK: Thorsons
Osho (2004). Buddha: His life and teachings. UK: The Bridgewater Company Ltd.
Unknown Author (1973). The Dhammapada (J. Mascaro, Trans.) UK: Penguin Books
Images used in this Post
Buddha zoom photo courtesy of Flickr user john_a_ward published under the CC license.
Monks Loneliness/La soledad del monje photo courtesy of Flickr user pasotrapaso published under the CC license.
Buddhabrot, Gallery of Computation photo courtesy of Flickr user jared published under the CC license.
9 Comments
Andrew, Mahavira or the Buddha? Who resonates with you more?
Buddha because he really spearheaded meditation becoming a worldwide phenomenon…talk about a legacy…
But Mahavira is awesome in his own right because of how far he was able to push his body and still come out sane and influential.
The Buddha was onto something with his refusal to categorize and expound about things both ethereal and physical. This unwillingness to label is perfectly congruent with his advocacy of cessation of attachment.
This is why I have always admired the teachings of the Buddha. His method is inherently simple and is applicable to all walks of life.
Admiring the Buddha’s teachings appears to be easy in America, and the West in general…
There are studies that show that societies that make Science a priority tend to accept the Buddha’s teachings as valid more often than non-scientific societies.
The reason is that the Scientific Method is all about not accepting anything as truth without testing, retesting, and retesting once again for accuracy and precision.
So I guess you could say the Buddha was applying the Scientific Method very early on to inner, subjective experiences.
Mahavira sane and influential? Influential, yes, but I don’t know about the sane part! Intentionally starving yourself for weeks at a time is renunciation of life itself. That is going too far, removing the exploratory impetus of the world renouncers by moving them immediately to the dead category.
Its only renunciation of life if you hope you’ll die from it. Mahavira stayed alive through 12 years of practice, and then taught for 30 after. He lived to the ripe old age of 72.
Details, details…
renunciation is the key to my practice these days. desire is such a slippery little bugger.
If renunciation of desire is your key practice then you probably have the desire to renounce things. And if that’s true, then at some point you’ll find yourself with the desire to renounce the desire to renounce things…
This raises the classic paradox of Zen Buddhism: The desire for enlightenment is itself the ultimate impediment to realizing and relaxing into the experience of enlightenment.
Ay, desire certainly is slippery…
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[...] Over the last three weeks we have discussed the phenomenon of world renunciation that swept through Indian culture circa 600 BCE. We also explored the lives and teachings of two major persons from this time period, Mahavira and the Buddha. [...]
[...] its humble beginnings thousands of years ago. As our journey progressed we were introduced to the Buddha and Mahavira, two individuals who had a major impact on the practice of Yoga. We concluded our [...]