Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha, has undoubtedly been one of the most influential personalities in the history of mankind. In this article we will make a brief summary of his life and his teaching.
Siddhartha was born in the city of Kapilavastu, in northern India, in the 6th century BC , in the full moon of May, in the bosom of the nobility. His mother, Queen Maya, died a few days after giving birth. There were several prophecies during his birth, one of them was that he would be a great king or a great renunciate , for this reason, his father, King Sudodana protected him from all religious teaching and kept him from suffering.
He married Yasodhara and had a son named Rajula, and at 29 years of age his life changed when he met for the first time in his life with an old man, a sick man, a corpse and an ascetic. From that moment he decided that he would overcome suffering and death, so he abandoned his family and his palace to become a renunciate .
For the next six years he wandered through India learning from different yoga teachers all kinds of techniques to achieve liberation. He underwent hard asceticism, fasting and long meditation sessions, until at age 35 he almost died drowned when bathing in a river, due to his weakness caused by mortifications and fasting. Then he understood: the secret was in balance, in the middle ... Not too many mortifications, not too much hedonism. Moderation, balance, not falling into excesses of any kind. For this reason he called his way, "the middle way.
"Shortly after he reached Nirvana, the supreme state, after a 49-day meditation in a row under a fig tree. From there, Siddhartha Gautama was known as "the Buddha," which means "the awake."
For the next 45 years he devoted himself to teaching his doctrine in northwestern India, until he died at 80 years of age. Later his disciples spread his teaching throughout Asia in what is now known as Buddhism. That was more than 2500 years ago ...
His teaching is based on the 4 noble truths :
There is suffering.
The origin of suffering is desire.
It is possible to free yourself from suffering.
The noble eightfold path is the path that leads to liberation.
The noble eightfold pathconsists of the following points:
Correct understanding.
Right thinking.
Right word.
Correct action.
Right livelihoods.
Right effort.
Correct attention.
Correct concentration.
In short : His teaching is based on moderation , ethics and compassion , and especially on meditation.
To follow the path of Buddha, from my point of view, it is not necessary to become a Buddhist or dress with any habit, it is enough to be moderate, compassionate and acquire the habit of meditating.
I have further developed the topic in the following video:
I highly recommend the following readings:
- Buddha, his life and teachings . Osho - Siddhartha . Hermann Hesse
To set this article, some music with Tibetan incantations .
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