Story Of Siddhartha Gautama Summary

[Natalí Stibb]

SiddharthaGautama,[e] most commonly referred to as the Buddha ('the awakened'),[f][g] was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE[4][5][6][c] and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal,[b] to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic.[7][h] After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gaya in what is now India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order. Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana ("final release from conditioned existence"[8]).[i]

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism,[9] leading to freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth, and suffering. His core teachings are summarized in the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, a training of the mind that includes ethical training and kindness toward others, and meditative practices such as sense restraint, mindfulness, dhyana (meditation proper) and the concepts of the five skandhas and dependent origination, describing how all dharmas (both mental states and concrete 'things') come into being, and cease to be, depending on other dharmas, lacking an existence on their own svabhava).

A couple of centuries after his death, he came to be known by the title Buddha, which means 'Awakened One' or 'Enlightened One'.[10] His teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Sutta Piṭaka, a compilation of teachings based on his discourses. These were passed down in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects through an oral tradition.[11][12] Later generations composed additional texts, such as systematic treatises known as Abhidharma, biographies of the Buddha, collections of stories about his past lives known as Jataka tales, and additional discourses, i.e., the Mahayana sutras.[13][14]

Buddhism spread beyond the Indian subcontinent, evolving into a variety of traditions and practices. The Buddha is recognized in other religious traditions, such as Hinduism, where he is considered an avatar of Vishnu. His legacy is not only encapsulated in religious institutions, but in the iconography and art inspired by his life and teachings, ranging from aniconic symbols to iconic depictions in various cultural styles.

According to Donald Lopez Jr., "... he tended to be known as either Buddha or Sakyamuni in China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet, and as either Gotama Buddha or Samana Gotama ('the ascetic Gotama') in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia."[15]

Buddha, "Awakened One" or "Enlightened One",[10][16][f] is the masculine form of budh (बुध् ), "to wake, be awake, observe, heed, attend, learn, become aware of, to know, be conscious again",[17] "to awaken"[18][19] "'to open up' (as does a flower)",[19] "one who has awakened from the deep sleep of ignorance and opened his consciousness to encompass all objects of knowledge".[19] It is not a personal name, but a title for those who have attained bodhi (awakening, enlightenment).[18] Buddhi, the power to "form and retain concepts, reason, discern, judge, comprehend, understand",[17] is the faculty which discerns truth (satya) from falsehood.

The name of his clan was Gautama (Pali: Gotama). His given name, "Siddhārtha" (the Sanskrit form; the Pali rendering is "Siddhattha"; in Tibetan it is "Don grub"; in Chinese "Xidaduo"; in Japanese "Shiddatta/Shittatta"; in Korean "Siltalta") means "He Who Achieves His Goal".[20] The clan name of Gautama means "descendant of Gotama", "Gotama" meaning "one who has the most light",[21] and comes from the fact that Kshatriya clans adopted the names of their house priests.[22][23]

John S. Strong sees certain biographical fragments in the canonical texts preserved in Pāli, as well as Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit as the earliest material. These include texts such as the "Discourse on the Noble Quest" (Ariyapariyesanā-sutta) and its parallels in other languages.[36]

The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, found in Gandhara (corresponding to modern northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan) and written in Gāndhārī, they date from the first century BCE to the third century CE.[46]

The sources which present a complete picture of the life of Siddhārtha Gautama are a variety of different, and sometimes conflicting, traditional biographies from a later date. These include the Buddhacarita, Lalitavistara Sūtra, Mahāvastu, and the Nidānakathā.[48] Of these, the Buddhacarita[49][50][51] is the earliest full biography, an epic poem written by the poet Aśvaghoṣa in the first century CE.[52] The Lalitavistara Sūtra is the next oldest biography, a Mahāyāna/Sarvāstivāda biography dating to the 3rd century CE.[53]

The Mahāvastu from the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda tradition is another major biography, composed incrementally until perhaps the 4th century CE.[53] The Dharmaguptaka biography of the Buddha is the most exhaustive, and is entitled the Abhiniṣkramaṇa Sūtra,[54] and various Chinese translations of this date between the 3rd and 6th century CE. The Nidānakathā is from the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka and was composed in the 5th century by Buddhaghoṣa.[55]

