Mahatma Buddha biography: Birthplace Real Name, Renunciation, First Sermon, Teachings, Death and Doctrine

The truth that Mahatma Buddha discovered is relevant even today. Buddha never said that he saw or knew God. He said that he only knew the cycle of life. He has found the truth. Disappointed with the increasing rituals in Brahminism, Buddha founded a new sect called Buddhism. It became so famous that crossing the borders of India, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. became the state religion of Asian countries. In this article we will study the life of Mahatma Buddha on a historical basis, obviously, the article will be detailed. Mahatma Buddha

Mahatma Buddha biography

Mahatma Buddha (563-483 BC) biography

Some historical facts related to Mahatma Buddha

Buddha, the “enlightened” in Sanskrit a clan name (Sanskrit) Gautama or (Pali) Gautama, personal name (Sanskrit) Siddhartha or (Pali) Siddhartha, his birth (563 BC) BC, Lumbini, Kapilavastu (present-day Nepal located in), Sakya republic, Kosala kingdom [now in Nepal].

He died, in 483 BCE in Kusinara, Malla Republic, Magadha Empire [now Kasia Tehsil Bihar, India]), Buddhism Siddhartha founded the religion called Buddhism. Buddha was more than a religious teacher but also a social reformer.

His followers, called Buddhists, propagated the religion that is known today as Buddhism. The title Buddha was used by many religious groups in ancient India and had many meanings, but it was most strongly associated with the tradition of Buddhism and meant an enlightened (enlightened) being who had overcome the slumber of ignorance. He was awakened from the darkness, the knower of the true knowledge of life, and attained freedom from suffering.

According to various traditions of Buddhism, there have been Buddhas in previous lives as well and there will be Buddhas in the future as well. Some schools of Buddhism hold that there is only one Buddha for each historical era; Others believe that all beings will eventually become Buddhas because they have Buddha nature (Tathagatagarbha).

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All forms of Buddhism celebrate various events in the life of the Buddha Gautama, including his birth, enlightenment, and passage into nirvana. In some countries, the three events are celebrated on the same day, which is called Vesak in Southeast Asia.

In other regions, the festivals are held on different days and involve a variety of rituals and practices. In these countries, Buddha’s birthday is celebrated in April or May depending on the lunar date.

“In Japan, which does not use a lunar calendar, the birth of the Buddha is celebrated on April 8. The celebration there has been merged with a native Shinto ceremony at the flower festival known as Hanamatsuri.”

Buddha’s childhood name

Most of the information about Buddha is based on popular legends. His family name was Gautama (in Sanskrit) or Gautama (in Pali), the Buddha’s childhood name being Siddhartha meaning in Sanskrit (“he who achieves his goal”) or Siddhartha (in Pali). Another name for the Buddha is Shakyamuni, “sage or ascetic of the Shakya lineage.”

Meaning of ‘Tathagat’

In Buddhist texts, he is commonly addressed as Bhagavata (often translated as “Lord”), and he refers to himself as Tathagata, meaning either “He who thus came ‘ or ‘he who thus went’.

Sources related to the life of Buddha

Information about his life comes largely from Buddhist texts written several centuries after his death. Therefore it is too early to consider these texts as historical, although all scholars accept the existence of Buddha.

The Buddha lived for 80 years (563–483 BCE), but there is considerable uncertainty about the date of his death. Traditional sources on the date of his death or, in the language of the tradition, “Nirvana Marga,” range from 2420 BCE to 290 BCE.

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Scholars in the 20th century narrowed this range considerably, with opinions generally divided between those who placed the Buddha’s death around 480 or 483 BCE and those who placed it a century later.

Historical references/evidence related to the birthplace of Buddha

The Buddha was born at Lumbini (Rumin-dei) near Kapilvastu on the northern edge of the Ganges river basin, which at that time bordered northern India, which is today part of southern Nepal. Scholars speculate that during the later Vedic period the people of the region were organized into tribal republics, governed by a council of senior citizens or a leader elected by the masses; The grand palaces described in traditional accounts of the Buddha’s life are not evident in the archaeological remains.

Which caste did Buddha belong to?

It is not clear to what extent these groups were incorporated into the caste system in the social system of the Ganges basin, but the Buddha’s family is said to have belonged to the warrior (Kshatriya) caste. The central Ganges basin was organized into about 16 Mahajanapadas, ruled by kings, often at war with each other.

The rise of these cities in central India, along with their courts and their commerce, brought about social, political, and economic changes that are often identified as major factors in the rise of Buddhism and other religious movements in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE.

Buddhist texts identify a variety of itinerant gurus who attracted groups of disciples. Some of these taught forms of meditation, yoga, and asceticism, and put forth philosophical ideas, often focusing on the nature of the individual and the question of whether human actions (karma) have an effect on the future.

