Oh, Buddha! Who are you and where are you? Are you Siddhartha? Or are you Gautama or are you the only enlightened? Are you one of the millions of avatars of The only Supreme Being?
Are you Siddhartha?
Are you the Savior born in a royal family as an established Kshatriya warrior to fight against the evils of the cursed caste system? I am sure the iron grip of the caste system over your royal members and your subjects alike should have shocked your truth seeking and straight forward mind. Your reasoning must have been perturbed by the brutishness of that brutal caste system. Did the horrified inner conflict of your conscience force you, Siddhartha, to seek a cloistered life?
Oh Gautama what was haunting you? The birth or the death?
I know your mind was haunted with the two questions that emerged in you repeatedly. Was it birth, the product of love? Or was it death, the denial of love?
Who was Siddhartha Gautama? That was a tormenting question in me for a long time. Was he a King who conquered the spiritual world by conquering his self? Or was he a sadhu who sat under a tree searching answers for some labyrinth riddles? Then how did the world rename a man who was already called by the name Siddhartha?
The names Siddhartha Gautama and Buddha have a very deep meaning in them containing the whole life history of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha. Gautama is the name of the family in which Siddhartha, the son of Suddhodhana and Maya Devi, was born. Siddhartha means a man accomplished his aim or mission of life. Buddha means the one who was enlightened.
Siddhartha's aim in life was to find out the answer for the question that was drilling his mind and soul- to achieve the aim of existence. Not content with his life of luxury, Siddhartha, at the age of twenty nine decided to venture out to find out the solution for his inner thirst. He abandoned his kingship and set out.
In his travels he came across a diseased man, a decaying corpse and an ascetic. Depressed, he wanted to find a way to overcome old age, disease and death. He began his mission by begging for alms in the street. At insight in him which told him that enlightenment would come through meditation and fasting, he nearly starved himself to death.
Siddhartha, the king-heir, sat in an intense yogic meditation beneath a pipal tree, now called Bodhi tree, near Benares. At the end of this meditation, in a single night, Siddhartha came to understand all his previous lives and the entirety of the cycle of birth and rebirth, or samsara, and most importantly, figured out how to end the cycle of infinite sorrow. At this point, Siddhartha became the Buddha, or "Awakened One." Instead, however, of passing out of this cycle himself, he returned to the world of humanity in order to teach his new insights and help free humanity of their suffering.
Buddha began to teach the middle path of his enlightenment. Since the mind and body are connected, it was wrong to have complete self denial as mind cannot concentrate when the body is without strength. Over indulgence on the other hand is not wise either as the mind cannot concentrate. The goal was to not live a completely worldly life but on the other hand do not live a life in complete denial.
He preached the Four Noble Truths are the secret to true peace and happiness.
They are: the Noble Truth of Unsatisfactoriness, the Noble truth of the Cause (Craving), the Noble Truth of Cessation, and the Noble Eight-fold Path leading to the cessation of all suffering. The wheel of Dharma had been set in motion.
For forty-five years the Buddha went about the country preaching and persuading men to follow his way of life, but at last, at Vaisali on the way from Rajagriha to Sravasti, he became ill and predicted that after three months he would enter into the Nirvana. Still he journeyed on until he reached Pava where he was made critically ill. Then by easy stages in spite of great pain and weakness, he reached the forest on the border of Kuninagara castle. He continued his teachings to his favorite disciples until the last moment. Thus passed into the unknown the greatest of the world's teachers and the kindest of men.
At a time when the world was in search of the answers for human suffering, Buddha rose to teach the true path of peace. The man of enlightenment lit the lamp of Truth to cast away the darkness of ignorance.
Yes, the firewood in a man called Siddhartha became a fire called Buddha!
