Читать книгу 20 MINUTES TO MASTER … BUDDHISM - Kulananda - Страница 10

‘Buddha’ is not a name, it is a title, meaning ‘One Who is Awake’ – awake to the highest reality, to things as they really are. And one becomes a Buddha through achieving Enlightenment – a state of transcendental insight into the true nature of reality. There have been many Enlightened individuals throughout Buddhist history, but the term ‘the Buddha’ is usually used to refer to one particular Enlightened individual, Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of the Buddhist religion, the first person in our era to tread the path to Enlightenment.

Siddhartha was born in about 485 BCE (Before Common Era) in Lumbini, near the town of Kapilavastu in the area below the foothills of the Himalayas which spans the current Nepalese border with India. It was a time of great political change. In the central Ganges basin, not very far to the south, powerful new monarchies were emerging which were gradually swallowing up the older, clan-based republics. One or two republics, however, still held out, and it was into one of these, that of the Shakyans, that Siddhartha Gautama was born.

Siddhartha’s family belonged to the warrior class, and his father was a member of the ruling oligarchy. Later tradition, knowing only the monarchies which soon usurped the earlier republics, dubbed Siddhartha a ‘prince’, and his father, Suddhodana, the ‘king’; but whatever his correct designation, we know that Suddhodana was rich and powerful and that the young Siddhartha led a privileged life.

At his birth, a seer predicted that the young boy was destined for either political or spiritual empire (his name, Siddhartha, means ‘he whose aim will be accomplished’). The legendary biographies tell that in his early life his father, wishing that his handsome and accomplished son should choose a life of political rather than spiritual empire, sought to attach him to the advantages of wealth and power by providing him with every available luxury, and keeping him sheltered from the harsher facts of the world about him. He arranged for Siddhartha’s marriage to a beautiful and refined young woman, Yashodhara, and she bore him a son, Rahula.

But Siddhartha began to develop an acute sense of dissatisfaction. He sensed the hollowness which underlay his superficially comfortable life, and he was unable to brush this feeling aside. His innate integrity wouldn’t allow him to pretend that everything was as it should be. He was driven to intellectual and spiritual exploration, seeking for answers which his privileged environment was unable to provide. This period of questioning is vividly expressed by the story of the four sights – four formative experiences which occurred to the young trainee-warrior whilst travelling abroad in his chariot.

The story goes that at the side of the road one day he caught his first ever sight of an old man, and thus realized, for the first time, the inevitable fact of old age. Similarly, he was confronted in turns by disease and by death. These experiences completely overwhelmed him. What was the point of living a life of ease and luxury when old age, disease and death were waiting in the wings – quietly biding their time before they came to claim him, his family and friends? Finally he saw a wandering mendicant, the sight of whom sowed in his mind the seed of the possibility that there was an alternative to the passive acceptance of old age, disease and death. But, at the same time, he saw that to embark on such a quest would require radical, even painful, action.

And so Siddhartha passed his early years – restless, worried by matters of profound existential concern and torn between the life for which ancestry had prepared him and the religious quest towards which his restless spirit propelled him. His insight into the inevitable facts of old age, disease and death, left him with an acute and ineradicable sense of the painful vacuity of the ‘pleasures’ and plottings of upper-class Shakyan life. Ancestral duty demanded that he join in, put his sense of the hollowness of things aside, and get on with the business of warriorship and government. Yet, at his core, where he was truest to himself, he knew that a life which denied the fundamentals of reality was not for him. He saw that he had two stark options: he could deny himself reality or he could deny himself family, luxury and power. He chose to seek reality, and at the age of 29, without the approval or even knowledge of his wife and father, he stole away from home, leaving behind wife, child, family and social status. He cut off his hair and beard, swapped his warrior garb for the rag robes of a religious mendicant, and began his search for truth and liberation.

It was an unsettled time. Rival kings, striving to establish ever larger kingdoms, were gradually absorbing and centralizing the earlier family – and tribe-oriented social structures. The old religion of the Vedas and its Brahminical priesthood was increasingly associated with these centralized governments, and a new class of religious practitioner was emerging. These were the wandering ascetics, who, dissatisfied with social conventions and with the empty ritualism of established religion, gave up their homes and social positions to wander at will in the world, living on alms and seeking spiritual liberation.

Siddhartha became a ‘wanderer’.

