There are Buddha statues all over the place in Japan, of course. They range from little plastic knick-knacks to giant stone or metal works of wonder. When I first saw the forty-foot high bronse Daibutsu (literally, "Big Buddha") at Todaiji in Nara during the New Year's celebration, I wept.
But there is another Daibutsu in the hills outside of Tokyo, in the old feudal capital of Kamakura, that I think I like even better. The Kamakura Daibutsu is smaller by a hair than the one in Nara, but more striking because it sits outdoors. The temple hall that surrounded it was washed away in a tsunami several centuries ago, so that the giant Buddha sits there among the hills, meditating like some sort of zazen Ultraman. Your first view of it as you enter the temple and come around the corner is stunning.
The Kamakura Daibutsu inspired Rudyard Kipling to write,
But when the morning prayer is prayed,
Think, ere ye pass to strife and trade,
Is God in human image made
No nearer than Kamakura?
and Aleister Crowley to state, "The Daibutsu, colossal amid his gardens of iris, with no canopy but the sky, does really produce a sense of his universality; it does remind one of the grandeur and solidity of his teaching; of the reasonableness of his methods of attainment, the impersonal peace which is their reward; and of the boundless scope of his philosophy, independent as it is of all arbitrary assumptions, parochial points of view, sordid appeals and soul-stupefying superstitions."
The Kamakura statue is a portrayal of the Amida ("infinite light") Buddha, while that in Nara of the Dainichi ("great sun") Buddha -- two of many ancient past, distant future, and supernaturally cosmic Buddhas that were eventually invented by various sects. But all the depictions of Buddhas are inspired by recorded descriptions of the prince Siddhartha Gautama, the person who became known as the historical Buddha. He is said to have been an extremely handsome man, which probably helped him in spreading his message: all else being equal, a teacher of noble birth and fine appearance can make much more of an impact than a goofy-looking wise man from the working classes.
The Early Years
[Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path, White Clouds is an excellent account of the life of the Buddha. The account here draws from that and from many other sources.]
The man who would become the historical Buddha ("awakened one", one of many titles bestowed on him by his followers) was born around 560 B.C.E. in northern India. Siddhartha's father was a king of the Sakya clan, and Siddhartha was his firstborn and heir. Siddhartha's mother died a few days after giving birth to him, and her sister became his step-mother.
As often happens to spiritual leaders, a number of legends have sprung up surrounding his birth. For example, one of the more spectacular stories has it that the baby Siddhartha was not born in the usual fashion, but emerged from his mother's side, took several steps, pointed up to the sky and down to to the Earth, and said "In all of Heaven and Earth, I alone am the World-Honored one!" (To which Zen master Ummon responded centuries later, "If I had been there, I would have killed the arrogant child and thrown his body to the dogs!")
Another legend is that a prophecy was made that if the young prince stayed on the worldly path, he would be a great king; but if he took to the spiritual path, he would be a redeemer of all of humankind.
We might dismiss the idea of supernatural glimpses of the future, and there are other sources that give a more historical account of the Buddha's life. But this mythic version highlights the tension that would later emerge within the seeker's family -- would he go off and seek enlightenment while he was still young? Or would he do his family duty, take the throne, produce an heir, and perhaps in his old age devote his energies and time to spiritual matters? The latter was the "respectable" path, as seen by his culture.
The mythic version also leads to the story of the Four Sights, one of the great "calls to adventure" in mythology. The story goes something like this:
After the prophecy, the young Siddhartha's parents took care to keep him firmly attached to this world. He was sheltered and protected in the palace, surrounded by beauty and never exposed to anything unpleasant in the outside world.
He was taught the arts of war and of pleasure as befits a future king: wrestling and archery, dancing and music. And when he grew older, the arts of love. A marriage was arranged to a beautiful and charming princess, and a son was born.
But Siddhartha was still curious about the world that had been hidden from him, and one day he was able to sneak out of the palace.
For the first time he saw sickness, old age, and death. He was horrified -- was this truly the way of the world? How could anyone endure the pain of it?
Then, by the side of the road, in the middle of all this horror, he saw one man who seemed calm and serene in the midst of it, a wandering mendicant who had given up his home and possessions to live the life of a spiritual seeker.
