The Buddha, his life, teachings, and the environment
A still from a recently released movie, “Ma Visin Mese Asana Ladi’
Buddhism is the teaching of how to understand fully what life is with its pleasures and its dissatisfactions and to work towards overcoming inevitable suffering by severing the samsaric cycle of existence. It encapsulates the truths propounded by the Buddha in India. (623-543 BC).
Born in the fifth month of the year when the moon was full, to King Suddhodana and Queen Mahamaya of the Sakyan clan in Lumbini (south Nepal), Siddhartha Gautama had his mother dying when he was an infant. Her younger sister, Prajapati Gotami, married the king and was foster mother to Siddhartha. At 19 he was married to Yashodara. The day his son, Rahula, was born, he renounced lay life and went forth.
Leading an austere life he joined groups of ascetics and learnt methods of meditation from renowned teachers. Having got no answers to his quest, he went forth alone and attained enlightenment on the full moon night in May, realizing the four Noble Truths: that life is unsatisfactory (dukkha), the cause of this (samudaya), its cessation (nirodha) and the path leading to such cessation (magga) – which we term the Noble Eightfold Path.
Many of these events and achievements are unique. The Buddha was not a messenger from a divine god who gave humanity a religion; neither was he one to be treated as a god and worshipped. He maintained the fact that he was an ordinary human being and we accept this. However he was no ordinary person; he had qualities that raised him far above others. Through his own reasoning he found a way out of suffering and transmitted the message throughout forty one years of walking all over Northern India preaching the Dhamma. He had as his first followers the five ascetics he had meditated with. Then as the Sangha grew he exhorted them to go spread the Dhamma for the love and benefit of mankind.
The Bodhisatva – aspirant to Buddhahood
The circumstances of his life too were far from ordinary. He was born out of doors, in a sal grove in Lumbini while his mother, Mahamaya, was travelling to her parents’ home for her confinement. Conducted back ceremoniously to Kapilavastu, the infant prince was presented to astrologers who foretold that he would either be a great king or turn ascetic. The king, his father, fearing the latter prediction, banished all old and ill from the palace and kept the prince a virtual prisoner within three palaces built for him, giving him pleasure in sports, education, dancing girls, the companionship of his half brother, Nanda, and a beautiful bride. He escaped from the palace on his faithful horse Kanthaka accompanied by his horseman Channa on four occasions, and saw an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse, each of which depressed him immensely. He next beheld an ascetic with a serene face. That resonated in his reclusive mind and consolidated his urge to go forth to seek the truth of life.
The renunciation of his princely life and family was out in the open where he symbolically cut a clutch of his hair and handed over his jewellery and rich clothes to Channa. He was 29 years of age. His meditation and learning from ascetics was all in the open – under trees, beside streams, among wild animals. Having nearly died through self-mortification, he changed his way of life to the ‘middle path’ of taking adequate nourishment. He journeyed to Senani, Gaya, where he sat under a tree. A while later a rich woman of the area brought milk rice to offer to the tree spirit as was her wont. The Bodhisatva partook of the meal gratefully and crossing the Neranjana River, sat under a bo tree (ficus religiosa), vowing to arise only after realization of the truth. He went into deep meditation and in the early dawn realized how hate, delusion and greed keep man bound to births and deaths and the way to sever the cycle was to totally rid oneself of these and other defilements and impediments.
The Buddha
He spent seven weeks at Gaya in the vicinity of the bo tree contemplating and refining what he had worked out. He spent one week gazing at the tree in gratitude. He wondered whether human beings would comprehend his findings if he were to preach to them and realized there were people ‘with little dust in their eyes’. He walked to Isipathana and preached his first sermon to the five ascetics he had been last with, setting the wheel of the Dhamma in motion. This again was out of doors in the shade of a tree.
After attaining enlightenment at age 35, Siddhartha, now known as the Buddha, lived in many monasteries in many groves gifted to him, until his death at 80. He spent 29 vas seasons of retreat during the monsoon in Sravasti. His preaching to masses of people would surely have been out of doors. He was the first environmentalist, one could say, since he categorised plants with animals as living entities and stressed no harm was to be done to trees by heedless felling. Declaring three months of vas during the rainy season was to prevent the trampling of creatures who emerged from the rain-soaked earth by mendicant monks.
And then proclaiming to his faithful acolyte Ananda Thera that the time had come for him to die, he journeyed though stricken with a stomach disorder to Kusinara, to a grove of sal trees. He requested a bed be made for him between two trees. He exhorted the monks gathered around him to work out their deliverance with diligence since all formations are of the nature to change: Aniccavata sankara, uppada vaya dhammino. He died on the full moon day in May out in the open. We say he attained parinibbana – Nibbana equating to the cessation of births, the severance of the samsaric cycle.
The sal trees shed their blossoms on him.
The month of May has Buddhists the world over commemorating the three events that occurred on full moon days in the fifth month of the relevant year in the vasana season (spring): the birth of Siddhartha Gautama; his Enlightenment; and the death of the Buddha – the Enlightened One. Sri Lanka sees piety of white clad temple goers in the morning and then at night for a week following are illuminations – flickering clay lamps, strung multicoloured bright lights and pandals or thorung on which are painted friezes depicting stories from the Buddha’s life with a loudspeaker blaring forth its narration. Also unique to the country are dansales – wayside temporary restaurants that offer food and drink to sightseers.
Vesak truly is the day of greatest significance to Buddhists and around it has grown cultural customs, rituals and most importantly dané - giving of oneself to meditation and enhanced religious observance, and alms whether to monks, less privileged persons or sightseers. The moon, needless to say is large and brilliant on this day in May.