Scholars are hesitant to make claims about the historical facts of the Buddha's life. Most of them accept that the Buddha lived, taught, and founded a monastic order during the Mahajanapada, and during the reign of Bimbisara (his friend, protector, and ruler of the Magadha empire); and died during the early years of the reign of Ajatashatru (who was the successor of Bimbisara), thus making him a younger contemporary of Mahavira, the Jain tirthankara.[56][57]

The dates of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain. Within the Eastern Buddhist tradition of China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, the traditional date for Buddha's death was 949 BCE,[1] but according to the Ka-tan system of the Kalachakra tradition, Buddha's death was about 833 BCE.[62]

According to the Buddhist tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha was a Shakya, a sub-Himalayan ethnicity and clan of north-eastern region of the Indian subcontinent.[b][o] The Shakya community was on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Indian subcontinent in the 5th century BCE.[85] The community, though describable as a small republic, was probably an oligarchy, with his father as the elected chieftain or oligarch.[85] The Shakyas were widely considered to be non-Vedic (and, hence impure) in Brahminic texts; their origins remain speculative and debated.[86] Bronkhorst terms this culture, which grew alongside Aryavarta without being affected by the flourish of Brahminism, as Greater Magadha.[87]

The Buddha's tribe of origin, the Shakyas, seems to have had non-Vedic religious practices which persist in Buddhism, such as the veneration of trees and sacred groves, and the worship of tree spirits (yakkhas) and serpent beings (nagas). They also seem to have built burial mounds called stupas.[86] Tree veneration remains important in Buddhism today, particularly in the practice of venerating Bodhi trees. Likewise, yakkas and nagas have remained important figures in Buddhist religious practices and mythology.[86]

Śāriputra and Moggallāna, two of the foremost disciples of the Buddha, were formerly the foremost disciples of Sajaya Belaṭṭhaputta, the sceptic.[93] The Pāli canon frequently depicts Buddha engaging in debate with the adherents of rival schools of thought. There is philological evidence to suggest that the two masters, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Rāmaputta, were historical figures and they most probably taught Buddha two different forms of meditative techniques.[94] Thus, Buddha was just one of the many śramaṇa philosophers of that time.[95] In an era where holiness of person was judged by their level of asceticism,[96] Buddha was a reformist within the śramaṇa movement, rather than a reactionary against Vedic Brahminism.[97]

The rise of Buddhism coincided with the Second Urbanisation, in which the Ganges Basin was settled and cities grew, in which egalitarianism prevailed. According to Thapar, the Buddha's teachings were "also a response to the historical changes of the time, among which were the emergence of the state and the growth of urban centres".[99] While the Buddhist mendicants renounced society, they lived close to the villages and cities, depending for alms-givings on lay supporters.[99]

According to Dyson, the Ganges basin was settled from the north-west and the south-east, as well as from within, "[coming] together in what is now Bihar (the location of Pataliputra)".[100] The Ganges basin was densely forested, and the population grew when new areas were deforestated and cultivated.[100] The society of the middle Ganges basin lay on "the outer fringe of Aryan cultural influence",[101] and differed significantly from the Aryan society of the western Ganges basin.[102][103] According to Stein and Burton, "[t]he gods of the brahmanical sacrificial cult were not rejected so much as ignored by Buddhists and their contemporaries."[102] Jainism and Buddhism opposed the social stratification of Brahmanism, and their egalitarism prevailed in the cities of the middle Ganges basin.[101] This "allowed Jains and Buddhists to engage in trade more easily than Brahmans, who were forced to follow strict caste prohibitions."[104]

In the earliest Buddhist texts, the nikāyas and āgamas, the Buddha is not depicted as possessing omniscience (sabbau)[107] nor is he depicted as being an eternal transcendent (lokottara) being. According to Bhikkhu Analayo, ideas of the Buddha's omniscience (along with an increasing tendency to deify him and his biography) are found only later, in the Mahayana sutras and later Pali commentaries or texts such as the Mahāvastu.[107] In the Sandaka Sutta, the Buddha's disciple Ananda outlines an argument against the claims of teachers who say they are all knowing [108] while in the Tevijjavacchagotta Sutta the Buddha himself states that he has never made a claim to being omniscient, instead he claimed to have the "higher knowledges" (abhijā).[109] The earliest biographical material from the Pali Nikayas focuses on the Buddha's life as a śramaṇa, his search for enlightenment under various teachers such as Alara Kalama and his forty-five-year career as a teacher.[110]

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