Sidhartha returned to the palace but was haunted by what he had seen. He knew then that he had to find out what that wandering ascetic knew that let him maintain his equanimity. A few nights later he snuck out of the palace. His charioteer accompanied him to the edge of the kingdom, where Siddhartha chopped off his own hair and headed off into the forest; his charioteer returned to the palace with the Siddhartha's hair, sword, and jewels as a farewell to his family.
Of course it probably didn't happen that way. Sources from the Pali cannon suggest a more gradual turn to the spiritual life. Some texts claim that the trigger for Siddhartha to leave his comfortable life was that one night he looked around at the sleeping women of his harem and saw his concubines in the absence of their artful charms, saw how empty his diversions had been.
But whatever the details, he left his life of luxury to live as an ascetic and to study with the best teachers that he could find.
At this time, the mainstream religion of Brahmanism was riddled with corruption. In opposition to it, many wisdom schools of yoga arose.
When most of us think of "yoga", we think of the system of physical culture. But the word yoga comes from the same root as "yoke" -- again, we find the notion of binding, of connecting. Hinduism developed several yogas, methods of training designed to create connection or unity: the physical culture of hatha yoga, the jnana yoga of knowledge and intellectual inquiry, the bhakti yoga of love and devotion, the karma yoga of work, and the raja yoga of psychological experiments and mental exploration through meditation. It was on the latter that Siddhartha focused.
(It's worth noting that the others forms of yoga would all spring up again in new forms as Buddhism grew -- the intellectual discipline of the sutra masters, the devotional forms of Shin Buddhism, the working meditations of Zen monks.)
Siddhartha sought out the best teachers in the land, but he was unable to find one who could satisfy him. With his combination of a keen mind and amazing determination, he was soon able to match every teacher he found, and plumb the totality of their methods. He learned to enter many altered states of consciousness, but he realized that this was not getting him closer to the problem of dealing with suffering.
Having tried all the mental methods available, Sidhartha turned to physical disciplines. He went for extreme asceticism -- sitting perfectly still for hours, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth so hard that the sweat beaded on his brow, disciplining himself to eat only a handful of beans a day, neglecting hygiene until the dirt fell off of him from its own weight.
He was as much master of his fleshly desires as any man has been. And as asceticism was a popular spiritual path at the time, his success in this won him a small crowd of followers. But it wasn't getting him to enlightenment. In fact, according to some versions of the tale it nearly killed him -- he passed out from starvation, and would have died, were it not for a young girl who found him collapsed in the road, overcame her fear that this emaciated collection of bone and parchment-like skin was a demon, and fed him.
He had pursued asceticism as far as was possible, and not found what he sought. He had investigated all the schools of philosophy and yoga available, and found them wanting.
He would have to find a new way.
Under a Tree
The climate in the part of India where our story takes place was mild. Mild enough that our hero was able to take his shelter under a banyan tree, among the roots, while he considered and meditated for a space of many weeks.
Having tried the extremes of asceticism and of the life of pleasure, he went for a "middle way", seeking neither to steel himself against pain nor to chase ephemeral pleasures. He ate enough to stay healthy, fully and mindfully enjoying the simple peasant fare given to him. He spent time talking to and teaching some of the local children, in return for food and other support. (A pattern that would persist into the monastic community he built.)
He recalled a time when, as a child, he had spontaneously relaxed into a meditative state while sitting under a rose-apple tree, watching a celebration of the spring planting. He had not sought out any special altered state of consciousness, but had simply relaxed into his own nature. It seems he took that spontaneous meditation, rather than the special trace states of his teachers, as a model for his contemplation during his time under the Bo tree.
As he sat, his mind cleared, and he began to see into his own true nature.
This is never an easy task. Legends say that he strove with demons, that he was tempted by Mara, the lord of illusion, and that the Bo tree bent down to protect him and that the Earth itself testified and bore witness to his right to seek enlightenment.