Although the Buddha would become one of these gurus, Buddhist followers consider him to be quite different from the others. Therefore, his place within the tradition cannot be understood by focusing exclusively on the events of his life and times (even if they were available). Instead, they should be viewed in the context of Buddhist principles of time and history.

Life is the result of actions (Theory of Karma and Reincarnation)

According to Buddhist doctrine, life is the result of karma, the law of cause and effect of karma, according to which virtuous deeds lead to future happiness and bad deeds lead to unhappiness. The beings of the universe are reborn without beginning in the six worlds: as gods, demigods, humans, animals, ghosts, and hell beings. The actions of these beings create not only their individual experiences but also the realms they inhabit.

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Concept of reincarnation

The cycle of rebirth, called samsara (literally “wandering”), is considered part of suffering, and the ultimate goal of Buddhism is liberation from that suffering. The means of liberation remain unknown until, over the course of millions of lives, a person perfects himself, eventually acquires the power to find a way out of samsara, and then compassionately reveals that way to the world. does.

Who is a Bodhisattva

“A person who has set out on a long journey to discover the way to freedom from suffering and then to teach it to others is called a bodhisattva.”

“A man who has discovered the true way, followed it to the end, and taught it to the world, is called a Buddha.”

Buddhas are not reborn after death because Buddhas enter a state beyond suffering called nirvana (literally “exit”), meaning liberation from the cycle of samsara. Because Buddhas rarely appear over time and because they only reveal the path to liberation (moksha) from suffering (dukkha), the appearance of a Buddha in the world is considered an important event in the history of the universe.

The story of a particular Buddha begins before his birth and continues till his death. This includes the millions of lives spent on the Bodhisattva path before the attainment of Buddhahood and the persistence of both his teachings and his relics after the Buddha passed into nirvana.

The historical Buddha is considered to be neither the first nor the last Buddha to appear in the world. According to some traditions, he is the 7th Buddha; according to another he is the 25th; according to another, he is the fourth. The next Buddha, named Maitreya, would appear after Shakyamuni’s teachings and relics had disappeared from the world. It is in this context that the traditional accounts of the events of the Buddha’s life should be seen. In Hindu texts, Buddha has been called an incarnation of Vishnu.

Buddha’s source of life

The accounts of Buddha’s life appear in many forms. Perhaps the earliest are those found in collections of sutras (Pali: suttas), discourses traditionally attributed to the Buddha. In the sutras, the Buddha describes the different events of his life that occurred from the time he gave up his life as a prince until he attained enlightenment six years later.

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Many references to his wisdom appear in the sutras as well. A Pali text, the Mahaparinirvana-Sutta (“Discourse on Final Nirvana”), describes the last days of the Buddha, his passage into nirvana, his funeral rites, and the distribution of his relics. The biographical details in the early sutras provide little detail about the Buddha’s birth and childhood, although some sutras contain detailed accounts of the life of the prehistoric Buddha, Vipassana.

Another category of early Buddhist literature, the Vinayapitakas (ostensibly related to the rules of monastic discipline), include accounts of many events from the Buddha’s life, but rarely as a continuous narrative; The biographical sections often end with the conversion of Sariputra, one of his early disciples. While the Sutras focus on the person of the Buddha (his past lives, his practice of austerity, his enlightenment, and his path into nirvana), the Vinaya literature emphasizes his ascetic life as a teacher and the conversion of his early disciples.

Thus, the Sutras and Vinaya texts reflect concerns of both the Buddha’s life and his teachings, concerns that are often interdependent; Early biographical details appear in doctrinal discourses, and the points of doctrine and pilgrimage sites are legitimized through their connection to the life of the Buddha.

Near the beginning of the common era, independent sources on the life of the Buddha were composed. They do not describe his life from birth to death, which often ends with a triumphant return to his native city of Kapilavastu (Pali: Kapilavatthu), which is said to have been a year or six years after his enlightenment. It happened a year later. Partial biographies add stories that were to become famous, such as the Child Prince’s meditation under a rose-apple tree and his four important chariot rides outside the city.

These sources usually make repeated references to events from the Buddha’s past lives. Indeed, the collection of stories of the Buddha’s past lives, called the ‘Jataka’, is one of the earliest categories of Buddhist literature. Here, an incident reminds the Buddha of an incident in a past life. He relates that story to illustrate a moral maxim, and upon returning to the present, he recognizes various members of his audience as current incarnations of characters in the story of his past lives, himself as the main character. in the form of.

Jataka Tales – Stories of Buddha’s Previous Births

The Jataka tales (there are 547 of them in a Pali collection) are one of the most popular texts in Buddhist literature. They are the source of about 32 stone carvings at the 2nd century BCE stupa at Bharhut in northeastern Madhya Pradesh state; The 15 stupa carvings depict the last life of the Buddha. Indeed, stone carvings in India provide an important source for identifying which events in the Buddha’s life are considered most important by the community.

