The other major challenge to orthodox Vedism was
founded by the son of a chief of a region called the Shakyas. This
region lay among the foothills of the Himalayas in the farthest
northern regions of the plains of India in Nepal. This founder, Siddhartha
Gautama, the Buddha, has many legends and stories that have accreted
around his life. While we can't be certain which of these stories and
legends are true and which of the thousands of sayings attributed to
him were actually said by him, we do know that the basic historical
outlines of his life are accurate.
He was the chief's son of a tribal group, the
Shakyas, so he was born a Kshatriya around 566 BC. At the age
of twenty-nine, he left his family in order to lead an ascetic life. A
few years later he reappears with a number of followers; he and his
followers devote their lives to "The Middle Way," a lifestyle that is
midway between a completely ascetic lifestyle and one that is
world-devoted. At some point he gained "enlightenment" and began to
preach this new philosophy in the region of Bihar and Uttar Kadesh.
His teaching lasted for several decades and he perished at a very old
age, somewhere in his eighties. Following his death, only a small
group of followers continued in his footsteps. Calling themselves
bhikkus , or "disciples," they wandered the countryside in
yellow robes (in order to indicate their bhakti , or "devotion"
to the master). For almost two hundred years, these followers of
Buddha were a small, relatively inconsequential group among an
infinite variety of Hindu sects. But when the great Mauryan emperor,
Asoka, converted to Buddhism in the third century BC, the young,
inconsequential religion spread like wildfire throughout India and
beyond. Most significantly, the religion was carried across the Indian
Ocean (a short distance, actually) to Sri Lanka. The Buddhists of Sri
Lanka maintained the original form of Siddhartha's teachings, or at
least, they maintained a form that was most similar to the original.
While in the rest of India, and later the world, Buddhism fragmented
into a million sects, the original form, called Theravada
Buddhism, held its ground in Sri Lanka.
That's all we know about the historical life of
Siddhartha, his mission, and the fate of his teachings. When we move
into the Buddhist histories, the record becomes much more uncertain,
particularly since the events of the Buddha's life vary from sect to
sect.
What follows, however, is the most common outline of
the nature of Siddhartha's life and philosophy. When Siddhartha
Gautama was born, a seer predicted that he would either become a great
king or he would save humanity. Fearing that his son would not follow
in his footsteps, his father raised Siddhartha in a wealthy and
pleasure-filled palace in order to shield his son from any experience
of human misery or suffering. This, however, was a futile project, and
when Siddhartha saw four sights: a sick man, a poor man, a beggar, and
a corpse, he was filled with infinite sorrow for the suffering that
humanity has to undergo.
After seeing these four things, Siddhartha then
dedicated himself to finding a way to end human suffering. He
abandoned his former way of life, including his wife and family, and
dedicated himself to a life of extreme asceticism. So harsh was this
way of life that he grew thin enough that he could feel his hands if
he placed one on the small of his back and the other on his stomach.
In this state of wretched concentration, in heroic but futile
self-denial, he overheard a teacher speaking of music. If the strings
on the instrument are set too tight, then the instrument will not play
harmoniously. If the strings are set too loose, the instrument will
not produce music. Only the middle way, not too tight and not too
loose, will produce harmonious music. This chance conversation changed
his life overnight. The goal was not to live a completely worldly
life, nor was it to live a life in complete denial of the physical
body, but to live in a Middle Way. The way out of suffering was
through concentration, and since the mind was connected to the body,
denying the body would hamper concentration, just as overindulgence
would distract one from concentration.
With this insight, Siddhartha began a program of
intense yogic meditation beneath a pipal tree in Benares. At the end
of this program, in a single night, Siddhartha came to understand all
his previous lives and the entirety of the cycle of birth and rebirth,
or samsara, and most importantly, figured out how to end the
cycle of infinite sorrow. At this point, Siddhartha became the
Buddha, or "Awakened One." Instead, however, of passing out of
this cycle himself, he returned to the world of humanity in order to
teach his new insights and help free humanity of their suffering.
His first teaching took place at the Deer Park in
Benares. It was there that he expounded his "Four Noble Truths," which
are the foundation of all Buddhist belief:
1.) All human life is suffering (dhukka ).
2.) All suffering is caused by human desire, particularly the desire that impermanent things be permanent.
3.) Human suffering can be ended by ending human desire.
4.) Desire can be ended by following the "Eightfold Noble Path": right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
From a metaphysical standpoint, these Noble
Truths make up and derive from a single fundamental Truth (in
Sanskrit, Dharma , and in Pali, Dhamma ). The Buddhist
Dharma is based on the idea that everything in the universe is
causally linked. All things are composite things, that is, they are
composed of several elements. Because all things are composite, they
are all transitory, for the elements come together and then fall
apart. It is this transience that causes human beings to sorrow and to
suffer. We live in a body, which is a composite thing, but that body
decays, sickens, and eventually dies, though we wish it to do
otherwise. Since everything is transient, that means that there can be
no eternal soul either in the self or in the universe. This, then, is
the eternal truth of the world: everything is transitory, sorrowful,
and soulless–the three-fold character of the world.
As pessimistic as this sounds, the philosophy of
Siddhartha Gautama is a kind of therapy. In fact, classifying it in
Western terms is impossible. We think of Buddhism as a religion, which
it unquestionably became, but Siddhartha was less concerned with
theology or ritual or prayer as he was with providing a tool for
individuals to use to escape suffering. The goal of this method, the
Eightfold Noble Path, is the elimination of one's desires and one's
attachment to one's self. Once one has understood correctly the nature
of the universe (Right Understanding) and devoted one's life to
selfless and altruistic actions (Right Action) and, finally, by losing
all sense of one's self and by losing all one's desires, one then
passes into a state called Nirvana (in Pali, Nibbana ).
The word means "snuffed out" in the way a fire is snuffed out or
extinguished. At this point, the self no longer exists. It is not
folded into a higher reality nor is it transported to a land of bliss,
it simply ceases to exist. This is the state that the Buddha passed
into at his death.
Like Jainism, then, Buddhism centrally concerns the
problem of the eternal birth and rebirth of the human soul. Unlike
Jainism, Buddhism in its original form does not posit some
transcendent alternative as a goal. In fact, Buddhism in its original
form held that the soul actually died when the body died. How, then,
could a soul pass from body to body? What passed from body to body was
a chain of causes set in motion by each soul; the Buddhist philosopher
Nagsena said it was like a flame passing from candle to candle. The
individual, in snuffing out the self, brings those chain of causes to
an end.
A large part of the program prescribed by Buddha
involved selflessness in the world. Buddhism represents one of the
most humane and advanced moral systems in the ancient world. The first
steps on the road to Nirvana were to focus one's actions on
doing good to others. In this way one could lose the illusion that one
is a unique self. The Buddhist scriptures disapprove of violence,
meat-eating, animal sacrifice, and war. Buddha enjoined on his
followers four moral imperatives: friendliness, compassion, joy, and
equanimity, the "Four Cardinal Virtues."
This is the philosophy that Buddha left the world.
In the years following his death, the teachings began to slowly
develop into various sects. Buddhism became so fragmented that barely
one hundred years after the death of Siddhartha, a council of
Buddhists was called to straighten out the differences. The earliest
forms of Buddhism, which are now only practiced by a small minority,
are called Theravada, or "The Teachings of the Elders."