Whatever the truth of this, whether these stories represent supernatural or psychological truths, Siddhartha persevered and overcame. And a little while afterward, upon seeing the morning star, he achieved his great enlightenment. A few days later, the Buddha gave his first sermon to some of his old followers from his ascetic days, describing what he had found.
Four Noble Truths
In Douglas Adams's famous science fiction radio play, and later novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an advanced civilization builds a giant computer to determine "the answer to life, the universe, and everything".
The computer announces that the problem is tricky, but can be solved in time. After thousands of years of computation, the civilization sends a delegation to receive the long-awaited answer.
The computer reports that the answer is, in fact, 42.
When the delegation expresses their incredulity and disappointment at this result, the computer claims that the answer is perfect; the problem is that the querents never knew exactly what the question was.
I imagine the Buddha's mind moving in a somewhat similar fashion. He had tried all the schools of philosophy, pushed his body to the brink of death, and not found what he was looking for.
But just what was it that he was looking for? What was the Question, the problem he was seeking to solve?
His realization is stated in the First Noble Truth, sometimes translated as "Life is suffering", though perhaps more accurately (and less depressingly, if less concisely) rendered as "Conditioned states of existence are inherently unsatisfying." It is a statement of the problem.
The actual Sanskrit word used is "dukkha", which can be literally translated as "out of joint", in the same sense as a slipped axle on a cart, or a dislocated shoulder.
Our lives are marked with suffering. And this is not merely a material problem, not something we can solve by feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. Of course these are wonderful things to do, but people who have every physical comfort still suffer. We see rich and famous celebrities who blow their brains out. The Buddha had lived the life of luxury himself, and still found it wanting.
To solve the problem, he would have to get to the root of it. This is expressed in the Second Noble Truth: the origin of suffering is desire and attachment.
We want material things, and make ourselves miserable when don't get them -- or we do get them, and find that they are not so wonderful as we dreamed. We are like a child at Christmas, surrounded by gifts but disappointed that we didn't get the BB gun we had fixed our heart on. Or we get do it, and then promptly shoot ourselves in the face with an unfortunate ricochet.
The romantic and sexual relationships that consume so much of our energy and attention are loaded with similar pitfalls. How often we burn with desire for the woman or man we find beautiful, then find that they don't live up to our fantasy.
We are dragged around by our desires like a man being dragged behind a horse.
But beyond the material things, beyond the sensual pleasures, we want certain things from the universe.
Number one, we want not to die! And we want our loved ones to not die. We want not to age, and many of us want our children to not grow up. And we want the initial passion of love to last. We want freedom from flux and change -- never mind that the one inevitable constant in the world is change.
These ideas are encapsulated in the terms sunyatta, "emptiness", and anatman, "no self". Everything is "empty", by which is meant lacking a separate existence. Everything depends on everything else for its existence.
For example, we separate a tree from the sun, the cloud, the rain, and the soil in our minds and words because it's useful for practical ends, but from a deep perspective there is no such separation. When we really look closely at that tree we see that its boundaries are so fuzzy and permeable that to fully understand it we have to understand the entire universe. The tree is no more separate from the world around it than a wave or a whirlpool can be separated from the water.
And this also applies to our own individual "selves". Buddhism teaches that the idea that we are separate, independent from the world, is an illusion, just as it is in the case of the tree. Because we mistake this illision for our true nature, we cling to it and want it to last forever, but we can't hold on to a mirage.
Well, wanting what you can't have is certainly a depressing prospect. Can anything be done?
Yes!
This is the Third Noble Truth: the end of suffering. In the mythic version, the Buddha had the example of the mendicant who inspired his quest, as a sort of "existence proof" that a solution exists. Perhaps in reality he had only his own experience and insight to rely on, but we have his example, and the example of many who followed, to demonstrate to us that relief is possible.
If suffering arises from desire and attachment, then by changing our thought processes we can escape this snare. The specific path of understanding, action, and mindfulness that the Buddha recommends is laid out in the Fourth Noble Truth, the Eightfold Path.
The Eightfold Path
The eight components of the path the Buddha suggested are usually translated as "Right understanding", "Right thought", and so on. Actually the original Pali term is "samma", which some scholars suggest might be better be translated as "best" than "right".
