The Historical Buddha?

[lpetrich]

Searching for the real Buddha

Of the major religions, Buddhism carries with it the least amount of supernatural baggage (though not entirely devoid of it) and is perceived as a religion that values contemplation and introspection. (Of course, I am referring to Buddhism in its more philosophical form, not the actual practice in places like Sri Lanka and Myanmar where it has become commandeered by chauvinists who think nothing of using murderous violence against those who are not Buddhists to the extent of going on ethnic cleansing rampages.) As a result, it has gained popularity among those who find it hard to accept the idea of gods and like to think of themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’, and Buddhism-inspired practices like meditation and mindfulness have gained a lot of traction in the West.

Was the Buddha an awakened prince or a humble itinerant? | Aeon Essays

At Wat Doi Kham, my local temple in Chiang Mai in Thailand, visitors come in their thousands every week. Bearing money and garlands of jasmine, the devotees prostrate themselves in front of a small Buddha statue, muttering solemn prayers and requesting their wishes be granted. Similar rituals are performed in Buddhist temples across Asia every day and, as at Wat Doi Kham, their focus is usually a mythic representation of the Buddha, sitting serenely in meditation, with a mysterious half-smile, withdrawn and aloof.

The basic creed of Buddhism looks more like a self-help routine than what most Westerners might consider a religion. It is the Four Noble Truths:

1. We suffer a lot in our lives.
2. Suffering is caused by irrational craving.
3. Stop craving and one will stop suffering.
4. Do so by following the Eightfold Way of things to do.

The historical Buddha, is depicted in Buddhist literature as an agnostic or weak atheist about the gods, including an Abrahamic-like God, and many of the more philosophical sorts of Buddhists agree with that. If such entities exist, they are not very relevant. But in Buddhism, one can become very enlightened, like the historical Buddha himself, and such enlightened people are often worshipped as gods.

 

[steve_bank]

As far as I know like Jesus there are no contemporaneous accounts of Buddha and his origins. The word Buddha I believe like the word Jesus Christ is more of a religious tag representative of a theme. There was no Mr and Mrs Christ whoever the parents were.

The story of a prince who goes walkabout seeking the cause of suffering fits well as a myth.

As to the supernatural it depends on the sect. Tibetan Buddhism is highly mystical. Buddha had an prohibition against killing with spells.

 

[lpetrich]

Was the Buddha an awakened prince or a humble itinerant? | Aeon Essays - "It is not just Buddhist temples in which the Buddha exists in an entirely mythic form. Buddhist scholars, bewildered by layers of legend as thick as clouds of incense, have mostly given up trying to understand the historical person."

 Gautama Buddha - has some discussion of this issue.

Most of us who encounter Buddhism or who are Buddhists likely know of the canonical account of the Buddha's biography, the one that has emerged over the centuries.

Siddhartha Gautama, son of King Suddhodhana, was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal. Ten months before, his mother Maya dreamed that a white elephant with six tusks entered her right side. Soon after his birth, his father consulted with eight sages to get an idea of what he will be like. For the most part, they agreed that he would either be a good successor or a great religious leader, and that if he he sees scenes of pain and suffering, he will become a religious leader. One of the sages, however, said that he would become a religious leader no matter what.

King Suddhodhana, wanting a good heir, kept his son away from scenes of pain and suffering, raising him in his palace in Kapilavastu in what is now Nepal. But as a young man, Gautama saw an old man, a sick man, an ascetic, and a dead man. He wondered what causes that to happen, and he decided to find out. While his wife and young son were sleeping, he tiptoed out and headed into the surrounding land. In his quest, he got a lot of instruction, and as part of his quest, he starved himself a lot and became very emaciated. One day a peasant girl saw him in that condition and gave him some milk and rice pudding, and he decided not to starve himself.

One day, Gautama sat under a tree and he decided to meditate on the question of suffering. As he did so, he became enlightened or awakened - the Buddha. He recognized the Four Noble Truths.

For the rest of his life, he spread the word of his great discovery, and he accumulated a community of followers, including many people who decided to become monks and nuns. Then one day he ate a meal of pork or mushrooms or something like that, and he felt his strength going away. He decided to lie down and and he gave his followers one last message: "All compound things decay. Strive to the goal with diligence." He soon died.

 Miracles of Gautama Buddha - oodles of them.

Like when he was born, he stood up, took seven steps north, and announced: "I am chief of the world, Eldest in the world. This is the last birth. There will be no more re-becoming." A lotus flower bloomed in each of his steps.

In other words, he announced that his current life was his last reincarnation.

 

[rousseau]

As far as I know like Jesus there are no contemporaneous accounts of Buddha and his origins. The word Buddha I believe like the word Jesus Christ is more of a religious tag representative of a theme. There was no Mr and Mrs Christ whoever the parents were.

I read a history of Buddhism a number of months ago and I believe it said the same thing, origins are hard decipher between fact / legend. But after that point Buddhism grew in a very similar way to Christianity.

As a religion it can look fundamentally different from Christianity, but where they converge is in their desire to transcend human suffering. They just do this from different metaphysical positions (positions that can look very similar in some respects, imo).

 

[lpetrich]

Mano Singham, author of Searching for the real Buddha, is from Sri Lanka, and he commented:

If Sri Lanka is any indication, most Buddhists do worship Buddha as some kind of a god. They go to temple and worship statues of the Buddha and any disrespect shown to the Buddha causes outrage and is treated as similar to blasphemy.

This drives Buddhist philosophers crazy. I remember a long time ago a speech given by a professor of Buddhist philosophy which was pretty much an extended rant at the Buddhist clergy for promoting the cult of Buddha as a god because it served their own interests.

That sort of worship seems like it inspired the Zen koan "You must kill the Buddha".

