Philosophy 387 |
The Life of the Buddha, Part III |
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| CONTENTS PART III
Assault of Mara
on the Buddha
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Shakyamuni Buddha
The Attainment of Enlightenment (April/May 528) Having rejected the luxury of the princely life with his "great renunciation" and now having abandoned its opposite, the way of austerity and self-mortification, Siddhartha returned to his first intuitions, meditation without austerity, but disciplined with the yoga he has learned from Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. He took enough food to gain some strength, accepting rice and milk from Sujata, and sat under a ficus tree, later called the bodhi or enlightenment tree at Bodhgaya. What was needed was to move beyond all that could be experienced, until it came to an end, which did not reveal ultimate reality as was usually assumed, but was a state of non-cognition. According to the Therevada tradition the enlightenment occurred on the night of the full moon, in the month of Visakha, corresponding to April/May of the Western calendar. Later legend explains that as Siddhartha sat under the tree, the demon Mara came terrorizing him with the fear of death, in the form of a huge army with soldiers holding every imaginable weapon, windstorms, whirlwinds, showers of hot rocks, sandstorms, but none could come close to the meditating Prince. Mara then tried darkness, but the light of his meditation defeated it. Clubs, spears, axes, arrows, and other weapons hurled at him turned into fragrant flowers that fell harmlessly at his feet. No one can escape the desire for life, and the food and sleep that sustain it, and the fear of death is the most difficult thing to over come. But Siddhartha overcame all the challenges of Mara, at the most desperate moment touching the earth for security. The earth responded with a deafening roar that scattered the frightened hosts of Mara. When Mara was vanquished, Siddhartha attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. The legendary account of Mara's temptation is to seen as a parable of Siddhartha's struggles to understand what binds us to existence. Having returned to a disciplined meditation, Pali tradition says that in the first part of the crucial night he acquired a supernatural ability to remember all his previous lives and he began to reflect on his past and how his lives had been directed by certain factors. Then in the middle of the night, he saw how similar factors directed the lives of others, understanding how one's own actions contribute to the course of life and how things beyond one's total control also influence it. He saw that greed and hatred produced evil consequences which destroyed both the person who had them and what they exercised that greed and hatred on, that one's own dispositions and lusts urged on one courses of action which needed to be curbed, and that confusion, our inability to understand what our actions entail and how our lives are shaped, bedevils us longest. We must eliminate them, one by one, and as we do so our freedom and wisdom increase. At the end of the night, he discovered the Four Noble Truths, became the Buddha, and called himself the Tathagata, "he who has arrived," meaning he had attained the truth. What, then, was the content of his insight and how did it occur? Was it only the Four Noble Truths, or these and the Chain of Dependent Origination, or another of his first teachings? Was it a matter of a disciplined control over our desires and dispositions or knowledge that overcame the ignorance which kept us from wisdom? Was it attained by series of progressively more profound insights into the nature of existence or of deeper meditative states? Was it a sudden leap of understanding that transfigures the mind and its grasp of the world? Did it consist in a discipline of meditation or action which could be mastered, or in a body of wisdom which could be taught, or in intuition which were beyond language and thought and could be attained but not directly taught? None of these questions can, or could be answered, and important differences among Buddhist philosophers hinge on the different answers to these questions. The meaning of the words which Siddhartha, now the Buddha, did use—moksa "freedom" or "release" (vimoksa, vimukti) and nirvana "cessation"—do not resolve any uncertainty.
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Vajrapani and First Five Disciples
Listen to the First Sermon. |
After he had attained Enlightment, the Buddha sat beneath the bodhi tree for seven days in a deep meditation. When he emerged from it, he went and sat under a different tree to consider what he had come to understand and the bliss it produced. According to Buddhist religious beliefs, others had reached the state of enlightment before Siddhartha, but had entered into nirvana without ever having taught. The Buddha, too, had doubts about teaching and was hesitant to do so, for reasons unknown but subject to much learned discussion. Legend says that the Buddha decided to teach only after the god Brahma encouraged him to do so. He first thought he should approach his former teachers Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, but they had died. |
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| Buddha Preaching the First Sermon. |
 His first sermon was
delivered in the Deer Park outside Benares, represented in art as "the turning of the
Wheel of the Law." There he proclaimed the Middle Way that abjured a life of
self-indulgence as well as of self-mortification. A life of moderation and self-discipline
which could be practiced by all. He told the five men who became his first disciples the
Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Way which are the core of his doctrine and are
accepted by all who call themselves Buddhists. His second sermon enunciated the doctrine
of "no-self" (anatta), which characterizes philosophical Buddhism. |
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Head of Brahman from Conversion of Kassapa Brotheers
Shotorak. Gandharan Style. Kabul Museum. |
From Benares, Buddha went to Uruvela
where he converted a thousand people who worshiped fire, led by the Kassapa brothers, and
delivered the Fire Sermon.
When they heard this sermon, the Kassapa brothers and their followers all became followers of the Buddha. To go to Part IV, click button |