The Jataka tales are famous outside India as well; In Southeast Asia, the story of Prince Vesantara (the last reincarnation of the Buddha)—who demonstrated his devotion to the virtue of charity by donating his sacred elephant, his children, and finally his wife—is famous as his final.

Ashvaghosha’s Buddhacharita

Among the various sources of knowledge of the Buddha’s life, one of the most famous is Ashvaghosha’s Sanskrit poem Buddhacharita (“Acts of the Buddha”). Texts such as the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya (probably 4th or 5th century CE) attempt to collect the many stories of the Buddha into a single chronological record.

In many cases, the purpose of these biographies is less to detail the unique deeds of Shakyamuni’s life, but rather to demonstrate that the events of his life are consistent with principles followed by all Buddhas of the past. According to some, and so on, all previous Buddhas had given up household life after following the four visions, all had done penance, all had attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, and all had preached in the Deer Garden at Sarnath.

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The Life of the Buddha was written and rewritten in India and throughout the Buddhist world, with facts and events being added and subtracted as necessary. Places that became important pilgrimage sites but were not mentioned in previous accounts would be retrospectively sanctified by adding a story about the Buddha’s presence there. Areas where Buddhism entered much after his death—such as Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and Burma (now Myanmar)—added narratives of his magical journeys to accounts of his life.

No one version of the Buddha’s life will be accepted by all Buddhist traditions. For more than a century, scholars have focused on the life of the Buddha, attempting to isolate and identify historical elements among the many legends.

Because of the centuries that had elapsed between the actual life and the creation of what might be called a complete biography, most scholars have discarded this line of inquiry as useless. Instead, he began to study the processes—social, political, institutional, and ideological—that accounted for the regional differences between the Buddha’s narratives. The various applications of the life of the Buddha are another subject of interest.

In short, scholarly efforts have shifted from attempting to obtain authentic information about the life of the Buddha to tracing the developmental stages and motivations of his biography.

It is important to reiterate that the Buddha’s inspiration for renunciation, beginning with his past lives and ending with his passage into nirvana, came fairly late in the history of Buddhism. Instead, the biographical tradition of the Buddha developed through a synthesis of several earlier and independent fragments. And biographies of the Buddha have been composed over the centuries and around the world.

For example, during the modern period, biographies have been written that seek to separate the Buddha from mythology and emphasize his role in advancing modern ethical systems, social movements, or scientific discoveries. This is followed by an account of the Buddha’s life that is well-known, yet fictional, which brings together some of the more famous events in his life from various sources, which often describe and interpret these events differently.

Different Hypotheses of Buddha’s Past Birth

Many biographies of the Buddha begin not with his birth in his last lifetime, but with a lifetime millions of years earlier when he first took the vow to become a Buddha.

A Brahmin named Sumedha

According to a popular Buddhist version, many eons ago (in some sources) there lived a brahmin named Sumedha, who realized that life was only suffering and then set out to seek truth beyond death. He retired to the mountains, where he became a hermit, practiced meditation, and attained yogic powers.

One day while flying through the air, she saw a large crowd around a guru, whom Sumedha learned was the Buddha Dipankara. When he heard the word Buddha he was filled with joy. Upon Dīpankara’s arrival, Sumedha loosened his yogin’s locks and laid himself down for the Buddha to cross the mud. Sumedha reflected that he could free himself from future rebirth in the same life if he practiced Dipankara’s teachings.

But he concluded that it would be better to delay his liberation in order to traverse the long path to Buddhahood; As a Buddha, he could lead others across the ocean of suffering to the farthest shore. Dipankara stopped before Sumedha and prophesied that for many ages this yogi with matted hair would become a Buddha. He also predicted Sumedha’s name and the names of his parents and chief disciples in his last lifetime (Gautama) and described the tree under which the future Buddha would sit on the night of his enlightenment.

In later ages, the bodhisattva would renew his penance in the presence of each of the Buddhas who followed Dipankara, before becoming the Buddha Shakyamuni himself. During his lifetime as a bodhisattva, he acquired merit (Punya) through the practice of the 6 (or 10) virtues. After his death as Prince Vesantara, he was born in Tusita heaven, from where he traveled the world to find the proper place for his final birth.

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Birth and early life of Mahatma Buddha

He decided that he should be born as the son of King Shuddhodana of the Sakya dynasty, whose capital was Kapilavastu. Soon after, his mother, Queen Mahamaya, dreamed that a white elephant had entered her womb. Ten lunar months later, when she was walking in the garden of Lumbini, a child came out from under her right arm. This elusive child immediately started walking and talking. With every step, a lotus blossomed under his feet, and he declared that this would be his last lifetime.

The king called court astrologers to predict the future of the son. Seven of them agreed that this child would become either a Chakravarti emperor or a great ascetic; An astrologer said that no doubt, the child would become Buddha.

Nurture the Buddha

His mother died seven days after his birth, and so he was brought up by his mother’s sister, Mahaprajapati Gautami. As a young child, the prince was once left alone during a festival. Later in the day, he was found sitting in meditation under a tree, whose shade remained constant throughout the day to protect him from the sun.

