Gautam Buddha

The birth date of Gautam Buddha is not known. According to experts and scholars, he was born in 568 B.C. and died in 506 B.C. He was the son of Suddhodhana, the Chief of the Sakya clan of Kapilavastu. His original name was Siddhartha. His mother Mahamaya, a Koliyan princess, was the Chief Queen of Suddhodhana. After her death, young Siddhartha was brought up by his mother’s sister and Mahapraapati Gautami.

As a young prince, he received normal training of a Kshatriya. At the age of sixteen, he was married to Yasodhara. Inspite of all his prosperity he was not inwardly happy. The idea of rejection came to his mind by seeing people in four different stages of life: an old man bent with age, a sick man shivering with fever, a body being carried to the cremation ground followed by weeping finally members and relatives and a wandering monk. On seeing them, Siddhartha realized where his destiny lay and set his heart on becoming a wanderer. Soon he felt dissatisfied with life and at the age of 29, he renounced everything and became an ascetic.

For six years, he wandered as an ascetic in search of true knowledge. During this period, he met Arada Kalama on the outskirts of Vaisali and became his disciple. There he learnt about the seventh stage of meditation. However, he was not satisfied and became a disciple of another teacher. Here he reached the stage of highest meditation but could not achieve final liberation. Thus, he took up deep meditation exposing his body to extreme physical pain.

At Uruvela near Gaya under a Pipal tree, he sat in deep meditation. There he finally attained knowledge from the ‘Great Unknown’ and became Buddha the enlightened one at the age of 35. The tree has been named Bodhi tree.

Buddha preached his first sermon in a Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi before his first five Brahmin disciples. The event has been described as the Turning of the Wheel of Law’. Buddha’s Eight Fold Path lies between two extremes: pleasure seeking on one hand and extreme asceticism on the other. Hence, the Eight Fold Path of Buddha was called the ‘Middle Path’, as it keeps clear of the two extreme ways of life. This is also called the ‘Right Path’.

Buddha prescribed Five Fundamental moral codes or principles. These were to refrain from killing, stealing, adultery, indulging in falsehood and drunkenness. He also recommended for the monks as well as for the masses the observance of Six Fundamental Virtues such as charity, purity, patience, courage, contemplation and knowledge. Buddha discouraged the origin and end of the universe. He did not recognize the authority of the Vedas and rejected its dependability.