He sought out the most famous spiritual teachers of his time, but soon surpassed them in spiritual attainment and, realizing that even the lofty heights to which they had led him didn’t provide the answers he was looking for, he left each of them in turn and continued on his quest alone.

It was a commonly accepted belief at the time that one liberated the spirit by weakening the prison of the flesh, and for the next six years Siddhartha engaged in the practice of extreme religious austerities. He wore no clothes, didn’t wash and went without food and sleep for increasingly long periods.

All my limbs became like the knotted joints of withered creepers, my buttocks like a bullock’s hoof, my protruding backbone like a string of balls, my gaunt ribs like the crazy rafters of a tumbledown shed. My eyes lay deep in their sockets, their pupils sparkling like water in a deep well. As an unripe gourd shrivels and shrinks in a hot wind, so became my scalp. If I thought, ‘I will touch the skin of my belly’, it was the skin of my backbone that I also took hold of, since the skin of my belly and my back met. The hairs, rotting at the roots, fell away from my body when I stroked my limbs.1

Renowned for the extent of his asceticism, his fame ‘rang like a bell’ throughout northern India, and he began to attract a following. But he was still not satisfied. Six years after leaving home, he was no nearer to resolving the fundamental questions of existence than he had been at the beginning of his quest. Realizing that his austerities had led him nowhere, despite his great name and reputation as a holy ascetic, Siddhartha had the moral courage to abandon his previous course. He began to eat in moderation, and his former disciples, scandalized by this backsliding, left him in disgust.

He was now completely alone. Family, clan, reputation, followers – all abandoned. All his attempts to break through the veil of ignorance had failed. Desolate, he didn’t know which way to turn next. Only one thing was certain – he would not abandon his quest.

At this point a memory rose to the surface of his mind. When he was quite young, sitting in the shade of a rose-apple tree, he had watched his father ploughing. Relaxed by the slow, steady rhythm of the ox-team, content in the cool shade, he had spontaneously slipped into a concentrated meditative state – might that be the way to Enlightenment?

In this state of acute existential solitude, his determination unshaken, according to legend Siddhartha sat down under a tree with this declaration:

Flesh may wither away, blood may dry up, but I shall not leave this seat until I gain Enlightenment!

For days and nights he sat there in meditation.

The legends present a vivid account of the existential struggle which Siddhartha was now engaged in. It was time for his confrontation with Mara, the Evil One – the archetypal embodiment of all that stands between us and the truth.

Seeing Siddhartha sitting thus determinedly in meditation, Mara shook with fright:

He had with him his three sons – Flurry, Gaiety and Sullen Pride – and his three daughters – Discontent, Delight and Thirst. These asked him why he was so disconcerted in his mind. And he replied to them with these words: ‘Look over there at that sage, clad in the armour of determination, with truth and spiritual virtue as his weapons, the arrows of his intellect drawn, ready to shoot! He has sat down with the firm intention of conquering my realm. No wonder that my mind is plunged in deep despondency! If he should succeed in overcoming me, and should proclaim to the world the way to final beatitude, then my realm would be empty today. But so far he has not yet won the eye of full knowledge. He is still within my sphere of influence. While there is time I will therefore break his solemn purpose, and throw myself against him like the rush of a swollen river breaking against the embankment!’

But Mara could achieve nothing against the Buddha-to-be, and he and his army were defeated, and fled in all directions – their elation gone, their toil rendered fruitless, their rocks, logs, trees scattered everywhere. They behaved like a hostile army whose commander had been slain in battle. So Mara, defeated, ran away together with his followers. The great seer, free from the dust of passion, victorious over darkness’s gloom, had vanquished him.2

Siddhartha sat calmly beneath the tree, allowing his mind to become still. Gradually, all the different currents of his psyche began to flow together. Steadily, his concentration increased. As it grew more and more focused, Siddhartha’s mind became clearer and brighter. Not allowing anything to impede this process, Siddhartha let it grow and strengthen. On and on, deeper and deeper into meditation, his mind became clear as a blazing diamond, glowing with ever increasing brilliance. It was intensely pleasurable, but Siddhartha wasn’t distracted by the pleasure – letting go of it, he entered states of increasingly profound equanimity.

Gradually, the bright rays of his concentrated mind began to light up the past. He remembered all the details of his past, back to his earliest childhood and then, suddenly, he saw back even further than that, and he began to recall his previous life. As his concentration deepened he saw further and further back – an endless stream of lives, arising and passing away in unceasing succession. Here he had been born, with this name, lived in that way, died at such an age and had been reborn in such a place – again and again, over and over. He saw each life in complete detail. On and on, the rhythm repeated unendingly. Birth, growth, disease and death; birth, growth, disease and death – an endless round.

