3 - The Story of Buddha

The world is full of ordinary people who would give almost anything to become princes and princesses—yet the story of Buddha is the story of a prince who abandoned all of his wealth and comforts and power to become one of the poorest among men.

His name was not Buddha to begin with, but Prince Siddhartha Gautama, and his father was the king of a group of Hindus called the Sakyas.

Throughout a kingdom, the birth of a prince or princess is always a matter for rejoicing, but in the case of little Siddhartha, the happy celebrations continued for many days, and among those who came with greetings and gifts were seven Holy Men. These Holy Men, as soon as they saw the baby prince, foretold wonderful things for him. They said, in fact, that he would some day be the greatest among men.

But 'some day' was still a long way off, and for all the years of his childhood little Siddhartha enjoyed a carefree life, doing all of the things that boys like best. He was very clever at sports, especially archery, he learned how to manage horses and elephants, and he never knew what it was to want anything without getting it.

Of course, as he grew older, he had serious things to attend to as well. He was the son of a king, and his education had to be of the highest.

At the age of 12, it is the custom for the sons of good Hindus to put on the Sacred Thread, and promise to make a deep study of the Holy Books of Hinduism, which are written in the ancient language of Sanskrit. So, as soon as he turned 12, Prince Siddhartha put on the Sacred Thread and made this promise.

He studied very hard, under the best teachers, and he learned so well that in four years' time he knew a great deal more than most people did about the complicated Hindu religion.

He had everything that he could possibly wish for— parents who adored him, pleasures and luxury, great knowledge, and handsome good looks.

The Prince Makes a Sad Discovery

Loving Prince Siddhartha as he did, his father the king wished to shield him from all ugliness and grief. He knew that the world outside the palace, the world of the common people, was filled with poverty, sickness, crime, and unhappiness and he hoped that his son's heart would never be disturbed by knowing of such things. Remembering this, years later, Buddha said, 'At my father's home lotus pools were made for me—in one place for blue lotus flowers, in one place for white lotus flowers, and in one place for red lotus flowers—blossoming for my sake .... Day and night a white umbrella was held over me, so that I might not be troubled by cold, heat, dust, chaff or dew.'

To complete his happiness, Prince Siddhartha married a very beautiful princess, the same age as himself, and again there was great rejoicing in the kingdom, and among his father's wedding gifts to him were three palaces.

But a healthy, active young man cannot shut himself up for ever, even in the splendour of three palaces. And a young man with a brilliant and inquiring mind cannot be satisfied forever with mere sports such as archery and hunting. So one day, with the thrill of a bird trying its wings, the prince rode out in his chariot among the common people of his father's realm. No doubt he expected to see many interesting and wonderful things. But what he did see, caused him much sorrow.

He saw a man lying ill and in great pain at the side of the road. A little farther on, he saw another man crippled with old age; and farther on again, he came upon a funeral, with many people weeping for the death of one they had loved.

Prince Siddhartha returned to his palace, where everything was so happy and peaceful and so beautiful. He looked around him and marvelled at the difference between all of this and what he had seen outside. Most of all he marvelled that he had spent 29 years of his life studying from books, and amusing himself, without once realising that there are great sorrows in human life. And he knew that he would never again be able to rest until he had learnt two things: the reason for suffering, and the way to set people free from it.

By this time he had been married for ten years, and every one of those years had been filled with happiness. He loved his beautiful wife very dearly, and he had a baby son whom he also loved dearly. Yet he knew that he must now leave everything that was precious to him, and go wandering out into the world alone, if he were ever to find wisdom and truth.

He pondered about this for some time, because the decision he had to make was a heartbreaking one. But at last there came the night when he knew that he must delay no longer. He knew also that if he waited until morning, the pleadings of his wife and the sight of his little son would make it almost impossible for him to leave them. So he crept out of the palace silently, there and then, in the middle of the night.

