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A QUESTION for us to consider is whether we can relate to the life of the Buddha, both in our formal practice and in our everyday lives, in a way that is meaningful for us in these times. Can we relate to his life in some way that gives perspective and context to our own? One possibility is to see the Buddha as a particular historical figure, a person who lived in what is now northern India in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.E., and who went through a powerful awakening transformation at the age of thirty-five. We can relate in a very human, historical way, understanding his struggles, his quest, his enlightenment, from the perspective of one human being to another.
Another level on which we can relate is to view the Buddha as a fundamental archetype of humanity; that is, as the full manifestation of buddha-nature, the mind that is free of defilement and distortion, and understanding his life story as a great journey representing some basic archetypal aspects of human existence. By viewing the life of the Buddha in both of these ways, as a historical person and as an archetype, it becomes possible to see the unfolding of universal principles within the particular content of his life experience. We can then view the Buddha’s life not as an abstract, removed story of somebody who lived twenty-five hundred years ago, but as one that reveals the nature of the universal in us all. This becomes a way of understanding our own experience in a larger and more profound context, one that connects the Buddhas’s journey with our own. We have undertaken to follow the same path, motivated by the same questions: What is the true nature of our lives? What is the root cause of our suffering?
In his book Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: World Publishing Co., 1971), Joseph Campbell, the great scholar of humanity’s myths and archetypes, explores the nature of the hero myth. He speaks of four stages in the great journey of the archetypal hero or heroine, and his discussion of the Buddha’s journey in terms of these four stages is a wonderful interweaving of the personal elements of the Buddha’s life and the universal principles they embody. Realizing how the events of the Buddha’s life relate directly to our own experiences can give tremendous energy and inspiration to our individual journeys. Reflecting upon the life of the Buddha brings a sense of joy to the mind, because in recognizing the power and magnitude of the Buddha’s spiritual quest, we reconnect with our own deepest impulses and motivations for practicing the dharma.
When we first contemplate the adventures of the world’s great explorers, we are struck with a feeling of the mystery and drama of discovery. We might picture them venturing into uncharted waters or exploring strange, new lands, but we tend not to think about the countless daily hardships and inconveniences—the mosquitoes, the rain, the boredom, the bad food. Yet that is all part of the journey as well. In the same way, the countless irritations and difficulties that present themselves in the course of practice are part of the extraordinary exploration of the nature of our own lives. It is easy to get so caught up in the details of our experience that we may lose touch with the vast scope of the context in which we are working.
Campbell calls the first stage of the hero’s journey the call to destiny. According to traditional accounts, the Buddha first heard this call many, many lifetimes before his birth as Siddhartha Gotama, when he was a forest-dwelling hermit named Sumedha in the time of the previous buddha, Dipankara. One day Sumedha heard that Dipankara Buddha would be passing nearby, and he joined the many people who were going to pay their respects. The people were preparing the road for Dipankara and the procession of monks and nuns, and Sumedha was given one small section of the road to prepare and make smooth. He had not quite finished and the road was still muddy when they were about to arrive, so at the last minute Sumedha laid his body down on the road for Dipankara to walk over.
It is said that when he saw Dipankara, Sumedha was so inspired by his presence and nobility that he resolved that he, too, would one day bring to perfection all the qualities of mind of a buddha. Dipankara saw this aspiration in the mind of the hermit and prophesied that many aeons of time in the future, Sumedha would be born a prince named Siddhartha Gotama and in that lifetime would attain to buddhahood. From the moment of hearing and responding to that call to destiny, Sumedha was a bodhisattva, a being destined to attain the awakening and perfection of a buddha. The Jataka Tales are a collection of stories telling of the bodhisattva’s efforts through many lifetimes to bring to fulfillment the ten paramis, or perfections of a buddha: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, resolve, equanimity, and loving-kindness. Likewise, the effort in our own lives to develop these paramis should not be undervalued. They are the powerful causes of all spiritual accomplishment.
