Who Was the Buddha?
This Monday, Buddhists around the world will celebrate Vesak,
also known as “Buddha Day.” Held on the first full moon of May, Vesak
marks the birth, enlightenment, and death of the historical Buddha,
Siddartha Gautama, born 2,600 years ago. These three pivotal moments are
all said to have occurred on the same day, many years apart.
In each place where Vesak is celebrated, devotees typically assemble in
their local temples for a ceremonial hoisting of the Buddhist flag and a
singing of hymns praising the three jewels.
Offerings of flowers, candles, and burning incense are made. From
there, the method of celebration varies from place to place. Paper
lanterns are lit and released into water and sky in South Korea and
Indonesia, while extravagant light displays illustrate the Buddha’s life
in Sri Lanka.
The life Vesak celebrates is not that of a god, but of a human being,
just like the rest of us. In that spirit, we’re sharing three pieces
that explore who the Buddha really was — his life, his teachings, his
humanity, and his path.
—Lilly Greenblatt, digital editor, Lion’s Roar
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The Buddha discovered a path to liberation, and more than two thousand
years later people are still following in his footsteps. Heather Sanche
unpacks his life, legacy, and essential teachings.
There are aspects of the Buddha’s biography that highlight his
humanness, and for many people it’s these aspects that fuel their
devotion to following in his footsteps. After all, if the Buddha was an
ordinary human being, that surely means other ordinary humans can attain
liberation. Ultimately, the Buddha taught that everyone has the
inherent potential to become a buddha, regardless of their race, class,
social standing, or gender.
The Buddha’s life story and teachings can inspire us to look deep within
our own minds and remove the perceptions clouding and distorting how we
experience the world. Whether we regard it as a religion, philosophy,
or a spiritual tradition, the Buddhist path, which is encapsulated in
the Buddha’s biography, can help us find flexibility of mind. His story
illuminates the wisdom of willingly accepting change.
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The Buddha who lived 2,600 years ago was not a god. He was an ordinary
person, named Siddhartha Gautama, whose teachings on enlightenment and
the end of suffering became the basis of the world religion of Buddhism.
Prince Siddhartha was twenty-nine years old when his life changed. In
carriage rides outside his palaces he first saw a sick person, then an
old man, then a corpse. This shook him to the core of his being; he
realized that his privileged status would not protect him from sickness,
old age, and death. When he saw a spiritual seeker — a mendicant “holy
man” ― the urge to seek peace of mind arose in him.
The prince renounced his worldly life and began a spiritual quest. He
sought teachers and punished his body with ascetic practices such as
extreme, prolonged fasts. It was believed that punishing the body was
the way to elevate the mind and that the door to wisdom was found at the
edge of death. However, after six years of this, the prince felt only
frustration.
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Buddhist scholar Peter Harvey explores the facts, myths, and deeper truths of the Buddha’s life story.
Ultimately, the most extraordinary features of the Buddha are his
applied wisdom and compassion in teaching a great range of beings. A
real human voice comes through the suttas, that of a person of deep,
incisive, and subtle knowledge responding to the questions and
situations of brahmins, non-Buddhist renunciants, kings, a great range
of ordinary men and women, and even gods. It is said that what the
Buddha taught, compared to what he knew, was like a handful of leaves
compared to all the leaves in a forest. From what he knew to be true, he
said he taught what was spiritually useful and appropriate to the
moment, whether the person he taught found the teaching pleasant or
painful to hear.
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