The prince enjoyed a luxurious life; Her father shielded her from exposure to the ills of the world, including old age, sickness, and death, and gave her palaces for summer, winter, and rainy seasons as well as all kinds of pleasures (including 40,000 female attendants by some accounts) provided.

Buddha’s marriage and change in life

At the age of 16, he married the beautiful princess Yashodhara. When the prince was 29 years old, his life took a profound turn. The prince asked Channa, the chariot driver, to take him around the city in his chariot. The king gave permission but first got all the sick and old people out of the way. An old man escaped after saving his sight. Not knowing what was before him, the prince was told that it was an old man. He was also told that this was not the only old man in the world; Everyone – the prince, his father, his wife, and his relatives – will all grow old one day.

The first trip was followed by three more trips beyond the palace walls. In these visits he first saw a sick person, then a dead body being carried to a cremation ground, and finally a monk sitting in meditation under a tree.

Buddha’s decision to leave home

After becoming aware of the various evils of human life and the existence of those who seek a kingdom beyond them, he sought permission from the king to leave the city and go into the forest.

The father offered anything to his son if he would stay. The prince asked his father to ensure that “he would never die, get sick, grow old, or lose his fortune.” His father replied that it was not in his hands.

The prince then retired to his chambers, where he was entertained by beautiful women. Undeterred by the women, the prince resolved that night to go in search of the one truth beyond birth and death.

Birth of Buddha’s son and renunciation

When Prince Siddhartha learned seven days earlier that his wife had given birth to a son, he said, “Another bond in his life” and named the child Rahula (Bandhan or Bedi), which means “the fetters”. ” Before leaving home, he went to his wife’s chamber to see his sleeping wife and newborn son.

In another version of the story, Rahula was not yet born on the night of his departure from the palace. Instead, the prince’s final act was to conceive his son, whose gestation period extended over the six years of his father’s pursuit of enlightenment. According to these sources, Rahula was born on the night that his father attained Buddhahood (true knowledge).

The prince left Kapilavastu and luxuries behind and went to the forest, where he cut his hair and exchanged his royal clothes for the simple dress of a hunter. From that time he ate whatever was put in his begging bowl.

Meeting the king of Magadha

Early in his travels, he encountered Bimbisara, the king of Magadha and the Buddha’s last patron, who, upon learning that the ascetic was a prince, asked him to share his kingdom. The prince refused but agreed to return after gaining knowledge.

Over the next six years, the prince studied meditation and learned to achieve deep states of blissful concentration. But he quickly made a comparative study of the achievements of his gurus and concluded that he would be reborn after his death, regardless of their achievements.

He then joined a group of five ascetics (presumably Jain monks) who had dedicated themselves to the practice of extreme forms of self-mortification. The prince also became adept at their practices, eventually reducing his daily meal to a pea. Buddhist art often depicts him in an emaciated form sitting in a meditative posture with sunken eyes and protruding ribs. He concluded that physical suffering and asceticism are not the path to freedom from suffering and rebirth and accepted a dish of kheer from a young woman.

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Medium route

His companions remained convinced of the effectiveness of the penance and released the prince. Now without a companion or guru, the prince took an oath that he would sit under a tree and not get up until he understood the cycle of birth and death.

On the full moon of May, six years after leaving his palace, he meditated until dawn. Mara the god of desire, who knew that the prince wanted to end desire and thus free himself from Mara’s control, showered upon him the wind, rain, rocks, weapons, hot coals, burning ashes, sand, clay, and attacked them in the dark.

The prince remained undeterred by all this and focused only on penance, thus turning the hail of fury into a shower of flowers. The Inner Force then sent its three beautiful daughters, Lust, Thirst, and Discontent, to tempt the prince, but he remained adamant.

In desperation, Astya challenged the prince’s right to occupy the spot of earth he was sitting on, claiming it was his. Then, in a scene that would become the most famous depiction of the Buddha in Asian art, the prince seated in meditation posture extended his right hand and touched the earth. By touching the earth, he was asking the goddess of the earth to confirm that a great gift he had given in his previous birth as Prince Vesantara had earned him the right to sit under the tree. He jerked off and walked away untrue.

Knowledge of truth

The prince sat in meditation all night. During the first quarter of the night, he had visions of all his past lives, remembering his place of birth, name, caste, and even the food he had eaten.

During the second half of the night, he saw how beings rise and fall through the cycle of rebirth as a result of their past actions.

In the third quarter of the night, a few hours before dawn, he was freed. Accounts differ as to whether that was exactly what he understood.

According to some versions, these were the four truths:

• Sadness,
• Origin of sorrow
• Prevention of suffering and
• The way to stop suffering.

According to others, it was the sequence of dependent origination: how ignorance leads to action and ultimately to birth, old age, and death, and how when ignorance is destroyed, how to birth, old age, and death is also destroyed She goes.