In the lifetime during which the bodhisattva became the Buddha, he was born a prince in the small kingdom of the Shakyas near what is now the border of Nepal and India. At the time of his birth, wise men foretold that he would become either a world monarch or, renouncing the world, a buddha. The bodhisattva’s father, the king, wishing for his son to become a worldly ruler like himself, contrived to surround Siddhartha with all the pleasures of the senses and to occupy him entirely with the delights of the world. There was a different palace provided for each of the seasons, with musicians, dancers, concubines, and the like, to entertain him. The king did everything within his power to banish unpleasantness from the experience of the young prince.
Siddhartha decided one day to leave the palace and go out into the city. Being concerned that Siddhartha would see something unpleasant and be prompted to question his life and renounce the world, the king ordered all unpleasant sights to be covered up, the city to be painted, flowers and incense to be placed all about, and all people who were suffering to be hidden away. But the bodhisattva’s calling was not to be so easily denied.
It is said that four heavenly messengers, celestial beings, appeared to him as he rode throughout the city. The first of these messengers appeared to him as an old person, stricken with age, feeble in the senses. The second messenger appeared as a person suffering greatly with disease. The third appeared as a corpse. Each time, the prince was startled because he had never before in that life come into contact with sickness, old age, and death. Seeing these aspects of life for the first time touched him deeply. Each time, he questioned the charioteer about what he was seeing and whether everyone was subject to this fate. The charioteer replied that it is the inevitable fate of all who take birth to grow older, get sick, and die. The last of the heavenly messengers appeared to the prince as a wandering monk. Questioned again, the charioteer answered that this was someone who had renounced the world in order to seek enlightenment and liberation. These four heavenly messengers awakened within the bodhisattva the energy of countless lifetimes of practice; they awakened within him both the deep sense of inquiry—What is the nature of birth and death? What is the force that sustains it? How can the suffering of conditioned existence be brought to an end?—and the recognition of the possibility of freedom.
What was the impetus for our own beginning practice? Have we recognized the heavenly messengers in our own lives? Each of us, like the Buddha, has a story; we all share in having heard some call to awaken. Reflecting upon the first steps in our own journey, those powerful moments of intuition that set us upon the path of inquiry, connects us more deeply with our own source of inspiration and the original spirit of our quest.
The second stage of the hero’s journey is called the great renunciation. Having awakened to the often hidden possibilities of life, we begin to give up our habitual ways of seeing and relating to the world and to live in a way more conducive to full realization. After the bodhisattva encountered the four messengers, he left the palace with all its pleasures and comforts in order to seek liberation. Siddhartha first went to different teachers of concentration meditation and mastered all the levels of absorption. Yet even after the highest level of attainment of this type, he realized that this did not constitute freedom. When he came out of those absorption states, his mind was still prone to defilements, and so he was not yet satisfied. He believed that even the highest of these states was not the unconditioned, that which was beyond birth and death.
He then spent six years practicing the various kinds of austerities and ascetic disciplines that were prevalent at that time—torturing and starving the body in an effort to subdue the ego and suppress the defilements of mind. It is said that for long periods he ate only one grain of rice a day, and that when he tried to touch his belly, his hand would grasp his backbone. So extreme was his asceticism that he would collapse from fatigue and hunger. After six years of such practice, he realized that this was not the path to freedom, to the end of suffering.
Siddhartha gave up this extreme ascetic discipline and, taking some food, nourished himself for the third great event in his journey, the great struggle. Having regained his strength, he seated himself beneath the bodhi tree with the resolve that he would not get up until he had attained supreme enlightenment. As he sat there with unwavering resolve and determination, all the forces of Mara, of illusion and ignorance, assailed his mind. Joseph Campbell describes this encounter in a mythopoetic way, which conveys very vividly the energy involved in that commitment to truth.
[The Bodhisattva] placed himself, with a firm resolve, beneath the Bodhi Tree, on the Immovable Spot, and straightway was approached by Kama-Mara, the god of love and death.
