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More than 2,500 years ago, in the sixth century BC, in what is now southern Nepal, a prince and heir is born to the Shakya clan. He is called Siddhartha and has the family name Gautama. His father is the ruler of the state, King Shudodhana. His mother, Maya, dies soon after Siddhartha’s birth and it is his aunt, Mahaprajapati, who brings up the boy under the watchful eye of the king.

A glorious future is predicted for the young prince. He will grow up to be a great and holy teacher or a powerful monarch, the astrologer Asita tells the king. But the king wants his son to succeed him and instinctively fears this might not be. He knows that the young prince’s sensitive nature could turn him into a philosopher, thereby causing him to surrender his birthright. So the king takes extreme measures to screen his son from the harsh realities of the outside world, and Siddhartha grows up in pleasurable isolation within the palace walls, carefully protected from the real world. Eventually he marries the beautiful princess Yasodhara.

Alas for the king, his carefully laid plans crumble when, at the age of twenty-nine, Siddhartha discovers the reality of city life beyond the palace gates. He encounters in quick succession the manifestations of life’s suffering and impermanence – sickness, old age, and death – aspects of life that had been carefully shielded from him. The young prince realizes that all his worldly pleasures, his strong body, and even his life cannot protect him from these creeping forces. He has to confront the inevitability of suffering caused by the impermanence of life and of all things. Siddhartha realizes that his luxurious existence will one day cease and crumble away. These revelations bring despair and his thoughts weigh heavily on his mind. An intense compassion wells up within him.

One day, Siddhartha encounters a homeless wanderer dressed in monk’s robes, whose demeanor belies his appearance, for the man carries himself like a nobleman. Siddhartha is inspired by the wandering mendicant’s search for the true nature of life and identifies with the goal of finding the truth. He makes up his mind to quit the palace to search for answers that can overcome the suffering nature of existence.

The birth of his son, Rahula, strengthens his resolve. Compassion again wells up within him as he realizes that one day his son, too, will have to confront the inevitability of illness, old age, and death. On the night of a full moon, Siddhartha steals out of the palace and rides into the night on his white horse, Kanthaka, while deities support its hooves to muffle the sound. Turning his back on his family and his princely life, he hopes one day to return with answers.

The prince’s determination leads him to study with two famous spiritual teachers, Alara Kalama and Udraka Ramaputra. From them, he acquires techniques of deep meditative absorption, which enable him to attain heightened states of consciousness that bring feelings of great bliss. But these states do not provide the answers Siddhartha is seeking. Death still remains the final reality.

Next he tries the path of intense asceticism. Looking at his body, he surmises that this that is the cause of suffering, so perhaps answers may be found in overcoming its physical demands. Denying the body food and sustenance will perhaps enable it to reach a state whereby he can escape the suffering of illness and old age. So Siddhartha fasts until he is skin and bone. He practices breath control until he nearly keels over. In his determination to discover a realm beyond old age and death, he subjects his body to intense agony and austerity. This discipline transforms his will into steel.

Five other ascetics practice alongside him, and for six years Siddhartha lives in this state of self-denial. But the answers and wisdom that he seek continue to elude him. He begins to realize that denying the body may not be the solution. His health suffers and this makes his mind weak; it is getting clouded and he is making no progress. It seems important to try another way, perhaps a middle road. So Siddhartha accepts some milk rice from Sujata, the wife of a local farmer. This disgusts his fellow practitioners, who believe that his will has weakened, so they abandon Siddhartha and leave for the Deer Park at Sarnath.

Alone, Siddhartha contemplates the new-found strength of his body. Making a cushion from patches of cut grass, he sits in the shade of what will later be identified as the bodhi tree. He resolves to meditate until he finds the path that will lead him to some answers and so bring a permanent end to all suffering.

His mind now takes on an intense clarity, lighting up vast beacons of memory from deep within – he remembers all his past lives and notes the cyclical patterns of birth, death, rebirth, and death, moving relentlessly in a never-ending rhythm. He sees all the beings of the world going through the same cycle. He contemplates how those who have been generous, kind, and loving experience rebirth in happy circumstances, while those who act with hatred, jealousy, anger, and greed inevitably fall into the suffering realms. It is all very clear. Birth and death seem wrapped around the sensations of craving, attachment, and the desire for living. It seems as if the cycle goes on forever.

It is the night of the full moon when Siddhartha begins, and as he sits in contemplative meditation he is continually “attacked” by maras – disturbing forces of delusion that try every way to break his concentration. First come temptations that are placed in his path – wealth and pleasure; then come threats that use fear as an agent of distraction; when this fails, the final weapon is the planting of seeds of doubt in his mind.

But the prince sits unmoved and undisturbed. Then, without breaking his concentration, he extends his right hand and touches the earth with his middle finger. Instantly the earth goddess appears to testify that the meditating prince has in past lives practiced the Six Perfections of generosity, morality, patience, enthusiastic perseverance, concentration, and wisdom. In touching the earth, the Mara forces are defeated and Siddhartha attains a total cessation of all suffering of body and mind, all ignorance and self-centeredness. Time and space vanish, and all ties melt away. In their place there is only total clarity, compassion, and wisdom consciousness, a state that is formless, with no beginning and no end – the state of all knowing; the state of no sorrow; the state of never-ending happiness and bliss!

The human personality of Siddhartha dissolves, and in its place emerges Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, the supreme emanation, the enlightened One, the fully awakened One, the foe-destroyer. Buddha continues to sit, allowing the impact of the new wisdom to permeate his whole being. He is thirty-five years old when he attains enlightenment, and for seven weeks thereafter he remains in meditative repose, enjoying the state of matchless bliss.

Those who are not upset with suffering and not attached to happiness are free of obstacles to Dharma practice are liberated from suffering and happiness and will go to the city of the sorrowless state – a blissful state of peace.

LAMA KYABJE ZOPA RINPOCHE