He responded to a certain Matt G., who posted

I have a book of koans called “Pointing at the Moon”. The message from this particular koan is to look at the moon, not the finger pointing at it. The Buddha showed the way to enlightenment, but is otherwise unimportant. I wonder what percentage of Christians think Buddhists worship the Buddha the way they worship Jesus, God, Mary, etc.

 

[lpetrich]

Was the Buddha an awakened prince or a humble itinerant? | Aeon Essays - Alexander Wynne

Back to Gautama, the Historical Buddha. When he lived is very uncertain, and academic opinion is about 480 - 400 BCE.

Kapilavastu has been hard to find, with the most likely sites being Tilaurakot, Nepal, and Piprahwa, nearby in India. But the brick buildings there are younger than the Buddha, and the Pali Canon of Buddhism states that Gautama's surroundings lacked bricks, with Kapilavastu's most prominent building being a thatched-hut tribal meeting hall.

The name Siddhartha means someone who has fulfilled his purpose, and is most likely a title, like "Buddha".

Was Gautama's father a king? "In an early story, the Buddha remembers attaining a meditative state as a child, while sitting under a tree as his father worked nearby. Are we to imagine that the King of the Sakyas had to work his own fields? At the most, Suddhodana would have numbered among the Sakya chieftains."

Though his mother Maya's death a week after his birth has no mythical purpose, and I agree with AW that it is likely factual, the early evidence does not have a name for Gautama's wife Yasodhara. She is called "Rahula's mother" in reference to Gautama's son Rahula.

AW concludes that he "was born into a small tribe, in a remote and unimportant town on the periphery of pre-imperial India."

The Pali Canon says about him that the five hearers of his First Sermon immediately attained enlightenment. But we don't learn much else about them, and what we do learn is very unflattering. AW concludes that Gautama was a lonely sage who practiced an austere discipline of meditation. He would only gradually have gotten followers. AW also states that having been born a prince could have originally been an allegory for progress toward enlightenment.

 

[steve_bank]

Paraphrasing from what I read over the years. I take awakened to mean realizing the situation you are in and becoming cognizant of the self created causes of your pain and troubles.

The Sanskrit/Indian terms can be confusing leading to an impression of something otter worldly. Look at Buddha as a practical psychologist of his time. He was taking about mental health IMO.

Today there are people who give up all possessions except a begging bowl. Wandering doing hat tey can for peole and living on charity. Nice work if you can get it. Perhaps an image of Buddha.

Buddha was no likely unique and was Brahman as I recall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadhu

Sadhu (IAST: sādhu (male), sādhvī or sādhvīne (female)), also spelled saddhu, is a religious ascetic, mendicant or any holy person in Hinduism and Jainism who has renounced the worldly life.[1][2][3] They are sometimes alternatively referred to as jogi, sannyasi or vairagi.[1]

It literally means one who practises a ″sadhana″ or keenly follows a path of spiritual discipline.[4] Although the vast majority of sādhus are yogīs, not all yogīs are sādhus. The sādhu is solely dedicated to achieving mokṣa (liberation), the fourth and final aśrama (stage of life), through meditation and contemplation of Brahman. Sādhus often wear simple clothing, such saffron-coloured clothing in Hinduism, white or nothing in Jainism, symbolising their sannyāsa (renunciation of worldly possessions). A female mendicant in Hinduism and Jainism is often called a sadhvi, or in some texts as aryika.[2][3]

 

[J842P]

Searching for the real Buddha

Of the major religions, Buddhism carries with it the least amount of supernatural baggage (though not entirely devoid of it) and is perceived as a religion that values contemplation and introspection. (Of course, I am referring to Buddhism in its more philosophical form, not the actual practice in places like Sri Lanka and Myanmar where it has become commandeered by chauvinists who think nothing of using murderous violence against those who are not Buddhists to the extent of going on ethnic cleansing rampages.) As a result, it has gained popularity among those who find it hard to accept the idea of gods and like to think of themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’, and Buddhism-inspired practices like meditation and mindfulness have gained a lot of traction in the West.

Was the Buddha an awakened prince or a humble itinerant? | Aeon Essays

At Wat Doi Kham, my local temple in Chiang Mai in Thailand, visitors come in their thousands every week. Bearing money and garlands of jasmine, the devotees prostrate themselves in front of a small Buddha statue, muttering solemn prayers and requesting their wishes be granted. Similar rituals are performed in Buddhist temples across Asia every day and, as at Wat Doi Kham, their focus is usually a mythic representation of the Buddha, sitting serenely in meditation, with a mysterious half-smile, withdrawn and aloof.

The basic creed of Buddhism looks more like a self-help routine than what most Westerners might consider a religion. It is the Four Noble Truths:

1. We suffer a lot in our lives.
2. Suffering is caused by irrational craving.
3. Stop craving and one will stop suffering.
4. Do so by following the Eightfold Way of things to do.

The historical Buddha, is depicted in Buddhist literature as an agnostic or weak atheist about the gods, including an Abrahamic-like God, and many of the more philosophical sorts of Buddhists agree with that. If such entities exist, they are not very relevant. But in Buddhism, one can become very enlightened, like the historical Buddha himself, and such enlightened people are often worshipped as gods.

"Craving" is not my favorite interpretation here. I prefer "clinging", because the fundamental idea is that our suffering is caused by attachment to temporary states and things. Because we hinge our happiness on these temporary states and things, we will always be unsatisfied.

Craving has a slightly different connotation that I think obscures this. In some ways, it is like Western Stoicism, which teaches us to stop worrying about things outside of our control. You could say, the Stoics taught to stop clinging to things that are outside of our control. Neither of these philosophies reject emotion and feeling, but rather, can be thought of as ways to deal with the negative emotion that is bound to be encountered in life.