The dangerous god appeared mounted on an elephant and carrying weapons in his thousand hands. He was surrounded by his army, which extended twelve leagues before him, twelve to the right, twelve to the left, and in the rear as far as to the confines of the world; it was nine leagues high. The protecting deities of the universe took flight, but the Future Buddha remained unmoved beneath the Tree. And the god then assailed him, seeking to break his concentration.
Whirlwind, rocks, thunder and flame, smoking weapons with keen edges, burning coals, hot ashes, boiling mud, blistering sands and fourfold darkness, the Antagonist hurled against the Savior, but the missiles were all transformed into celestial flowers and ointments by the power of Gautama’s ten perfections. Mara then deployed his daughters, Desire, Pining, and Lust, surrounded by voluptuous attendants, but the mind of the Great Being was not distracted. The god finally challenged his right to be sitting on the Immovable Spot, flung his razor-sharp discus angrily, and bid the towering host of the army to let fly at him with mountain crags. But the Future Buddha only moved his hand to touch the ground with his fingertips, and thus bid the goddess Earth bear witness to his right to be sitting where he was. She did so with a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand roars, so that the elephant of the Antagonist fell upon its knees in obeisance to the Future Buddha. The army was immediately dispersed, and the gods of all the worlds scattered garlands. [p. 32]
This is a wonderful rendering of the bodhisattva’s struggle with Mara; and in a very fundamental way, each one of us may be said to be sitting under the bodhi tree every time we strongly resolve to be aware, to be mindful. Mara may assail the mind with desire and anger, with restlessness and fears, with all the same forces personified in the imagery of myth. It is the same struggle, the same commitment, the same process of becoming free. The effort manifesting is heroic effort, because it reso-nates in an arena beyond just our immediate experience; we are expressing at that time the unwavering determination and courage of the hero and heroine.
The first stage of the archetypal journey is the call to destiny; the second is the great renunciation, the leaving behind of old patterns and habits, beginning to see our lives in a new way; the third stage is the great struggle with all the forces of delusion; and the fourth stage in this universal journey is the great awakening. After the hosts of Mara were dispersed, the bodhisattva spent the three watches of the night contemplating various aspects of the dharma. In the first watch he surveyed with his power of concentration the succession of births and deaths through countless lifetimes. Through seeing this process stretching back into beginningless time—being born into certain circumstances, going through the dramas of life, dying and being reborn—came a profound understanding of the impermanence and insubstantiality of existence. Life and death are arising and vanishing like bubbles on the surface of a stream. The long-range perspective of the cycles of lifetimes undercuts the seeming solidity and importance our attachments and preferences assume when we are identified with particular situations or experiences.
In the second watch of the night, he contemplated the law of karma. He saw how the karmic force of past actions propels and conditions beings through successive rebirths. Seeing beings driven by ignorance through the whirlwind of differing destinies awoke in him the energy of deep compassion. In the third watch of the night he contemplated the Four Noble Truths and the law of dependent origination. He saw how the mind becomes attached, and how through attachment there is suffering. He understood the possibility of deconditioning that attachment and coming to a place of freedom.
It is said that just at the moment of dawn, when the morning star appeared in the sky, his mind realized the deepest, most complete illumination. After attaining the great enlightenment, the Buddha uttered this verse in his heart:
I wandered through the rounds of countless births,
Seeking but not finding the builder of this house.
Sorrowful indeed is birth again and again.
Oh, housebuilder! You have now been seen.
You shall build the house no longer.
All your rafters have been broken,
Your ridgepole shattered.
My mind has attained to unconditioned freedom.
Achieved is the end of craving.
The Buddha saw that in this world of samsara, of constant appearing and disappearing, being born and dying, there was great suffering. Craving, the builder of this house of suffering (the mind and body), was discovered; the defilements of mind, the rafters, were broken; the force of ignorance, the ridgepole, was shattered, and thus the Buddha realized nirvana, the unconditioned. It is said that the path to nirvana, the Eightfold Path, is a silent vehicle, like a chariot that drives smoothly and gracefully, without emitting squeaks and clatter. The people who ride on this chariot, however, those who have realized the truth, may be quite noisy. They are noisy in their songs of praise for this vehicle and for the completion of their journey.
