Who Was The Buddha?
By “Dr. Arcane”

Around 2500 years ago, King Shuddodana Gautama of the Shakya clan ruled in northern India. He built a great castle and ruled his people well. One night, his wife, Queen Maya, had a strange dream wherein she saw a white elephant enter her womb through the side of her chest. She soon found that she was indeed pregnant. The people of the kingdom were thrilled that there would soon be a royal heir.

Planning to have the child at her parent’s home, Maya traveled there before the birth. On April 8th, on the way to Queen Maya’s ancestral home, she stopped to rest in a garden. Reaching for a blossoming branch in the garden, she suddenly, painlessly, had the child. Unfortunately, a few days later, Queen Maya died.

The baby was named Siddhartha, meaning, ‚ÄúEvery wish fulfilled,‚Äù and was raised within his father’s grand castle. His father, of course, expected young Siddhartha to succeed him as King at some point in the future.

Fate, however, had other plans for Siddhartha. A wandering holy man came to the castle to see the King. He had a vision concerning the young Prince and had to tell the King. He foretold that the young boy had two possible futures; either as a great King who would rule the entire world, or as a great holy man. The King decided immediately that his son would not leave the castle and learn to be the great future King.

Young Siddhartha lived in the castle and grew up inside its protective walls, never seeing anything that would make him think of spiritual or religious things. His father was careful to remove all hints of the real suffering that accompany this world. The Prince lived a perfectly shielded life. His father arranged a marriage, and then Siddhartha had a son of his own. Not long after, on a parade through the city, he spotted three sights. First he saw a sick man. He asked his good friend and charioteer, “Will I become sick?” The charioteer answered truthfully, “Ees, eventually we all get sick.” They continued through the city, and the Prince spotted a very old man. He asked, “Will I grow old like that man?” to which the charioteer answered similarly. Lastly, he saw a dead man being carried away. “Will I die?” he asked, and did not like the answer.

Leaving his wife and son behind, Siddhartha abandoned the castle and went off to live in the wilderness as a wandering holy man. He met up with other ascetic mendicants, refusing to eat, spending all day in meditation and denying all pleasures. For years he studied with the ascetics, and nearly starved to death in the process. After six years studying in this manner, he finally decided that he would learn no more following this path. He decided that denying the world was wrong, but that enjoying life too much, as in his younger days, was ad as well. He decided to follow a “Middle Path.” His friends, the other five mendicants, abandoned him, since he no longer believed as they did.

He then sat beneath a Bodhi tree and meditated. During this meditation, he was tempted in many ways to abandon his search for truth and live a life of pleasure. He rejected every temptation and continued his struggle to know. At last, he succeeded, becoming enlightened under the Bodhi tree, and the world would never be the same for him. At 35 years old, he became a Buddha, one who is “awake.”

He met up with his five mendicant friends, and he quickly convinced them that his path was real, and they became his first followers. He traveled the countryside, teaching his ways, and word quickly spread about this man who taught the Path to Enlightenment. He soon had many thousands of followers. He was eventually reunited with his father, wife and son, and they too, became his followers.

He traveled around teaching for decades, and at around age 80, died from eating some spoiled food. He foresaw his death, but continued teaching as always until the very moment of death. He closed his eyes and in perfect peace, moved on to Nirvana. Stories about his life, his teachings, and his Path were written down and his followers continued to spread the message for the next 2500 years.

Since then, people have known him by many names; Siddhartha, Buddha, Gotama, Shakyamuni, Enlightened One, Tathagata, and many others. Not a god, just a man, but the greatest teacher of all time.

The Fourth Noble Truth

Just to summarize, we now know that all life is suffering. This suffering is caused by attachments and desire. Yet, there is a way to end this suffering. To continue our medical analogy, Doctor Buddha, saw the problem, identified the cause, and then prescribed a cure. Today we are going to discuss this cure.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the path (or “Way”) that ends suffering.

This prescription to end suffering is usually called The Eightfold Path, because it has eight steps or components. These eight components are:

1. Right Thought
2. Right Speech
3. Right Actions
4. Right Livelihood
5. Right Understanding
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

This path is also sometimes called “The Middle Way” because it goes directly between all opposite concepts. It is the middle way between asceticism and self-indulgence. By focusing on perfecting these eight components, you can attain enlightenment and be released from all suffering. This is what is called attaining Nirvana (or Enlightenment).

“I teach about suffering and the way to end it”
Shakyamuni Buddha

You can probably guess what we’ll be discussing for the next eight days, right? Some of the steps on the eightfold path are intuitively simple, yet hard to put into practice. Others are conceptually complex and take a lifetime of practice to master (if ever).

Now your homework for the weekend. Memorize the four Noble Truths. They’re the heart of Buddhism, and we’ll be discussing them repeatedly. If you have time, memorize the eightfold path as well, as that’s just as crucial. There really isn’t much to memorize in Buddhism, but these two lists are way up there in importance.

The Four Noble Truths

1. All of life is suffering
2. There is a cause to this suffering, desire and attachment
3. There is a path to end this suffering
4. The Eightfold Path is the way to end suffering

The Third Noble Truth

Now we know that all the world is suffering, and the cause of all is desire and attachment. These are important ideas to really understand and think through. You’ll have some extra time today to reflect on the First and Second Noble Truths, because the Third Noble Truth is really simple.

The Third Noble Truth is the idea that Suffering can be beaten.

We know from the first two Truths that everyone, everywhere is suffering in one way or another and that all this suffering is related to attachment and desire. “Doctor Buddha” first identified the problem (suffering), then he found the cause of the sickness (Desire), so the next step was to prescribe a cure.