Then the barriers which had divided him off from others fell away and he saw before him the lives of countless other beings, their struggles, successes and failures, and he felt the unfailing rhythm of their lives: birth and death, birth and death, birth and death – the timeless pulse of suffering humanity.

Siddhartha began to discern a pattern within this ceaseless flux of change. Those whose lives had been based in kindness and generosity were reborn in happy circumstances, those who gave way to greed and hatred were inevitably reborn in states of suffering. Watching life after life he found that he could predict the outcomes of people’s actions. Those who spread happiness generated happy circumstances for themselves; those who caused pain and separation found themselves alone in a hostile world. It was so clear and yet, preoccupied with their petty dealings, people failed to see it.

Siddhartha began to identify each step of the process whereby the unending stream of birth and death took place. Birth and death followed from craving. It was their deep craving for existence which led beings from life to life in an endless round of suffering. With the ceasing of craving, birth, death and suffering also ceased. Having directly apprehended the link between craving and suffering, Siddhartha could no longer be misled into believing that craving could bring happiness in its train. This brought about a dramatic change in his being. All traces of his own craving died away. Birth and death dissolved. The limited, human personality ‘Siddhartha’ simply dropped away. All that was left was total, luminous clarity. Perfect understanding. Infinite freedom and unrestricted creativity.

In the final watch of that full moon night in May, complete Enlightenment had finally dawned. Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha.

And the moon, like a maiden’s gentle smile, lit up the heavens, while a rain of sweet-scented flowers, filled with moisture, fell down on the earth from above.3

Siddhartha spent several weeks absorbing this profound experience. He pondered for some time whether or not he could make his discovery of Enlightenment known to others – it was so subtle. To penetrate into it required calm and great concentration, people were so caught up in their petty desires, getting and spending; so attached to family, friends, wealth and reputation.

Then, the legend runs, a celestial being appeared and begged him to teach, for there were some beings in the world ‘with but little dust on their eyes’ who were perishing for want of the teachings.

With the eye of his imagination, the Buddha surveyed all the beings in the world. He saw all living beings as a vast bed of lotus flowers. Some flowers were sunk deep in the mire, others had raised their heads to the level of the water, and yet others had risen quite above the water – though they had their roots in the mud they were reaching up towards the light. There were beings who would understand what he had to say. The Buddha decided to teach.

Leaving the place we now know as Bodh Gaya, he walked the hundred or so miles to Sarnath, near the ancient city of Varanasi, where some of his former disciples were staying in a deer park. As he approached they looked to one another in disgust – here was the backslider Gotama, the former recluse. What did he want? They were certainly not going to receive him with respect. But as the Buddha approached they were so taken with his calm, radiant demeanour that they couldn’t help but defer to him.

These were stubborn men. Hardened by years of asceticism, full-timers in the spiritual quest, they thought they had heard it all. But the Buddha seemed to be approaching life from an entirely new dimension. There was something inexplicably different about him. They got down to debate – tough, straight talking, going to the very heart of things. Their discussions went on for days. Every now and again someone would leave to beg alms for the others, and then return to the fray. The Buddha’s conviction and confidence was absolute. He had found the skilful Middle Way to Enlightenment, a path leading between the extremes of hedonism and asceticism; nihilism and eternalism.

Finally, the ascetic Kaundinya broke through. He saw what the Buddha was driving at, not just intellectually – he had the same kind of experience that the Buddha had under the tree at Bodh Gaya. His attachment to his own limited personality dropped away and he, too, was now free from the bondage of craving.

The Buddha was delighted – ‘Kaundinya knows!’ he exclaimed, ‘Kaundinya knows!’ What the Buddha had discovered could be made known. If Kaundinya could understand, then others could too. Humanity would benefit from these teachings. Over the next few days the other ascetics also became Enlightened. Then a young man called Yasa came by. Engaging the Buddha in discussion, he was convinced of the truth of the teachings, and so brought his family and friends along to hear them. In this way a new spiritual community – a Sangha – came into being. Soon there were 60 Enlightened beings in the world, and the Buddha sent them out to teach ‘for the welfare and happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world’.