Despite their differences, all sources agree that on this night he became a Buddha, an awakened being who awakened himself from the sleep of ignorance and spread his knowledge throughout the universe.

The experience of that night was so profound that the prince, now a Buddha, lived around the tree for seven weeks, enjoying his enlightenment. One of those weeks was rainy, and the serpent king came and spread his hood over the Buddha to protect him from the storm, a scene commonly depicted in Buddhist art.

After seven weeks, two merchants came to him and presented him with honey and cakes. Realizing that it is improper to receive food from the Buddha’s hands, the deities of the four directions offered him a bowl. The Buddha magically collapses the four bowls into one and receives the gift of food. In return Buddha plucked some hair from his head and gave it to the merchants.

Buddha’s first disciple

He was unsure what to do next because he knew that what he understood was so deep that it would be difficult for others to fathom. Lord Brahma descended from his heaven and asked him to teach, pointing out that humans are at different levels of development, and some of them would benefit from his teaching.

As a result, the Buddha concluded that the most suitable student would be his first teacher of meditation, but he was informed by a deity that he was dead. He thought beside his five former companions in the practice of penance.

Where did Buddha give his first sermon?

The Buddha from his foresight determined that he was residing in a deer park at Sarnath outside Varanasi (Banaras). He set out on foot, meeting a wandering ascetic on the way, with whom he greeted. When he explained to the man that he was enlightened and therefore superior even to the gods, the man responded indifferently.

Although the five ascetics had agreed to ignore the Buddha as he had renounced self-mortification, they were compelled by his charisma to rise and greet him. They asked the Buddha what he had understood since his departure. He responded by teaching them, or, in the language of the tradition, he “set the wheel of Dharma in motion.” (Dharma has a wider meaning, but here it refers to the doctrine or teaching of the Buddha.) In his first sermon, the Buddha spoke of the middle way between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-abnegation and described both.

He then turned to what came to be known as the “Four Noble Truths”, perhaps more accurately

Translated as “[spiritually] the four truths for the great”. As explained in more detail in other discourses,

Buddha’s Four Noble Truths

1 – There is suffering in the world – The first is the truth of suffering, which holds that exist in all realms of rebirth is characterized by suffering. Special sufferings for man are birth, old age, illness, death, loss of friends, facing enemies, not getting what he wants, and getting what he does not want.

2 Suffering – The Cause of Suffering – The Second Truth identifies the cause of suffering as non-virtuous, negative actions of body, speech, and mind that produce future fruit-bearing karma in the form of physical and mental suffering. These actions are motivated by negative mental states called klesha (suffering), which include desire, hatred, and ignorance, the mistaken belief that there is a permanent and autonomous self between the temporary components of mind and body.

3 – Cessation of suffering – The third truth is the truth of cessation, the perception of a state beyond suffering, called Nirvana. If the ignorance that drives desire and aversion is removed, there will be no negative karma and future suffering will not arise. While such reasoning allows for the prevention of future negative karma, it does not seem to account for the vast storehouse of negative karma accumulated in past lives that has yet to bear fruit.

However, in high levels of concentration, the insight of self-absence is said to be so powerful that it destroys even all the seeds for future births. Cessation emphasizes the attainment of both the destruction of the causes of suffering and the impossibility of future suffering. However, the existence of such a state remains hypothetical without a method for achieving it, and

4–The Fourth Truth/Eightless Path (Eightfold Path)—The path was portrayed in many ways, often as three pieces of training in ethics, meditation, and wisdom. In his first sermon, the Buddha described the eightfold path of

• The right view,
• The right attitude,
• The right language,
• The right action,
• The right livelihood,
• The right effort,
• The right exercise, and
• The right meditation.

A few days after the first sermon, the Buddha established the doctrine of Anātma (अनात्मन), at which point the five ascetics became arhats, who have attained freedom from rebirth and will enter nirvana upon death. He became the first member of the Sangha, a community of monks.

Post-enlightenment period

The Buddha soon attracted more disciples, sometimes converting other teachers into his followers. As a result, his fame started spreading. When the Buddha’s father heard that his son had not died after his great renunciation but had become a Buddha, the king sent nine successive delegations to invite his son to return home to Kapilavastu. But instead of accepting the invitation, they joined the Buddha’s disciples and became Arhats.

The Buddha was persuaded by the 10th Sandesh (who also became an Arhat) to return to the city, where he was disrespected by the clan elders. Therefore, the Buddha rose into the air, and fire and water came together from his body. This act caused his relatives to respond with reverence. Because he did not know whether he should be invited to lunch, the Buddha went from house to house begging for alms instead of going to his father’s palace. This greatly saddened his father, but the Buddha explained that this was the practice of the Buddhas of the past.