In the Theragatha and Therigatha—collections of enlightenment verses of the early monks and nuns—we often find the refrain “Done is what had to be done.” In attaining the great enlightenment, the bodhisattva experienced the completion and fulfillment of his long journey, a fulfillment of the potential shared by all human beings. He had become the Buddha, the Awakened One. He spent the next seven weeks in the area of the bodhi tree, contemplating different aspects of the truth. He had completed his own journey of liberation, and he now wondered whether it was possible to share the profound dharma he had realized with others, blinded as they were by their attachments.
According to legend, a celestial being, a brahma god, came down from the highest heaven realm and urged the Buddha to teach the dharma for the welfare of all beings, out of compassion for all beings. He asked the Buddha to survey the world with his eye of wisdom, stating that there were many beings with but little dust in their eyes who would be able to hear and understand the truth. The Buddha did as the brahma god asked and saw that what he said was in fact true, and out of deep compassion for the suffering of beings he began his forty-five years of teaching.
He first traveled to a place outside of Benares called Sarnath, where the five ascetics with whom he had previously practiced were living in a deer park. The Buddha gave his first sermon to these five ascetics, thereby setting in motion the Great Wheel of the Dharma. In this sermon he spoke of the Four Noble Truths and the Middle Way, that path between the extremes of sensory indulgence and self-mortification; and he thus laid the foundation for his teachings of the next forty-five years.
The Buddha continued his teaching travels, and when sixty of his disciples had themselves come to full enlightenment, he sent them out to begin spreading the dharma with this exhortation: “Go forth, O monks, for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, benefit, and happiness of people and devas. Let not two go by one way. Teach the dharma, excellent in the beginning, excellent in the middle, and excellent in the end. Proclaim the noble life, altogether perfect and pure; work for the good of others, those of you who have done your duty.”
We can see from this statement of the Buddha that the whole thrust of practice and of understanding is to develop freedom in oneself, compassion for the suffering of the world, and an active sense of service for the welfare of others. Seeing the purification of our own hearts and minds in the context of working for the benefit of others inspires and gives energy to our practice. Practice is never just for oneself; the manifestation of truth is always one of greater connectedness and compassion.
The two chief disciples of the Buddha were Sariputra and Mogallana. Mogallana was very adept in meditation and he became an arhant, a fully enlightened being, in just one week. Among the Buddha’s disciples, he was foremost in the development of psychic powers, and there are many stories of his exercising his powers to further the teachings. Sariputra was the disciple foremost in wisdom. Because his mind was more discursive, having to look at each experience from many different angles, it took him two weeks, a little longer than it took Mogallana, to get enlightened. Sariputra is said to have been second only to the Buddha in his understanding of the mind. According to tradition, it was through him that the abhidharma, the Buddhist psychology, took substance and form. It is said that the Buddha would visit the heaven realm where his mother had been reborn in order to teach her the abhidharma, returning periodically to give the gist of his teaching to Sariputra, who then elaborated and expounded it.
There are certain qualities that distinguish a buddha from other arhants. There is no difference between the freedom of mind of a buddha and that of an arhant; in the minds of both, greed, hatred, and ignorance have been completely uprooted. However, with his efforts through countless lifetimes, a buddha brings to perfection certain powers of mind and a range of understanding and compassion that is unique. The life of a buddha manifests the perfection of wisdom, compassion, and skillful means. In every situation a buddha knows exactly the right way to teach and the best way to open the minds of others. He is thus endowed with omniscient wisdom and practical compassion.
At the time when the hermit Sumedha encountered Dipankara Buddha, he already had the potential to be enlightened, but he chose to forsake this for the welfare of all beings suffering in their ignorance. Through his compassion for the countless beings needing to be led in safety across to the other shore, he was willing to sacrifice his own immediate freedom in order to spend the aeons necessary to develop all the perfections of a buddha.