For the next 45 years the Buddha wandered around northern India. Sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by members of the growing community that was coming into being around him. As he wandered, he taught. Kings, courtesans, sweepers and householders; all kinds of people came to hear the Buddha teach. What he taught was the Dharma.

Dharma is a complex Sanskrit word (in Pali, the other main language of the ancient Indian Buddhist texts, it is ‘Dhamma’). It can mean law, or way, or truth. Here, it stands for all those teachings and practices which lead one towards Enlightenment. Over time, the Dharma which the Buddha taught came to be systematized. Repeated for hundreds of years in a purely oral tradition (the Buddha himself, like most of his kinsmen, was probably illiterate) the Dharma eventually formed the basis of an immense literary tradition, but at the start of it all there was just the Buddha, wandering about, trying to get people to see things more clearly, freely sharing his wisdom for the sake of all living beings, helping others to move towards the transcendental insight which he himself had attained.

Over the course of his life, the Buddha’s fame as a teacher spread throughout northern India, an area of 50,000 square miles, encompassing seven different nations. He was known as Shakyamuni – ‘the Sage of the Shakya Clan’ – and there was an immense general interest in what he had to say. Enlightened at about 35, he lived until about 80, and all of those 45 years were given over to teaching. Except in the rainy season, when he and whatever followers were with him retired into retreat, he walked the hot and dusty roads, passing through villages and cities, living on alms, taking only what was freely offered to him, and addressing himself to all who wanted to hear what he had to say, irrespective of sex, caste, vocation or religion. Amongst his followers were two of the principal kings of the region, members of most of the leading republican families, and some of the wealthiest merchants. On his travels he came into close personal contact with wandering ascetics, peasants, artisans, shopkeepers and robbers. People of all castes poured into his Sangha, where they lost their separate designations of caste and class – becoming simply ‘followers of the Buddha’.

Wherever he could, the Buddha tried to help people to see things as they really are, responding to every situation out of the depths of his wisdom and compassion. One day, for example, a woman called Kisa Gotami came to see him. Her child had died and she was distraught. Clutching the dead baby to her breast, she rushed about, looking for that medicine which would restore the child to life. Thrusting the dead child up at the Buddha, she wailed – ‘Please, please! Give me medicine for my baby!’

‘Very well,’ said the Buddha, ‘but first you must bring me a mustard seed.’

A mustard seed! How easy!

‘But,’ the Buddha added, ‘it must come from a house where no one has died.’

Kisa Gotami rushed off to beg for her mustard seed. She dashed from house to house. People were very willing to help her, but whenever she asked ‘Has anyone ever died in this house?’ the answer was the same. ‘Alas, yes. The dead are many and the living are few.’

Kisa Gotami was utterly beside herself. Where was she going to find the mustard seed she so badly needed? As she passed from house to house the message gradually began to sink in. Death comes to all. There is no getting away from it. She returned to the Buddha and laid down her dead child. ‘I know now that I am not alone in this great grief. Death comes to all.’

Kisa Gotami joined the Sangha and, in due course, became Enlightened.

Another time the Buddha found himself in a part of the country which was being terrorized by a bandit called Angulimala – ‘Finger Necklace’ – who, after killing his victims, had the gruesome habit of cutting off one of their fingers and adding it to a string of them which he wore around his neck. His ambition was to acquire 100 such fingers. At the time we are speaking of he had 98, and he was so desperate to reach his goal that he was just beginning to think that he might have to kill his old mother, who lived with him and did the cooking.

As the Buddha came to the area where Angulimala lived, the terrified villagers begged him not to go any further, for the danger was immense. But the Buddha quietly ignored their pleas and set out at a steady pace, calm and alert as ever.

Angulimala saw a figure approaching. ‘Who dares to come like this into my territory, so calm and steady?’ He was used to people trying to keep under cover, rushing anxiously through. ‘Very well. Finger number 99 coming up!’ And he grabbed for his sword and set off in pursuit of the Buddha. But however fast he ran he couldn’t keep up with the Buddha, who was walking at his usual steady pace. This so intrigued Angulimala that he couldn’t help but call out, ‘Hey! Stop, monk, stop!’

The Buddha turned. ‘I have stopped, Angulimala. You stop too.’

‘How can you lie like that? And you a holy man!’ exclaimed an indignant Angulimala. ‘I can’t catch up with you even though I am running as fast as I can. How can you say that you are standing still?’

