In this present age, when we are living through the excellent eon of the 1,000 buddhas, the path to total enlightenment is founded on the teachings of Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha and the fourth of the 1,000 buddhas who will appear in our world. Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of the future, will be the fifth Buddha (see Chapter 9).
A buddha is a fully enlightened divine being who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance, so that he has expanded all his awareness and all his senses. His body, speech, and mind are completely pure. His wisdom-mind is perfect wisdom, and his compassion is limitless compassion. The enlightened state of a buddha transcends all suffering and death. His is the omniscient mind that knows all things.
A buddha is not a Creator God. Evil and suffering, goodness and happiness are all part of the order of things produced by karma (see here, and here) since beginningless time. The root of suffering lies in ignorance, which leads to misconceptions about the true nature of existence. Ignorance views the self as absolute, as separated from others. Ignorance leads to attachment, which in turn leads to desire and greed. Ignorance also leads to cravings that result in jealousy and anger. These in turn lead to stealing, killing, war, and many other negative events that create suffering. Suffering leads to bad karma, which in turn leads to the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth – referred to as samsara (see here, and here).
Buddha’s teaching is to eliminate ignorance. While Buddha cannot change our karma, he can teach us how to purify it, thereby reducing its severity. Buddha also teaches us the wisdom that totally understands the true nature of reality – the wisdom of “dependent arising,” of knowing that the existence of self is dependent on and related to others. Understanding the nature of self leads to love and compassion. So the state of buddhahood is described as the greatest good, the highest happiness, the most supreme compassion, the most powerful love – it is a state of superlative being to which every living being can aspire.
A standing Shakyamuni Buddha with prayer wheel at Boudhanath stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal. Buddhas and Bodhisattvas manifest as prayer wheels to purify negative karma on the path to enlightenment.
The story of Shaykamuni Buddha
More than 2,500 years ago, in the sixth century BC, in what is now southern Nepal, a prince and heir is born to the Shakya clan. He is called Siddhartha and has the family name Gautama. His father is the ruler of the state, King Shudodhana. His mother, Maya, dies soon after Siddhartha’s birth and it is his aunt, Mahaprajapati, who brings up the boy under the watchful eye of the king.
A glorious future is predicted for the young prince. He will grow up to be a great and holy teacher or a powerful monarch, the astrologer Asita tells the king. But the king wants his son to succeed him and instinctively fears this might not be. He knows that the young prince’s sensitive nature could turn him into a philosopher, thereby causing him to surrender his birthright. So the king takes extreme measures to screen his son from the harsh realities of the outside world, and Siddhartha grows up in pleasurable isolation within the palace walls, carefully protected from the real world. Eventually he marries the beautiful princess Yasodhara.
Alas for the king, his carefully laid plans crumble when, at the age of twenty-nine, Siddhartha discovers the reality of city life beyond the palace gates. He encounters in quick succession the manifestations of life’s suffering and impermanence – sickness, old age, and death – aspects of life that had been carefully shielded from him. The young prince realizes that all his worldly pleasures, his strong body, and even his life cannot protect him from these creeping forces. He has to confront the inevitability of suffering caused by the impermanence of life and of all things. Siddhartha realizes that his luxurious existence will one day cease and crumble away. These revelations bring despair and his thoughts weigh heavily on his mind. An intense compassion wells up within him.
One day, Siddhartha encounters a homeless wanderer dressed in monk’s robes, whose demeanor belies his appearance, for the man carries himself like a nobleman. Siddhartha is inspired by the wandering mendicant’s search for the true nature of life and identifies with the goal of finding the truth. He makes up his mind to quit the palace to search for answers that can overcome the suffering nature of existence.
The birth of his son, Rahula, strengthens his resolve. Compassion again wells up within him as he realizes that one day his son, too, will have to confront the inevitability of illness, old age, and death. On the night of a full moon, Siddhartha steals out of the palace and rides into the night on his white horse, Kanthaka, while deities support its hooves to muffle the sound. Turning his back on his family and his princely life, he hopes one day to return with answers.
The prince’s determination leads him to study with two famous spiritual teachers, Alara Kalama and Udraka Ramaputra. From them, he acquires techniques of deep meditative absorption, which enable him to attain heightened states of consciousness that bring feelings of great bliss. But these states do not provide the answers Siddhartha is seeking. Death still remains the final reality.
Next he tries the path of intense asceticism. Looking at his body, he surmises that this that is the cause of suffering, so perhaps answers may be found in overcoming its physical demands. Denying the body food and sustenance will perhaps enable it to reach a state whereby he can escape the suffering of illness and old age. So Siddhartha fasts until he is skin and bone. He practices breath control until he nearly keels over. In his determination to discover a realm beyond old age and death, he subjects his body to intense agony and austerity. This discipline transforms his will into steel.
Five other ascetics practice alongside him, and for six years Siddhartha lives in this state of self-denial. But the answers and wisdom that he seek continue to elude him. He begins to realize that denying the body may not be the solution. His health suffers and this makes his mind weak; it is getting clouded and he is making no progress. It seems important to try another way, perhaps a middle road. So Siddhartha accepts some milk rice from Sujata, the wife of a local farmer. This disgusts his fellow practitioners, who believe that his will has weakened, so they abandon Siddhartha and leave for the Deer Park at Sarnath.
Alone, Siddhartha contemplates the new-found strength of his body. Making a cushion from patches of cut grass, he sits in the shade of what will later be identified as the bodhi tree. He resolves to meditate until he finds the path that will lead him to some answers and so bring a permanent end to all suffering.
His mind now takes on an intense clarity, lighting up vast beacons of memory from deep within – he remembers all his past lives and notes the cyclical patterns of birth, death, rebirth, and death, moving relentlessly in a never-ending rhythm. He sees all the beings of the world going through the same cycle. He contemplates how those who have been generous, kind, and loving experience rebirth in happy circumstances, while those who act with hatred, jealousy, anger, and greed inevitably fall into the suffering realms. It is all very clear. Birth and death seem wrapped around the sensations of craving, attachment, and the desire for living. It seems as if the cycle goes on forever.
It is the night of the full moon when Siddhartha begins, and as he sits in contemplative meditation he is continually “attacked” by maras – disturbing forces of delusion that try every way to break his concentration. First come