The Buddha was endowed with three accomplishments. The first is called the accomplishment of cause, which refers to the extraordinary effort made by the bodhisattva through innumerable lifetimes to perfect the paramis; that is, he accomplished the cause for buddhahood. The second is the accomplishment of result, which refers to his enlightenment and attainment of omniscient knowledge. And the third is the accomplishment of service, seeing to the welfare of others. The Buddha was not complacent with his own awakening, but out of loving care for all beings he set forth to teach, and until he died he shared the dharma with all those who were ready to hear.
The heroic effort made by the bodhisattva to develop the perfections is only possible through the motivation of extraordinary compassion. Yet compassion alone is not enough; for it to bring effective results, compassion must be acted upon, and this demands a discriminating wisdom as to beneficial or harmful actions, knowing which paths will bring happiness and which will not. Great compassion requires great wisdom in order to bear fruit, and great wisdom requires deep compassion as the motivation and impetus for action to be undertaken for the sake of other beings. These two great wings of the dharma were perfectly fulfilled in the Buddha.
It is said that even if one were to combine the love and compassion of all parents on the planet for their children, it would not approach the great compassion of the Buddha. Parents may have a great capacity to love and forgive their children. In the Buddha, these qualities were boundless. Because of his practical compassion, he ceaselessly exhorted beings to give up the causes of their suffering and to avoid those actions that bring about harm and unhappiness. He encouraged and urged beings to follow that path that leads to happiness, well-being, and freedom.
One of the unique powers of a buddha is unobstructed vision. Every morning the Buddha would survey the world with his unhindered eye of wisdom, encompassing all beings in his net of compassion. With the ability to penetrate others’ hidden tendencies, he would recognize all those who were ripe for awakening, and he would appear to them, offering the exact teaching that could open their hearts and minds.
There is a story of a monk who had been practicing meditation on the unpleasantness of the body, visualizing its parts—internal organs, blood, hair, bone, flesh, sinew, and so forth—as a way of developing dispassion. Although he practiced diligently for several months, he made no progress, and his mind grew agitated and restless. The Buddha came to know of this, and he saw that for this monk that particular practice was not appropriate. Through his psychic power, the Buddha created a golden lotus, which he instructed the monk to contemplate. As the monk contemplated it, the golden lotus began to change and disintegrate, and through contemplating the process of change and decay in the beautiful flower, the monk was enlightened. In telling of this later, the Buddha said that this monk had been a goldsmith, working with and fashioning beautiful objects for five hundred consecutive lifetimes. The monk’s mind was so attuned to beauty that although he could not relate to unpleasant objects in a balanced way, contemplation of the impermanence and insubstantiality of beautiful things was his own particular doorway to liberation.
One of my favorite stories is of a monk who was known as the dullard, because he couldn’t learn or remember anything. His older brother, who was an arhant, tried to teach the dullard a dharma verse of four lines, but each time he learned a new line, it would push the previous line out of his mind. He worked for a time trying to remember these four lines, but he was unable to do so. His brother thought that there was no hope and suggested that the dullard leave the monkhood and return to a householder’s life. Although he had a dull mind, he had a good and open heart, and this suggestion made him quite sad. He was walking down the road, feeling dejected, and the Buddha, having come to know what had happened, came and stroked his head consolingly. The Buddha then gave him an object of meditation: a white handkerchief. He told the dullard to take the handkerchief and rub it at a time when the sun was high. This was the meditation. Gradually, as the dullard did this, the handkerchief grew dirty, causing him to understand the impurities coming out of the body. Seeing how the handkerchief grew dirty by rubbing it led his mind to a state of dispassion, and out of that deep balance of mind he became enlightened. The story goes on to say that with his enlightenment came all the psychic powers and knowledge of all the teachings.