After he had gone some distance, he stopped and shaved his head, in the manner of monks who spent the whole of their lives alone, thinking about the mysteries of the world. Then he met a beggar, and changed clothes with him. He gave the beggar his own princely garments, and went on his way wearing the beggar's rags. From now on he would live without shelter or comfort. Like other wandering monks he would beg for food, and he would search untiringly for truth.

This occasion is honoured by Buddhists throughout the world as the Blessed Night of the Great Renunciation.

'A Beggar'—in Exile

Year after year, Siddhartha wandered on, over dusty roads, through towns and villages, and forests and great lonely places, searching for one who could teach him the secret of life, the wisdom of the world, the reason for human suffering. He sought out one great teacher after another, and asked for guidance, but all they ever told him was to study the Vedas— the ancient Holy Books of the Hindus— and Siddhartha had already done that, for many years, without finding any of the answers in them.

At one stage he met five monks who, like himself, were searching for wisdom. He asked if he might join them, and they gladly agreed. Their idea was that, if they made their bodies suffer, their spirits would be better able to receive wisdom. So they, and Siddhartha with them, starved themselves almost to death. But after all this, they knew no more than they did before.

Perhaps, thought the five monks, some other kind of suffering might be what was needed, but Siddhartha knew better. He had learnt his lesson—that punishing your body does not make you any brighter or wiser. So he decided to leave the five monks and continue his search alone, and to eat properly while he did so. When the monks learned of this, they shook their heads and felt rather disgusted with him.

Seven years had now passed since the prince left his family and his palaces. He thought of his baby son, who would now be a baby no longer, and of his wife with all her gentleness and beauty, and of his loving parents—and a great longing for them filled his heart. He thought of all the years that he had lived separated from them, without learning anything of real value, and a sense of despair came over him. He also felt very tired.

Under the Bodhi Tree

Over the way a little, he noticed a bodhi tree, casting shade on the ground below it. He went across and sat under it, and made a vow that he would not move away from this spot until he had learnt the truth of life. So, actually, he already knew one of his most important teachings—that wisdom and truth are not to be found in books, in temples, in punishing the body, or from anything outside of one's own self. It is necessary only to become perfectly quiet and still, and the answer will be found in that stillness.

Now we know how, at one time, Jesus wandered alone in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, and how the evil one came to him in his loneliness, and offered him all the power and riches in the world if he would only obey a few simple commands. And 500 years before this, exactly the same thing happened to Siddhartha, under the bodhi tree.

For 49 days and nights he sat there, and the evil one (Mara) did everything possible to distract him from his great purpose—set fierce storms raging around him, with rain, winds, lightning, and falling rocks. And when all of this failed, Mara offered him the world's riches if he would break his vow and live the life of a thoughtless, pleasure-seeking prince again. But Siddhartha seemed not even to hear him, and at the end of the 49 days and nights—during the hours known ever since as the Sacred Night—the wonderful, simple truth dawned upon him. It brought with it a sense of peace and of rest such as he had never felt before, and for a short while he was tempted to guard this peace within him, and live with it as a precious secret for the rest of his life. But he knew that he could not do this— that he must share it with the whole sad and weary world.

So he left the bodhi tree, and set out to travel even farther afield than he had gone already.

Now, his name was no longer Siddhartha Gautama, but Buddha (which means The Enlightened One).

The Sermon of Benares

He went first to the holy city of Benares. There he met his old friends the five monks, who were still torturing their bodies, and still finding no answers to their questions. When he told them that he now knew the wisdom of the world, they begged him to explain it to them. And so it was that he preached his first sermon—the famous Sermon of Benares.

We do not know the exact words he used, but their meaning was very clear and simple, and so different from the old Hinduism that, at first, the poor monks were quite startled by them.

After all, the Vedas had been accepted as mankind's most sacred books for thousands of years, yet now, here was this young man declaring that, in reality, they were not sacred. And it was well known that temples were holy places where all good Hindus went to worship, yet this young man assured them quite firmly that temples had no value whatever. And everybody knew that, in the beginning, the great Lord Brahma had created people of different qualities, or castes, yet now this young man said outright that Brahma had done nothing of the kind—that castes were the work of man, not of God.