His wife Yashodhara remained faithful to him in his absence. When he returned to the palace she did not go out to greet him, however, she said that the Buddha should come to her to recognize her qualities. The Buddha did so, and, in a scene that is often recounted, she bowed before him and placed her head at his feet.

She eventually entered the order of female nuns and became a nun. He sent his young son Rahula to his father to ask for his inheritance, and the Buddha ordained him as a monk. This dismayed the Buddha’s father, and he told the Buddha of the great anguish he felt when the young prince renounced the world. Therefore, he asked that in the future a son be initiated only with the permission of his parents. The Buddha made it one of the rules of the monastic order.

The Buddha traveled with a group of disciples throughout northeastern India for 45 years after his enlightenment, teaching the Dharma to those who would listen, sometimes debating with masters of other sects (and, according to Buddhist sources, According to, always lost), and gained.

followers from all social classes. To some he taught the practice of surrender; To some, he taught the Five Precepts (not to kill humans, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, lie, or take drugs); And to some, he taught the practice of meditation. However, most of the Buddha’s followers did not renounce the world and lived ordinary life. Those who decided to leave home and become his disciples joined the community of monks.

Entry of women into the union

At the request of his widowed stepmother, Mahaprajapati, and women whose husbands had become monks, the Buddha also established an order of nuns. Monks were sent out to teach Dharma for the benefit of gods and humans. This is what the Buddha did: each day and night he surveyed the world with his omniscient eye to locate those who could benefit him, often traveling through his supernatural powers.https://studyguru.org.in

Growth of Buddhist Monasteries

It is said that in the early years, the Buddha and his monks wandered through all seasons, but eventually adopted the practice of staying in one place during the rainy season (mid-July to mid-October in northern India). The patrons built shelters for their use, and at the end of the rainy season, a special occasion was instituted to offer food and provisions (especially cloth for clothing) to the monks. These shelters evolved into monasteries that were inhabited throughout the year.

The monastery of Jetavana in the city of Shravasti (Shavatthi), where the Buddha spent most of his time and delivered many discourses, was donated to the Buddha by the wealthy moneylender Anathapindada (Pali: Anathapindika).

The Buddha’s authority, even among his followers, did not go unchallenged. Controversy arose over the merit of the austerities required of monks. The Buddha’s cousin, Devadatta, led a faction that favored a stricter discipline than the advice given by the Buddha, for example, that monks live in the open and never eat meat.

When the Buddha refused to nominate Devadatta as his successor, Devadatta attempted to kill him three times. He first hired assassins to eliminate the Buddha. Devadatta later rolled a boulder over him, but the boulder only touched the Buddha’s toe.

He even sent a wild elephant to trample him, but the elephant stopped in its charge and bowed down at the feet of the Buddha. Another schism arose over a minor breach of toilet etiquette among the monks of a monastery. Unable to resolve the dispute, the Buddha went into the forest to live with the elephants for the entire rainy season.http://www.histortstudy.in

How did Mahatma Buddha die?

Shortly before his death, the Buddha remarked to his beloved disciple Ananda on three separate occasions that a Buddha could, upon request, extend his life span by one Kalpa. Yamaraja (Mara) then appeared and reminded the Buddha of his promise, made shortly after his enlightenment, when his education was complete.

The Buddha agreed to die after three months, at which point the earth trembled. When Ananda asked about the cause of the tremors, the Buddha told him that there are eight occasions of an earthquake, one of which occurs when a Buddha gives up the will to live. Ananda begged him not to do so, but the Buddha explained that the time for such requests had passed; If he had asked earlier, the Buddha would have consented.

In 483 BCE the Buddha at the age of 80, weakened by old age and illness, partook of a meal from a blacksmith named Chunda (it is difficult to identify from the texts what the meal contained, but many scholars believe it was pork), instructed the blacksmith to serve him alone and bury the rest of the food without offering it to other monks.

Soon afterward the Buddha became seriously ill, and at a place called Kushinara (also called Kushinagara; modern Kasia) lay on his right side between two trees, which were immediately out of season. He instructed the monk who was fanning him, explaining that he was blocking the view of the deities who had gathered to witness his death. After giving instructions for his funeral, he said that common people should make pilgrimages to the place of his birth, the place of his enlightenment (Bodh Gaya), the place of his first education (Sarnath, Varanasi), and the place of his nirvana (Kushinagar). Should do

Those who worship the temples built at these places will be reborn as deities. The Buddha then explained to the monks that the Dharma and Vinaya (monastic code of conduct) should be their teachers after he left. He also allowed the monks to finish the small precepts (after Ananda failed to ask which ones, it was later decided not to do so). Finally, the Buddha asked the 500 assembled disciples if they had any final questions or doubts. When they remained silent, he asked twice more and then declared that none of them had any doubts or illusions and that they were destined to attain nirvana.

According to one account, he then opened his robe and instructed the monks to see the body of a Buddha, which rarely appears in the world. Finally, he declared that all conditional things are transitory and exhorted the monks to endeavor with diligence. These were his last words. The Buddha then entered into meditative absorption, moving from the lowest level to the highest, then from the highest to the lowest, before entering the fourth level of concentration, from which he passed into nirvana.