Yes, there is a way to beat this depressing cycle of misery that we’ve been talking about. Most people haven’t attained this, and most won’t in this lifetime. Let’ s see if we can work it out on our own; as I said, it’s pretty easy. Since suffering is the problem we are trying to beat, and suffering is caused by attachment and desire, then it seems that the way to beat suffering is to control desire and limit attachments. Attachment and desire come from within; they are caused by our own minds. If we have control of our own minds, we should be able to just shut off the suffering. In fact, Buddhists go so far as to claim that reality is what you make of it. Simple, eh? Well, no, of course it isn’t, but this is idea that everything is in your mind and that you need to learn to control your mind is the heart of Buddhism.

But there is a way to do it, and Buddha went on to explain it in the Fourth Noble Truth, which we’ll cover tomorrow.

The Second Noble Truth

Yesterday I explained how “All of life is suffering.” I think we decided that this was a pretty depressing outlook on life, but remember I asked you to bear with me. The Buddha wanted to “cure” this condition, and he did. But just like any doctor, before he could cure the suffering, he had to diagnose the cause of the suffering.

The Second Noble Truth is the idea that “There is a single cause to suffering: Attachment.”

As I said yesterday, all things are impermanent. No matter how much you love your car, or your dog, or your family, someday you will lose them. Or you will die yourself, and thereby lose everything you have accumulated in life. Nothing is permanent. Nothing. I don’t like it, and you probably don’t like it either, but that’s tough. Attachment to things and the resultant loss of those things causes suffering. If you’ve ever lost a loved one, you know exactly what I mean. But you don’t actually have to lose someone to suffer, because you know deep down that someday you are going to lose them. That thought is always in the back of your mind; death is part of living, and we have accepted the idea.

This is a very logical idea, and if you think it through, I think you will agree. All suffering comes from attachment, or put in another way, desire. I desire a new Ferrari, but I can’t afford it. I suffer because I cannot have what I want. I’m hungry; all I have to do is go the kitchen and make a sandwich, but right now, I desire food, and that little bit of hunger is a mild form of suffering. Poor people around the world are hungry too, but they don’t have sandwiches handy; they suffer too, albeit more seriously than I do. I want to date a supermodel, but they won’t give the time of day. Maybe my sights aren’t so high and I have a crush on the girl next door (but she hates me!); there’s more suffering. Greed, Lust, Anger, Ignorance, and even emotions we think of as positive, such as Love are all forms of attachment or clinging. There’s no way around it; even Buddha himself got hungry and had physical needs.

What about physical pain? That’s attachment as well. You are attached to your own body, believing that this life is somehow real. Your body is not you, it’s just another temporary vessel. We’ll discuss this further another time, but your attachment to yourself is just as bad as aching with lust for a supermodel.

Think about it for yourself, don’t take my word for it. You will find that everything about essential Buddhism is completely logical when you dwell on it and analyze it a bit. Think about various forms of suffering, and see how they can be traced back to desire, attachment, or clinging of one form or another.

Yeah, it’s still depressing. But tomorrow we’ll discuss the cure for what ails us.

The First Noble Truth
Today we’ll start the regular mail of the Daily Buddhism. We may as well start from the beginning. The very foundation of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths. I can’t think of a better place to start than these ideas. We’ll cover them in order over the next four days. Many stories and concepts have been credited to the Buddha over the millenia since his death; some probably came from him, while others were probably apocryphal. No one doubts that Buddha himself came up with the Four Noble Truths. This is really the heart of Buddhism.

The first Noble Truth is the idea that All of life is suffering.

This just seems obviously wrong on first consideration. I was happy today, I was happy yesterday. Sure, there is occasional suffering for most people, and for some people there may actually be constant suffering, but to say all of life is suffering sounds not only depressing, but just plain wrong. Many people, hearing this most basic rule of Buddhism, immediately come to the conclusion that Buddhism is a negative thing; a depressing thing; a real downer. This is not the case.

On further reflection, there is a lot to be said for this idea. Bear with me a minute. There are various types of suffering with which we all must deal:

First, there is physical suffering. This is what most of us think of when we first hear about suffering; physical pain, mental distress and strong emotional disturbances. Things that make you… suffer. That’s pretty obvious.

But Buddha expanded on the idea of suffering by taking into consideration that all happiness is temporary. Everything is in fact temporary. This idea is what Buddhists call ‚Äúimpermanence.‚Äù No matter what you have, who you love, or what you do, eventually you will lose it. You will grow old and suffer; your friends and family will die. The great works you have done in your life will fade from memory. You will eventually die. You can build a stone monument that lasts three thousand years, but it too will eventually turn to dust. Yes, it’s depressing, but you have to admit that it’s true.

Buddha, coming from a background as a Hindu, took that second idea of suffering and expended it infinitely. If all of life is suffering, then what does reincarnation add to the mix? The answer is eternal suffering. Once you die an dget a little relief in this life, the cycle starts over again.

Also keep in mind that when I say “suffering,” I am poorly translating the word “Dukkha” which does mean suffering, but also means “imperfect” and “unsatisfying” as well as “grasping.” Here is one translation of Buddhas own explanation:

“Now this … is the noble truth of suffering:birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”

This idea of suffering is hard to accept, because we have been raised to think of life and the world as basically a good thing. And this is true to a certain extent; we can be happy for a while, but don’t you know in the back of your mind that sooner or later the happiness will end? This really is some depressing and sad stuff. Fortunately, Buddha found the reason for this suffering and figured out a way to defeat it.

Stay tuned!