Who was the man known as Buddha?

(Editor’s note: This is if the first in a three-part review of “Buddha.”)

Curious about the man known as the Buddha, I read three books about him, and my favorite, by far, is Karen Armstrong’s “Buddha” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000, 171 pp). The reviewer for The Times of London describes it like this: “A fascinating book … It is hard to imagine a clearer, more concise or more authoritative introduction to one of the world’s most influential (yet shadowy) spiritual figures.”  

“Buddha” is a small but dense book, and the time and setting, northern India around 500 BCE, was foreign to me. But Armstrong’s scholarship seems careful and she chooses her words with care. This precision inspires confidence that a close reading will pay rewards.

Buddhist scriptures are “voluminous,” says the author. “They have been written in various Asian languages and take up several shelves in a library.” The earliest were not written until hundreds of years after the death of Siddhatta Gotama, the given name of the Buddha. There is little included in these scriptures that would satisfy modern criteria for historical fact, even though modern historians generally agree that such a man did live and teach disciples, who then kept the memory of him alive.

Scholars consider the Pali canon, written in an old north Indian dialect probably related to the language Gotama spoke, to be the most useful. Armstrong uses the Pali spellings in her book. Considering the lack of verifiable historical fact, and also the presence in the stories of gods and miraculous human feats, such as levitation, it seems reasonable to call the stories we have legend rather than fact. This would not diminish the importance of the legend. The substance is probably based on fact. Also, stories about the Buddha’s early life, his spiritual quest, his enlightenment and teaching, and his death, were important because of their significance. Stripped of the miraculous aspects, the stories lose no value. His becomes even an ordinary story. You can do this, the story says, and the Buddha himself insisted. He believed he had discovered truth, a way to inner peace, that was natural and available to all.

At the age of 29, Gotama left his comfortable life to become a wandering monk. He had been born into a wealthy family, and the legend says that his father wanted to shield him from any sight of suffering. One version has the gods, who knew of Gotama’s destiny as a spiritual leader, disguising themselves as an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, and then slipping past the guards at the gate of the compound to let themselves be seen by the young man. There is suffering in the world. Knowing this, Gotama believed he could not be happy in a comfortable domestic life. He believed that there must be something better, more satisfying, more complete. He called that peaceful state Nibbana, which translates, “blowing out.”

After leaving home, Gotama became one of a sizable number of men who chose to live “the holy life,” living in the forests of the area and following some teacher or other. The common look for these monks, as they were called, was a yellow robe and a shaved head. The common question when a monk met another monk on the road was, “Who is your teacher?” Households in the region, the Ganges plain, supported the monks gladly by giving leftovers. Many people were interested in what the monks were learning. As Armstrong notes, “Religious knowledge in India had one criterion: did it work?”

Each teacher had their Dhamma, the set of beliefs and practices they taught their disciples. Gotama’s teacher believed that ignorance was the root of all suffering. The first step to transcend suffering was the practice of a strict morality. No stealing, lying, harming another creature, sex or intoxicants. His monks were to follow stringent habits of cleanliness and cultivate an attitude of perpetual serenity. The monk had to practice accepting extremes of heat, cold, hunger and thirst. Once he was well-practiced in self-control, the monk went on to the study of yoga, which meant, in that day, various methods of meditation.

Gotama was a dedicated and talented student. He became so proficient at the higher states of meditation that his teacher offered to make him partner in the sect. Gotama, however, decided to leave this teacher. As Armstrong puts it, “The elevated state of consciousness that he had achieved could not be Nibbana, because when he came out of his trance, he was still subject to passion, desire and craving. He had remained his unregenerate, greedy self.” A brief relief from suffering could not be Nibbana. Nibbana was eternal.

He turned now to complete asceticism, extreme self-denial. He slept out in the cold or on a spiked mattress. He held his breath for longer and longer periods of time. He barely ate and became bony. His hair fell out and his skin turned black. But nothing he did gave him peace. He now considered all his efforts. Armstrong: “The Dhammas taught by the great teachers of the day seemed fundamentally flawed; many of their practitioners looked as sick, miserable and haggard as himself.”

At this point, six years after leaving home, Gotama decided to go on his own. “Surely, there must be another way to achieve enlightenment!” At that moment, a childhood memory returned to him. His father had taken him to watch the ceremonial plowing that preceded planting. The boy was left by himself in the shade of a tree, and he looked at the freshly plowed soil, with young grasses torn up, and insects and their eggs disrupted. He felt sorrow, but it was a beautiful day, and the sorrow was followed by the transcendent joy of oneness. He sat up straight, with his legs crossed, and stayed for a time in a state of bliss.

Perhaps, thought Gotama, looking back on this time of joy, the way to Nibbana lay in cultivating natural tendencies instead of fighting human nature.

Part ll will look at the development of his teachings.

(Anne Bevilacqua is lifelong book lover and a resident of Haywood County.)