Relics of Buddha

The Buddha instructed his followers to cremate his body as the body of a universal monarch would be cremated and then to distribute the remains among the different groups of his followers, who would place them in hemispherical reliquaries called stupas. were about to be established. His body lay in a coffin for seven days before being placed on a funeral pyre and lit on fire by the Buddha’s chief disciple, Mahakashyapa, who was absent at the time of the Buddha’s death.

After the Buddha was cremated, his relics were handed over to a group of folk disciples, but armed men came from seven other regions and demanded the relics. To prevent bloodshed, a monk divided the remains into eight parts.

According to tradition, 10 parts of the relics were distinguished, 8 from the portion of the Buddha’s relics, 1 from the ashes of the pyre, and 1 from the bucket used to divide the relics. The relics were later collected and enshrined in the same stupa. More than a century later, King Ashoka is said to have redistributed the relics to 84,000 stupas.

The stupa would become a reference point marking the Buddha’s presence in the landscape of Asia. Early texts and archaeological sources link stupa worship to key sites in the Buddha’s life and career.

Eight temples are generally recommended for pilgrimage and worship. They are located at the places of his birth, his enlightenment, the first turning of the wheel of dharma, and his death, as well as the places in the four cities where he performed miracles. For example, a stupa in Sankashya marked the spot where the Buddha descended into the world after teaching the Dharma to his mother (who died seven days after his birth), who lived in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three Deities.

The importance given to the stupa suggests the Buddha’s persistence in the world despite his apparent path to nirvana. Generally, two types of nirvana have been described. The first is called “Nirvana with the Balance”, which the Buddha attained under the Bo tree after he had destroyed all the seeds for future rebirth. Hence this first nirvana is also called the last nirvana (or demise) of suffering.

But the karma that had created his present life was still at work and would continue to do so until his death. Thus, during the rest of his life, his mind and body remained intact after realizing Nirvana. The second type of nirvana occurred at his death and is called the “final nirvana of the aggregate (skandha) of mind and body” or “nirvana without rest” because after his death nothing remained reborn.

In fact, something was left: the remains found in the ashes of the pyre. Therefore, sometimes a third Nirvana is mentioned. According to Buddhist belief, there will come a time in the distant future when the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha will disappear from the world and the relics will not be respected. It is then that the relics enshrined in stupas around the world will break through their remains and magically return to Bodh Gaya, where they will assemble into the resplendent body of the Buddha seated in a lotus posture under a Bo tree.

Emitting rays of light that illuminate 10,000 worlds. They will be worshiped by the gods for the last time and then burst into flames and disappear into the sky. This third nirvana is called “the last nirvana of the remnant”. Until that time, the remains of the Buddha should be treated as his living presence, imbued with all his wonderful qualities.

Epigraphic and literary evidence from India suggests that the Buddha, in the form of his stupas, was not only a benefactor but was regarded as a legal person and owner of the property. The relics of the Buddha were essentially the Buddha.

Images of buddha

The Buddha also lives in the world in the form of texts that contain his words and statues that represent his form. There is no historical evidence of Buddha’s paintings being made during his lifetime. Indeed, scholars of Indian art have long been concerned by the absence of Buddha images on many early stone carvings at Buddhist sites. The carvings depict scenes showing reverence for the Buddha’s footprints, for example.

One scene, which is believed to depict the Buddha’s departure from the palace, shows a riderless horse. Such works have given rise to the theory that early Buddhism prohibited the depiction of the Buddha in physical form but allowed representation by some symbols. The theory is based on the lack of any instructions for depicting the Buddha in the early texts.

This view has been challenged by those who suggest instead that the carvings are not depictions of events from the Buddha’s life, but represent pilgrimages and worship of important sites from the Buddha’s life, such as the Bo tree.

Enthroned images of the Buddha are central to Buddhist practice, and there are many stories of their miraculous powers. Many famous images, such as the statue of Mahamuni in Mandalay, Myanmar, derive their sanctity from the belief that the Buddha posed for them.

The consecration of a Buddha statue often requires elaborate rituals in which the Buddha is asked to enter the statue or the story of the Buddha’s life is told in his presence. Epigraphic evidence from the 4th or 5th century indicates that Indian monasteries usually had a room called the “fragrant chamber” which housed an image of the Buddha and was believed to be the Buddha’s residence with his retinue of monks.

Reconstruction of the Mahayana tradition and the Buddha

About four centuries after the Buddha’s death, movements emerged in India, many of them centered on newly written texts (such as the Lotus Sutra) or new styles of texts (such as the Prajnaparamita or Prajna Paramita Sutras) that sought to be the Word. Used to claim Buddha’s These movements would be designated by their followers as Mahayana, the “great vehicle” for enlightenment, in contrast to earlier Buddhist schools, which did not accept the new sutras as authoritative (i.e., the word of the Buddha).

