Close to 2,500 years in the past, Prince Siddharta Gautama was born in what’s now called Lumbini in Nepal. He was born a prince and his birth had been received with many uncommon conditions that suggested a future of greatness. The prince’s father asked a wiseman who resided in the kingdom for guidance regarding his son. The sage man believed that the prince, Siddharta Gautama, might either follow in his father’s footsteps and become a great king or he would become a spiritual leader.
Praying that his son should develop into his heir, the king managed his best to separate the prince from those activities that could motivate him toward a spiritual existence. The prince was surrounded by extravagance and excess, all the advantages that his royal position could provide. Siddharta Gautama proved to be a smart student and excellent sportsman. He married a exquisite woman whom he loved and they bore a child.
At the age of 29, the prince discovered that the world around him was a great deal more complex than he encountered in the walls of his palace. Out among the people of the kingdom, he discovered actuality: old-age, sickness and death. The surprise of this discovery left the young prince shaken. He made the decision then to dedicate himself to ending the suffering. Leaving behind his wife and child, the prince forsaked his worldly property and embarked on a spiritual journey.
Guatama commenced a course of study with several instructors to understand their practices. With the aid of Alara Kalama, he soon started to comprehend meditation and discovered an exalted form known as absorption. This permitted him to accomplish a state of nothingness where there was no moral or cognitive dimensions. While this was valuable it was obvious to the past prince that it wouldn’t resolve the suffering he had observed. Guatama continued his hunt for others who might possibly assist him on his spiritual quest. Udraka Ramputra, helped Gautama to comprehend a state of neither perception or non-perception, but this to was not precisely what he was trying to find. The next step in the journey led Gautama to Uruvilva in Northern India. It was there he selected an ascetic path, experiencing a life of deprivation for nearly 6 years. This just resulted in the destruction of his entire body, weakness and self-destruction. Even though it cost him his five followers, Gautama rejected this ascetic lifestyle.
The end of this spiritual quest seemed as far away as ever, so the Buddha sat down under a Bodhi tree and proclaimed that “flesh may wither, blood may dry up, but I shall not rise from the spot until Enlightenment has been one.” After forty days of thought and meditation, the Buddha at last attained Enlightenment.
It is the Buddhist belief that at that time he achieved a state of being that exceeds anything else in the universe. Our normal experiences are based on preconceptions and conditions: how we were raised, our encounters, imperfections and shortcomings. Enlightenment is a state when the complex inner workings of existence become obvious and the cause of human suffering discovered.
For the next 45 years, the Buddha traveled through much of what’s now north India. He taught the way of Enlightenment to all that wanted to understand. This particular instruction had become referred to as the dharma or “the teaching of the enlightened one. The Buddha adopted numerous disciples who subsequently achieved their own Enlightenment and so they taught others.
Buddhists believe that Buddha attained a state of being that flows beyond everthing else in the world. If regular experience is founded on conditions - childhood, mindsets, viewpoints, awareness, and so on - Enlightenment is Unconditioned. It was a state in which the Buddha obtained insight into the deepest workings of life and for that reason, into the cause of human suffering, the problem that had set Him on His spiritual journey in the first place.
The Buddha statue we often see doesn not represent a god and did not look at himself as a divine person. He was just a human that endeavored to transform himself through self reflection and meditation. Buddhists view him as an ideal and his journey as a guide which could direct them on the path to enlightenment. Most homes that practice Buddhism will display a statue of Buddha, but this is intended to remind them of their own spiritual journey.
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