The translations of some of the elements vary somewhat. But it's useful to group the eight components into three parts:
1) Best Understanding (or Comprehension or View) and Best Thought (or Intention or Aspiration or Resolve): seeing the problem, resolve to start to think in a new way.
2) Best Speech, Best Action, and Best Livelihood: in word and and in deed, act in ways that don't create suffering and that cultivate positive mental habits.
3) Best Effort (or Exertion or Striving), Best Mindfulness (or Recollection), Best Meditation or Concentration): understanding that the mind is the source of everything, undertake the task of training it: resolve to keep trying, to return always to the path and the present moment whenever we stray, and to engage in exercises to strengthen our facilities.
The Buddha: the Rest of His Life
The Buddha laid out the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path in a talk to his disciples (the ones he had lost when he left the ascetic path, and now regained), and thus was started a new school of thought in the world.
But that wasn't the end of the story. He was still a young man, probably in his thirties. He spent the next several decades refining his teaching and gathering followers. Many left their homes to become bhikkhus and bhikkhunis (ordained monks and nuns) but he also taught lay people.
His wife and son and stepmother eventually took the vows and joined his community of monks and nuns.
His combination of noble birth (and thus social acceptability) and transcendent insight allowed him to gain a tremendous audience. It's quite likely that others before the Buddha had just as much insight in the truth, and possible that previous teachers were also as articulate in their analysis and teaching. But Siddhartha had one thing more: connections.
Even if he had "abandoned the world" (understanding "the world" to be his society), the world did not abandon him. As a result, he was able to build a substantial following.
Enough of a following, in fact, to present a threat to the established power structure. Kings and princes sought his council, turning against established religious leaders and scheming courtiers. As a result at least three attempts were made on his life. (It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened to his teaching and his followers if he, like Jesus of Nazareth, had been cut down early in his career.)
There is one episode from the later life of the Buddha that is particularly relevant to our investigations here. On one occasion, the Buddha gathered all of his followers together for a sermon. But rather than speaking to them, he mutely held up a single lotus flower.
One of his disciples, Mahakasyapa, got the idea and smiled.
It was on the basis of his response to this "Flower Sermon", that the Buddha designated Mahakasyapa as his successor. So just what was it that Mahakasyapa got in that instant?
According to orthodox Zen Buddhism, in that moment both the Buddha and Mahakasyapa saw that flower "just as it was" -- experience unfiltered by discriminating consciousness. And in that instant the Buddha transmitted his state of enlightenment to Mahakasyapa. This "direct transmission" is the heart of orthodox Zen -- it is claimed that this state has been passed down for two and a half millennia, from Buddha through Mahakasyapa and a series of Zen Masters to students today.
The Buddha continued teaching and preaching for decades, until he was cut down in his eighties by a digestive disorder that may -- or may not -- have been brought about by a meal of bad mushrooms -- or bad pork.
After his death, his followers gradually split into two camps.
The Theravada ("Way of the Elders", sometimes known by its detractors as the "Hinayana", or Lesser Vehicle) is conservative and monastic-oriented. Its ideal state is that of the arhat, a person who has purified and freed themselves from all attachments. Theravadans attempted to keep intact all of the rules of the original Buddhist community, including many trivial ones that had been established in response to specific occurrences.
The Buddha told his followers that after his death, the trivial rules could be relaxed -- but no one wanted to be responsible for determining which rules were trivial. The difficulties of maintaining this set of rules limited the spread of Theravada, which until recently was limited to the warmer areas of Southeast Asia.
The liberal, flexible, Mahayana ("Greater Vehicle"), took a more flexible approach to both rules and to doctrine, adapting to whatever environment it found itself in. It was meant to be more accessible to lay people than Theravada, and when it encountered a new culture it soaked up the local deities, beliefs, and practices -- sometimes to the point of diluting, or even losing entirely, the Buddha's teachings. It takes as its ideal the bodhisattva, a person of limitless compassion who vows to save all sentient beings. Mahayana spread widely through China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Tibet.
It was from the Mahayana tradition that Zen arose. But that would be almost a thousand years after the life of the Buddha, and thousands of miles away, in China.