‘I am standing still, because I am standing in Nirvana,’ the Buddha replied. ‘You are moving, because you are going round and round on the Wheel of Rebirth.’

Angulimala was so moved by the Buddha’s calm demeanour and compassionate attitude that he gave up violence and begged to be allowed to become one of the Buddha’s followers. He joined the Sangha and made rapid spiritual progress.

One day a king came to see the Buddha. They got into discussion and the question arose as to who was the happier, the king or the Buddha. ‘Of course I’m happier,’ said the king, ‘I’ve got palaces, wives, courtiers, wealth, armies, horses and elephants. I have power, fame – anything I want. What do you have? A robe, a begging bowl, a few scruffy followers …’

‘Tell me,’ asked the Buddha, ‘could you sit here for an hour, doing nothing at all, fully alert, enjoying complete happiness?’

‘Er … I suppose I could,’ replied the king.

‘And could you sit here for six hours – without moving – enjoying complete and perfect happiness?’

‘Ah … that would be rather difficult,’ said the king.

‘And could you sit here for a day and a night, without moving, being perfectly happy, all the time?’

The king admitted that would be beyond him.

‘But I can sit here for seven days and seven nights, without stirring, all the time enjoying complete and perfect happiness,’ said the Buddha. ‘Therefore, I think I am happier than you.’

And so the Sangha grew and the Dharma spread far and wide. But the Buddha wasn’t interested in disciples simply for the sake of a large following. Nor did he want people to follow him out of blind faith. He wanted people to check his teachings out in practice. To try them out and see if they actually worked for them.

Once a group of young men from the Kalama clan came to visit him. They were confused as to the rival claims of the different spiritual teachers of the day. They all seemed to make contradictory claims. How were they to choose between them? The Buddha replied:

Do not go by hearsay nor by what is handed down by others. Nor by what people say, nor by what is stated on the authority of your traditional teachings. Do not go by reasoning, nor by inferring, nor by argument as to method, nor by reflection on and approval of an opinion; nor out of respect – thinking that a teacher must be deferred to. But, when you know of yourselves: ‘These teachings are not good; they are blameworthy; they are condemned by the wise: these teachings, when followed out and put in practice, conduce to loss and suffering’ – then reject them.4

So, yes, we have to refer to people wiser than ourselves. Teachings must, after all, be taught, and some ‘are condemned by the wise’, but nonetheless we must test everything we hear in the crucible of our own practice and experience. If teachings lead to happiness and gain, we can accept them. If they lead to loss and suffering, they must be rejected.

Finally, at the age of 80, his body worn out and racked with pain, the Buddha made one final teaching tour, giving all his friends and followers one final chance to ask him any questions they might have about the teaching. To the last he was completely aware and concerned only for the welfare of others. A wanderer called Subhadra came to see him on his death-bed, and Ananda, the Buddha’s companion, turned him away, not wanting the Buddha to be disturbed at such a time. But the Buddha insisted on talking with him and Subhadra, soon convinced of the truth of the Dharma, joined the Sangha.

Then the Buddha asked if any of the assembled Sangha had any doubts or questions about his teaching. With typical thoughtfulness, he allowed that those who were too embarrassed to ask for themselves might do so through a friend. The answer was a resounding silence. The Buddha had made the Dharma perfectly clear. Seeing this, he gave a final exhortation to his followers: ‘All conditioned things are impermanent! With mindfulness, strive!’ And with that he entered into a state of deep meditation and passed away.

For most of his teaching career, the Buddha was accompanied by his cousin and close friend Ananda, who is reputed to have had a prodigious memory. All the doctrinal stories in the Buddhist scriptures are attributed to him, for apparently he remembered all the different occasions on which the Buddha taught, and recounted them in full to a council of the Sangha which was called after the Buddha’s death, thus laying the foundations of an oral tradition which preserved the teachings until they began to be committed to writing several hundred years later.

For the last 2,500 years the Buddha’s teachings have enabled countless men and women to achieve liberation – ‘the heart’s release’. In the Deer Park in Sarnath, with his former ascetic followers, the Buddha set rolling the Wheel of the Dharma. Since then it has rolled on down the centuries – through India and Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Tibet, China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. Millions upon millions of people have been deeply affected by the Teaching. Wherever it went it wrought profound personal, social and cultural change.

But what exactly is the Dharma? And what use can it be – a body of teaching which was propounded 2,500 years ago in India?