Buddhism 2
Buddhism 2Before Buddha had started teaching, many people were
ignorant of their feelings and could not understand a
lot of their senses. Before Buddha, people suffered
without understanding why. Buddha taught people how to
release themselves from this daily suffering. They
learned that the pathway to self-righteousness was
bordered with the release from suffering. Buddha’s way
of life has benefited the whole world because now
people can choose to understand why we are suffering,
and how we can be released from it.
In the depths of India in C.563 b.c., a child
was born. His parents named him Siddartha Guatama, and
it was prophesized that he would one day become a
universal emperor or teacher. Siddartha’s father was
a wealthy ruler of an important tribe called “shakya”1
Young Siddartha spent his early life enclosed within
the walls of the palace, where he was sheltered from
anything but luxury, and serenity. He was not
satisfied with only material possessions. Siddartha
felt like he needed something else in his life. So he
pleaded to his father that he could become a follower
of the polytheistic religion that was at that time the
only religion in India. When his father refused,
Siddartha stood in one place for days on end, until his
father agreed. So Siddartha left his enclosed palace
and set out on his own.
Not long after he started his venture out of
his home, Siddartha ran across four things he had never
seen before. These four things were to be called the
four signs. The four signs were; old age, sickness,
death, and true serenity. These four men were really
gods put there so Siddartha could learn what else lies
beyond the pure luxury that he knows so well.
Siddartha soon realized that the first three men stood
for the presence of suffering, and the fourth man stood
for the release of suffering. From that point on,
Siddartha knew that his mission would be to solve the
riddle of suffering and figure out a way to overcome
it. He found a Bo tree nearby and swore he would sit
beneath the tree and contemplate the reasoning behind
suffering until he could solve the riddle. There he
sat until after 49 days, when he rose and found the
holy men whom he had made friends with, he gave his
first sermon, and soon he had a whole group of
followers. By reciting his first sermon, Siddartha was
“setting in motion the wheel of the law”2 It was
apparent that Siddartha had taken a major step toward
enlightenment. His many trusted followers had noticed
this and they gave him the name “Buddha”. Buddha is a
western Indian Sanskrit name. “Budh” meaning “to wake
up, or to know”. Buddha’s goal was to escape...
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