These life-changing encounters would become known in Buddhism as the Four Passing Sights. For a time the prince returned to palace life, but he took no pleasure in it. Even the news that his wife Yasodhara had given birth to a son did not please him.
The child was called Rahula , which means "fetter. One night the prince wandered the palace alone. The luxuries that had once pleased him now seemed grotesque. Musicians and dancing girls had fallen asleep and were sprawled about, snoring and sputtering. Prince Siddhartha reflected on the old age, disease, and death that would overtake them all and turn their bodies to dust.
He realized then that he could no longer be content living the life of a prince. That very night he left the palace, shaved his head, and changed from his royal clothes into a beggar's robe. Renouncing all the luxury he had known, he began his quest for enlightenment.
Siddhartha started by seeking out renowned teachers. They taught him about the many religious philosophies of his day as well as how to meditate. After he had learned all they had to teach, his doubts and questions remained. He and five disciples left to find enlightenment by themselves. The six companions attempted to find release from suffering through physical discipline: enduring pain, holding their breath, and fasting nearly to starvation.
Yet Siddhartha was still unsatisfied. It occurred to him that in renouncing pleasure he had grasped the opposite of pleasure, which was pain and self-mortification. Now Siddhartha considered a Middle Way between those two extremes.
He remembered an experience from his childhood when his mind had settled into a state of deep peace. He saw that the path of liberation was through the discipline of mind, and he realized that, instead of starvation, he needed nourishment to build up his strength for the effort.
When he accepted a bowl of rice milk from a young girl, his companions assumed he had given up the quest, and they abandoned him. Siddhartha sat beneath a sacred fig tree Ficus religiosa , known ever after as the Bodhi Tree bodhi means "awakened". It was there that he settled into meditation. The struggle within Siddhartha's mind came to be mythologized as a great battle with Mara. The demon's name means "destruction" and represents the passions that snare and delude us.
Mara brought vast armies of monsters to attack Siddhartha, who sat still and untouched. Mara's most beautiful daughter tried to seduce Siddhartha, but this effort also failed. This is the last birth. According to Buddhist tradition he spoke Pali, a Pakrit from northern India in which most early Buddhist scripture first appears, before the rise of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit as the liturgical language.
The celebrated Bodhi tree still exists, but is very much decayed; one large stem, with three branches to the westward, is still green, but the other branches are barkless and rotten. Despite his father's efforts to hide from him the sick, aged and suffering, Siddhartha was said to have seen an old man. When his charioteer Channa explained to him that all people grew old, the prince went on further trips beyond the palace.
On these he encountered a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and an ascetic. These depressed him, and he initially strove to overcome aging, sickness, and death by living the life of an ascetic. King Siddhartha Gautama decided to leave the palace and pursue his calling. So he left the kingdom and searched for several spiritual teachers to learn from them. He practiced under two hermit teachers of yogic meditation After mastering the teachings of Alara Kalama , he was asked by Kalama to succeed him.
However, Gautama felt unsatisfied by the practice, and moved on to become a student of yoga with Udaka Ramaputta. With him he achieved high levels of meditative consciousness, and was again asked to succeed his teacher.
But, once more, he was not satisfied, and again moved on. After years of searching and seeking the truth Siddhartha and a group of five companions Kaundinya and his four colleagues led by Kaundinya Kaundinya was a Brahmin who first came to prominence as a youth due to his mastery of the Vedas are then said to have set out to take their austerities even further.
They tried to find enlightenment through deprivation of worldly goods, including food, practicing self-mortification Mortification of the flesh is an act by which an individual or group seeks to mortify, or put to death, their sinful nature. Press ESC to cancel. Popular articles. Esther Fleming May 15, Table of Contents.
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