It was all very upsetting, but in the end, his words made such good sense and explained so many difficult things so clearly, that the five monks bowed before him and called him 'master'.

As we have seen, the Hindus believed that Shiva destroys and that Brahma creates, yet Shiva and Brahma are not enemies, but parts of the One Being. And, in the same way, Buddha had first to tear down many of the old beliefs before he could build up his new ones. These new ones— the very heart of Buddhism—are known as the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path.

The Four Noble Truths are:

1. Life on Earth is filled with suffering.
2. This suffering is caused by selfish desires and cravings.
3. The way to end suffering is to stop craving.
4. To stop craving, one must follow the Middle Way—not the way of earthly pleasures, nor the way of earthly sacrifices, but the quiet, peaceful way in between.

This Middle Way is what is known as the Noble Eightfold Path. It is so important that it is pictured in the form of a wheel with eight spokes, all leading in toward perfection or Nirvana.

The names of the spokes are:

1. Right knowledge—the knowledge of truth.
2. Right intention—always to be calm within one's self, and kind towards others.
3. Right speech—without lying, and without condemning.
4. Right conduct—never killing, stealing, or doing any other harm toward any living creature.
5. Right livelihood—never becoming wealthy by making or selling anything which might be harmful toothers.
6. Right effort—always toward self-control.
7. Right thinking—thinking no evil at any time, keeping one's thoughts as pure as one's actions.
8. Right concentration—not on the little affairs of the self, but on the great truths of life.

How a Good Buddhist Should Live

Suppose two people were quarrelling about something, and you wanted to settle the argument for them. You certainly wouldn't go about it by rushing to defend one side against the other, but by hearing both sides and then finding a solution—somewhere in between the two— which would be satisfactory for both of them. The Middle Way is the way of Buddhism, and in it there are no extremes or opposites.

If you were a good Buddhist, you would not think of your self as separate from my self. You would think of us both as parts of the one great Life. You would not feel any great pleasure or any great pain, but, inside yourself, you would be perfectly quiet and calm. And you would not think of anything as either good or bad, because, if everything is one, it cannot be divided into opposites.

Of course, you would have to work very hard at this kind of thinking and feeling before it came naturally to you, and the only way you could work at it would be through silence and meditation.

This sounds easy enough, but actually it is quite difficult to keep your mind fixed upon one thing only, even for a few seconds. Suppose you decide to fix your whole attention, for just one minute, on the petals of a rose.

Perhaps it is a yellow rose, and it reminds you of a pullover that your sister started knitting and never finished. Very much the colour of honey ... which reminds you that you must make inquiries about how to set up your own bee farm ... and supposing you did, would you have enough flowers in the garden for a few thousand bees, or would you have to move them around a bit, into the neighbours' gardens—even out into the bush? ... Imagine the bush in springtime—how those bees would regale themselves! Then, of course, you would get honey tasting of gum-blossom, wattle, boronia ...

Well now, our minute is up, and how much of it have we spent concentrating on the yellow rose? Very little indeed, for that is the usual way with thoughts. They flit around like butterflies, getting nowhere in particular, especially when you try to fix them firmly upon things like truth and wisdom. Yet, no matter how difficult it is, the Buddhist must train himself to concentrate long and deeply.

This may take him many years—or most likely many whole lifetimes or reincarnations. At long last, however, he comes to the stage when he has no selfish desires—and no interest in the small things of this Earth, like power and money and possessions—when he knows that he is one with the whole human race—when it would be impossible for him to think or act unkindly toward anything or anyone—and then, he has reached Nirvana or, as we would call it, Heaven.

And the most important thing is, he has come to this wonderful state within himself. He has not travelled a long way off to it, or had it opened up to him as a reward. Buddhism does not teach that there is an outside God who judges people and then rewards or punishes them. It teaches that there is only the one great Life or Spirit, and that we are all part of it.

