One day, whilst sitting under a great, spreading, Bo tree
Siddhartha Gautama felt that he was somehow undergoing profound,
and extensive, alterations of realisation and awakening.
Siddhartha remained for seven days under the great tree. It is
from this times that Siddhartha began to be referred to as the
Buddha, a name implying his being Awake and Enlightened. These
few day's spent under the Bo tree are considered to have been the
time of his Enlightenment.
Buddha is said to have "attained Nirvana" - to have achieved
a state where suffering is eliminated through the abandonment of
desires - desires being the cause of suffering. Such
attainmentment is held to bring release from an otherwise endless
succession of reincarnations or rebirths. The term Nirvana has
suggestive associations with a verb indicating cooling, or
possibly, extinguishment!!!
Considering himself to have made significant Spiritual Progress
and that he now had some Buddha teachings that he thought important to share with
others Siddhartha journeyed on foot over one hundred miles to
Benares.
Buddha's Enlightenment was experienced whilst living a life
that was neither overly luxurious nor overly austere. His
teachings were subsequently framed against an idea of a "Middle
Way" that avoided such extremes. In a deer park he delivered the
celebrated "The Sermon at Benares" in which are included two of
the more central Buddha teachings i.e. the "Four Noble
Truths" and the "Noble Eightfold Path".
The First Noble Truth is that old age, illness, and death are
all forms of human suffering, and that there are many other other
ways in which people suffer. The Buddha accepted the Vedic idea
of endlessly successive reincarnations where life followed upon
life, with much suffering inevitably attending in each of these
lives. The idea of Karma further sugesting that in each existence
a person's good or bad deeds would respectively impact positively
or negatively on their store of "merit". It was this Karma-merit
that would underpin the advantageous, or pitiful, state into
which individual reincarnations would occur.
The Second Noble Truth is that suffering is closely linked
to desire, a desire for being which leads from birth to death and
involve ageing, illness, and mortality. There are also various
desires for pleasures and for powers which, frustratingly, may
not be realised.
The Third Noble Truth is that suffering can be dispelled by
the abandonment of all desires.
The last of the Four Noble Truths holds that such
abandonment of desires can be achieved by following the Noble
Eightfold Path
Right Belief (in the Truth)
Right Intent (to do good rather than evil)
Right Speech (avoidance of untruth, slander and swearing)
Right Behaviour (avoid blameworthy behaviours)
Right Livelihood (some occupations e.g. butcher, publican, were
disparaged!!!)
Right Effort (towards the good)
Right Contemplation (of the Truth)
Right Concentration (will result from following the Noble
Eightfold Path)
Siddhatha Gautama's Buddha teachings were to provide the
basis for the establishment of Buddhism as a most significant
religious and philosophical movement - in India for more than a
thousand years - with Buddhism also spreading widely into other
parts of Asia.
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