The Buddha had seen that in a past lifetime the dullard had been a great king, who had one day gone out in the hot sun bedecked in his lavish finery, which slowly became soiled in the heat. At that time he began to see the unpleasant aspect of the body and to become detached from it. The Buddha touched on that seed which had been planted in him long before, and in a single stroke his mind emerged from its dullness.
There is a very touching story told of a woman named Kisa Gotami. Though she came from a poor family, Kisa Gotami married a wealthy man. In time she gave birth to a son, and they lived very happily until, after two years, her son died. She was overcome with grief. Refusing to admit that her son had died, she carried his small corpse around, asking people for medicine to make the baby well. She eventually went to the Buddha and asked if he could please do something to make her son better. The Buddha said that he could help her, and that in order to do so she must first go into the village and get some mustard seed from a house and bring it back. But he said that the mustard seed must be from a house in which no one had ever died. She went from one house to another asking for the mustard seed but each time was met with the same response. Although everyone gladly offered her the seed, there was not a single house in which there had been no death. By the time she got to the end of the village, her mind had opened to the fact that death is part of the universal experience, that nobody is free from it. Out of this openness to the fact of death, she was able to relinquish her illusions and finally bury her son. She returned to the Buddha, became a nun, and soon afterward attained to full enlightenment.
There are innumerable stories of people from all walks of life—beggars, merchants, artisans, courtesans, village people, nobles, kings and queens—each coming to the Buddha with varying degrees of faith and understanding, whom he helped come to freedom and peace through the power of his love, wisdom, and skillful means.
One discourse the Buddha gave that is particularly helpful in understanding the spirit of investigation and discovery in dharma practice is known as the Kalama Sutta. He was asked by a village people known as the Kalamas how they could know which among the many different religious teachings and teachers to believe. The Buddha said that they should not blindly believe anyone—not their parents or teachers, not the books or traditions, not even the Buddha himself. Rather, they should look carefully into their own experience to see which things lead to more greed, more hatred, more delusion, and should abandon them; and they should look to see what things lead to greater love, generosity, wisdom, openness, and peace, and should cultivate those things. The Buddha’s teachings always encourage us to take responsibility for our own development and to directly investigate the nature of our experience. There was no desire in the Buddha’s mind for fame, honor, or disciples. He was motivated by genuine compassion.
When he was eighty years old, the Buddha became quite sick and, knowing he was soon going to die, lay down on a spot beneath two trees. The legends tell us that these trees were flowering out of season, symbolizing the Buddha’s final release into the unconditioned. Even on his deathbed he shared the dharma, showing the way to a renunciate of another sect. In his final words he exhorted those who had gathered around him—and all of us—saying, “All compounded things are impermanent. Work out your liberation with diligence.” He then entered into a state of jhanic concentration and passed away.
As practice deepens and we come to a fuller appreciation and understanding of our own true nature, there develops a wonderful love and respect for the Buddha, both as a historical figure and as the archetype of the buddha-nature potential within us all. If we reflect on the three great accomplishments of the Buddha’s life, we can become filled with a sense of deep appreciation for having the opportunity to walk the path discovered by such a being, a path of the greatest distinction and truest nobility. With mindfulness and insight we can reflect the Buddha’s journey in our own.
J. G.
Recollection of the Buddha can be an effective way of arousing and strengthening the spiritual faculties of faith and concentration. Contemplating the perfections of the Buddha (such as generosity, morality, concentration, loving-kindness, and wisdom) and investigating the ways in which he developed these qualities may serve as an inspiration to our own practice. In this regard, reading the story of his life, the tales of his previous births, and the direct teachings of his discourses will reveal his efforts and accomplishments. An important aspect for us in this recollection is to connect the Buddha’s effort with our own.
Another way of recollection is to relate to images of the Buddha as if the Buddha himself were actually present. How does it affect our mind states if we are paying respects, bowing to, or sitting in front of the Buddha? Is there greater mindfulness in what we do? Does it help us to look more honestly at the nature of our minds? Perhaps there may also arise a deep feeling of love and devotion, which softens our mind and inspires our heart.