If we choose to live selfishly, without caring about anybody's welfare other than our own, we are breaking away from reality and living in a dream, and this dream is so often a nightmare that it cannot bring us happiness.

Selfishness leads to greed, greed leads to cruelty, cruelty leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and so on. There seems no end to the miseries that we create for ourselves with selfishness. And we might live through hundreds and thousands of lifetimes in this way before we at last experience the deep joy and quiet which come with an understanding of truth. So, as Buddha explained it, this is the working of karma.

Do not think for a moment, he told the startled monks at Benares, that there is a God who sends you down to Earth in a high condition or in a low one. Nothing of the kind. Your own thoughts and actions do this.

The Death of Buddha

The sermon at Benares was only the beginning. After that, for 45 years, Buddha travelled around India teaching all who would listen.

Once, he returned to the palace homes where he had lived as a child and a young man. His family greeted him with reverence as well as joy, and they all became his followers.

After many more years of travelling, he died at the age of 80. It was said that he passed straight into the infinite, never to be born again on this Earth. And it was also said that 'there was a great shaking of the earth, terrifying and frightful, and the drums of the gods resounded'.

Soon after his death, his closest followers, or disciples, began to recite his teachings among themselves and among all who wished to learn them, and for about 240 years they passed from generation to generation in this way. Then, in the year 242 B.C., they were written down for the first time, by three very earnest students, and called the Tripitaka, or 'Three Baskets of the Law'. And right to this day, the 'Three Baskets' are regarded as the holiest of all writings about the teachings of Buddha.

How Buddhism is Practised

The great new religion of Buddhism gradually spread far beyond India, because—unlike Hinduism—it was a religion for all mankind, no matter what their race, or colour, or social class. Hinduism was only for Hindus, but anybody anywhere could become a Buddhist by living and thinking in the way that Buddha taught. For the first time in the history of man, here was a religion without boundaries, a religion for everyone. Wherever it travelled, people accepted it eagerly.

Today, there are possibly about 250,000,000 Buddhists in the world, mostly in Japan, China, Sri Lanka, Korea, Mongolia, Indo-China, Burma, and Thailand. Yet, strange to say, there are comparatively few in India, where Buddha himself was born, and where he lived and taught—for India remains the land of Hinduism. Yet among all the millions who follow his teachings, how many really understand them?

Think, for instance, of all the thousands of Buddha images that there are in the world—yet Buddha taught that we should never worship images. And there are wonderful Buddhist temples, and thousands of strange little buildings called stupas, where sacred Buddhist relics are kept—yet Buddha himself taught that there should be no temples and no relics.

People throng to these stupas in their thousands, just to walk round and round them, meditating. Often they bring flowers and food as gifts, and carry long strings of beads which they finger as they recite all the wonderful words which describe Buddha.

The most sacred of the stupas are those which are said to hold some of Buddha's actual teeth and hairs. But no matter what they hold, Buddha himself would be most unhappy about them.

Of course, with passing time, many variations have crept into Buddhism, or into the way people practise it.

Some think it means one thing, some think it means another. A large group of Buddhists feel that one should search for truth within oneself—as Buddha did, sitting under the bodhi tree—and that, having found it, one should guard it away in deep silence and secrecy, if possible in a monastery, where life is utterly uncomplicated. But there is a much larger group who feel that it is right to go out and live in the crowded, jostling world of people, just as Buddha himself did, trying to share with all humanity the joys of the spirit when it has been awakened to wisdom and truth.

In Tibet, Buddhism became mixed with a type of Nature worship. And many centuries ago, when India's Buddhism came into contact with China's Taoism and Confucianism, a remarkable new form of it arose, known as Zen.