The Mahayana sutras offer different conceptions of the Buddha. It is not that the Mahayana schools saw the Buddha as a magical being while the non-Mahayana schools did not. Descriptions of the miraculous powers of the Buddha abound throughout the literature. For example, the Buddha is said to have hesitated before deciding to teach after his enlightenment and decided to do so only after being urged by Brahma.

In a Mahayana sutra, however, the Buddha has no indecision but instead pretends to be influenced by Brahma’s request that all those who worship Brahma take refuge in the Buddha. Elsewhere, it was explained that when the Buddha complained of headaches or backaches, he did so only to convert others to the Dharma; Because His body was not made of flesh and blood, it was virtually impossible for Him to experience pain.

One of the most important Mahayana sutras for a new conception of the Buddha is the Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapundika-sutra), in which the Buddha denies that he left the royal palace in search of freedom from suffering and that after six years he found that freedom. Mili while meditating under a tree. Instead, he explains that he attained enlightenment innumerable billions of years ago and has since been propagating the Dharma in this world as well as in innumerable other worlds.

Because his life is unimaginable to those of little intelligence, he has resorted to the use of skillful methods (Upaya), pretending to give up his princely life, perform penance, and attain unsurpassed knowledge. In fact, he was enlightened all the time, yet he pretended to do these things to inspire the world. Furthermore, because he recognizes that his continued presence in the world may cause those of lesser virtue to become complacent about putting his teachings into practice, he announces that he is soon to enter nirvana.

But this is also not true, because his life will not end for many more billions of Kalpas. He tells the story of a physician who returns home to find his children ill after having been poisoned during his absence. He prescribes a cure, but only a few take it. So he again leaves the house and spreads the rumor that he has died.

The children who did not take the antidote do so in honor of their late father and are cured. Father returns again. Similarly, the Buddha pretends to have entered nirvana to create a sense of urgency in his disciples, even though his lifespan is infinite.

Three body theory

Such a view of the Buddha’s identity is codified in the doctrine of the three bodies (Trikaya) of the Buddha. Early scholars describe the Buddha as having a physical body and a second body, called the “mind-formed body” or the “emanation body”, in which he performs miraculous feats such as the return of his late mother to the Tis Heaven. To go close.

Three Gods are teaching him, Dharma. The question was also raised as to who exactly should Buddhists honor when honoring the Buddha. A term, Dharmakaya, was coined to describe a more metaphorical body, a body or collection of all the good qualities or dharmas of the Buddha, such as his wisdom, his compassion, his fortitude, and his patience. This storehouse of qualities was identified as the body of the Buddha to be taken refuge in.

All of this is reorganized into the Mahayana Sutras. The emanating body (Nirmanakaya) is no longer the body that the Buddha employs to perform supernatural functions; Rather it is the only body manifested in this world and the only body visible to ordinary humans.

It is the emanation body of the Buddha who was born as a prince, attained enlightenment, and taught the Dharma to the world; That is, Visual Buddha is a magical performance. The true Buddha, the source of liberation, was the Dharmakaya, a term that still referred to the transcendental qualities of the Buddha, but became something more cosmic, an eternal principle of enlightenment and ultimate truth, playing on the plurality of the word Dharma. The later Mahayana texts describe the Buddha as having an all-knowing mind and a profound nature of emptiness.

Presence of multiple universes

Along with the additional bodies of the Buddha, the Mahayana Sutras also revealed the presence of multiple universes, each with its own Buddha. These universes—called Buddha Realms or Pure Lands—are described as abodes of extraordinary splendor, where trees bear jewel-like fruits, birds sing verses of the Dharma, and the inhabitants commit themselves to its practice. dedicate.

Buddha fields became preferred places for future rebirths. There the presiding Buddhas became objects of devotion, especially the Buddha of Infinite Light, Amitabha, and his western paradise called Sukhavati. In Buddha regions, the Buddha often appeared in a third form, the Ananda body (Sambhogakaya), which was the form of a young prince adorned with 32 major marks and 80 minor marks of a superman.

The former include patterns of a wheel on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, elongated earlobes, a crown protrusion on the top of his head (Usnisa), a circle of hair between his eyebrows (Urna), flat feet. , and webbed fingers. Scholars have speculated that this last attribution derives not from the textual source but from the inadequacies of the early sculptors.

The Buddha’s wonderful physical and mental qualities were codified in numerous liturgies of praise and listed in poetry, often taking the form of a series of epithets. These epithets were commented upon in texts, inscribed on stupas, recited aloud in rituals, and contemplated in meditation.

One of the more famous is “Thus gone, Worthy, Fully and fully awakened, Accomplished in knowledge and virtue, Well gone, Knower of the world, Unsurpassed guide to those in need of austerity, Gods And the teacher of men, the awakened, the fortunate.”