Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a three-part review of “Buddha.”
Siddhatta Gotama, born in northern India around 500 BCE, left his comfortable home as a young adult to follow a simple, spiritual life. After six years of learning from teachers, he went on his own and eventually believed that he had found the way to transcend the suffering of the world. A night spent in meditation under a bodhi tree cleared any last doubts. From then on, the Buddhist scriptures call him Buddha, the enlightened one.
At first, he was reluctant to teach his method, his Dhamma. Author Karen Armstrong, in her book “Buddha,” using the Pali spellings for terms, quotes the scriptures. Trying to teach “would be exhausting and disappointing for me,” says the Buddha. No one is ready, he thought. But the gods intervened. There are people who are ready, they told the new Buddha. Besides, the fundamental principle of his Dhamma, loving-kindness, would not let him live a solitary life. He set out to find a group of old companions.
Gotama had lived in the forest with five other men, all practicing extreme self-denial as a path to truth. It was during this time that Gotama had realized the futility of such extremism and had left to go on his own search. He now described to his five friends what he called the Middle Way. It is best to avoid the extremes of sensual pleasure, on the one hand, and extreme self-denial, on the other, not for moral reasons but for practical ones. The extremes don’t work, he said.
Suffering, he went on, had to be “fully known,” and could be known through the discipline of mindfulness, which is observing one’s thoughts in a detached way. And meditation, used by all the spiritual seekers of that time and place, must be infused with loving-kindness, with compassion. Mindfulness and compassion, he said, these are the practices that will, in time, let a person rise above suffering.
One of the friends, during the hearing, recognized these teachings as truth. The new Dhamma “rose up” in him, as if it was something his deepest self had known beforehand. This fit with what Buddha always insisted. He didn’t invent anything. He discovered an ancient truth and always said that his followers should test anything he taught them. The other four companions soon embraced what they heard, and Buddha had his first disciples. Thus began his new life — practicing his Dhamma, walking to the towns and cities of the region, living simply, teaching and living with his followers.
Buddhist art, says author Armstrong, usually depicts a lone Buddha in meditation, leading us to believe that he was a solitary man. Not so. He was often surrounded by crowds of his own monks, who could number in the hundreds, and of people who had heard of him and sought him out. People liked to be around him. His monks “were not only gentle and compassionate,” says Armstrong, “but deeply sociable.” At times they were so chatty that the Buddha asked for quiet. One local king, impressed by the good spirit in the community, commented on the contrast in his court, where greed and anger predominated.
Mostly itinerant, the growing group of teacher and disciples stayed in one place during the monsoon season, and began to develop patterns to their daily spiritual life. Wealthy businessmen and kings donated land outside different cities and built simple huts for the monks. All the while, they continued their practice of the Dhamma, which the Buddha called “skillful living.” Communal life often put the ideals of equanimity to the test. But, says Armstrong, “It seemed that it was possible to train people to live without selfishness and to be happy.”
And so it went for 45 years. In one of my favorite stories, an old friend of the Buddha, another king, was bereft after the death of his wife and what he saw as the increasing violence in society. He traveled to see his friend, whom he thought to be like a great tree; above disagreement, a shelter from the world. The Buddha opened the door to his hut, and the old king knelt and kissed his feet.
“Why are you doing this poor old body such honor?” the Buddha asked.
Because you are a comfort, and it is so peaceful here, and because we are both old, answered the king. Armstrong: “They were two old men together, and they should express their affection for each other in this dark world.”
Armstrong says that as the Buddha grew old in the story, the scriptures begin to emphasize the ruthlessness of the world. The world of his followers itself was not spared such ruthlessness, as a group tried to betray him and take control of the order. But, always, the Dhamma continues to work for the individual.
Nearing death, the Buddha turned away from the cities where he had spent most of his teaching years and headed north with a small group of monks towards the smaller towns at the edge of the Ganges plain. When they reached the town of Kusinara and the end seemed near, his devoted companion and caretaker Ananda began to feel afraid. “Lord, do not go to your Final Rest in this dreary little town, with mud walls; this heathen, jungle outpost, this backwater.”
Ananda began to cry about his own failure to reach enlightenment. How will I live, he cried, without “my compassionate Teacher, who was always kind to me?”
The Buddha attempted to console his friend. “Let the Dhamma and the Discipline that I have taught you be your Teacher when I am gone.” And to his monks, “All individual things pass away. Seek your liberation with diligence.” And with that, he died.
After his enlightenment, not inclined to teach his way because it seemed too difficult, Ananda considered the suffering in the world and, the scriptures say, “Out of compassion, he gazed upon the world with the eye of a Buddha.” And he taught for the rest of his life.
(Anne Bevilacqua is a lover of books who lives in Haywood County.)