Nobody knows for certain exactly how this came about. Some say that it was brought, intact, into China in A.D. 520 by the Indian monk Bodhidharma. But this seems unlikely, since the attitudes of Zen are so 'Chinese' in character. Also, we know that Buddhism itself reached China in the first century A.D. And early in the fifth century, a young scholar-monk named Seng-chao, steeped in the study of Chinese Taoism and Confucianism as well as of India's Buddhism, was showing unusually deep insight into Buddhist teachings, but in an altogether new way—the way which later came to be known as Zen.

What is Zen?

Zen is not so much a religion as an attitude of mind; and not so much an attitude as a non-attitude. And if this is the right way to describe it, it is also the wrong way, for right and wrong are not opposing ideas, but essential parts of the same idea. To know is, at the same time, not to know. This is a small part of what we learn from Zen.

We learn, also, that there is nothing whatever to be gained by striving after this or that, because as soon as we attain it, it no longer seems important to us. Something else becomes important instead, and this goes on without end. So that, in reality, we gain nothing worth having. And in our rush and frenzy to get it, we miss out on the only thing which really is important: the passing moment which is the everlasting 'now', and the sudden awakening which might come to us in any one of those precious moments.

This 'awakening' cannot be taught or learnt, any more than it can be experienced by an effort of will. If a student should ask a master of Zen how to attain the Buddhist consciousness, the master might well reply, 'It's beginning to look like rain'. And nothing could tell the student more clearly that the true answer to his question must come, not from anyone or anything outside, but from within himself. Also, it will come in a flash, not after searching or labouring or brain-teasing.

Zen Buddhism doesn't symbolise things. It accepts everything in a very down-to-earth manner, just as it is, but never isolated or 'cut off, always as interrelated with everything else. In a cluster of dew-drops, each dew-drop contains within it the reflections of all the others. And the same goes for mankind. Each human being is a necessary part of the whole world around him; not by becoming this or that on purpose, but merely by being.

The mind of Zen gives no explanations. Its awareness of the sheer 'is-ness' of everything is simple and direct:

'The snail gliding over the bent grass-blade.'
'Cassia, yellow in the sun'.

No wonder that Zen has found such perfect expression in the art of Chinese painting, and in the haiku poetry of Japan!

The Chinese artist holds his brush upright, and must move it continuously to keep the ink flowing out of it smoothly. His arm and hand must be able to move with complete freedom, and in this way his painting can 'alight' upon the paper like a sudden thought—usually with plenty of empty space around it, for the 'void' is as important a part of the painting as the figures are. This, as Zen expresses it, is another way of 'playing the stringless lute'.

Then again, the little Japanese haiku poem gives perfect expression to Zen, for it merely states things as the poet becomes aware of them, without any elaborate settings, and without either comments or explanations:

Golden butterfly
Opening and closing
Fan-like wings
Against a city wall.

Sincerity—and Love

Zen is by no means the only variation upon the original Buddhism, yet there is no hostility among these many different forms, for when it comes to the most important teachings, they all believe the same. And it is interesting to realise how much these teachings have in common with all of the other great religions of the world.

Here, now, are a few of the most important of them— some, it is said, in Buddha's own words. Let us look at them carefully, and see if even one of them could be considered 'wrong' by any of the other great religions:

'All that we are is the result of what we have thought .... If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. ... If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him.... Hatred does notecase by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love.'

'If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me.'

'If (a man) conquer himself, he is the greatest of conquerors.'

'Earnestness is the path of Nirvana, thoughtlessness the path of death. Those who are in earnest do not die; those who are thoughtless are as if dead already.'

'Brethren, even if one should seize the hem of my garment and walk behind me step for step, yet if he be covetous in his desires ... malevolent of heart, of mind corrupt, careless and unrestrained, ... that monk is far from me and I am far from him.'

There is no value in good actions if they are done with the idea of winning praise. They must be done for their own sake, and as a pure expression of love towards every living thing.

'Hold fast to the truth as a lamp.'

'Go ye out of compassion for the world and preach the doctrine which is glorious'.

In other words, Buddhism is, above all, a religion of love—and this alone makes it one of the truly great religions of the world.