Who Is the Buddha?

I’d like to start by sharing a little bit about the life of the historical Buddha. His given name was Siddhartha Gautama, and he was born a prince in ancient India. While his own personal story is from over 2500 years ago, not much has changed in terms of the broad strokes of the spiritual path altogether. 

In particular, Siddhartha’s journey to awakening as a Buddha can be viewed as the unfolding of the buddha nature itself: the innate wisdom, compassion, and openness within every living being.  In this way, we all have an inner Buddha, and are all on our own journey of awakening.  We’re following in the best of footsteps.

Siddhartha had it all.  He was born into a royal family of wealth, security, and comfort, and was slotted for leadership.  He grew up in an actual palace, wanted for nothing, and was happily married with a child.  In today’s phrasing, he was set for life.  He had the right job, the right relationship, utter security, lived in a cushy neighborhood, and all the nicest things. 

The problem is, that’s not reality—-at least not for very long. 

This illusion was pierced for Siddhartha on trips outside the palace walls where for the first time he witnessed sickness, aging, and death.  He’d been so sheltered before that he actually had to ask his driver (of a chariot, mind you), what those things were when he saw them. 

And that in fact, we will all experience them. 

Many of us today are not as privileged, nor as naive, as Siddhartha was, yet we all have our own version of what “the palace” is---that ideal life we chase after, fantasize about, or measure ourselves against.  The “someday, I’ll” or “if I were better I would” version of things, that we may at best temporarily achieve a portion of, but which drains away our self-respect in all the ways our actual situation falls short, or that sets us up for disappointment time and again. 

The problem isn’t the palace per se.  The problem is the illusion that we can get it all together and keep it all together. 

And further, that the degree to which we achieve that is success and the degree to which we don’t is failure.  That’s simply not reality, and it’s a painful shortchanging of our actual potential to live in alignment with the flowing sacredness of life. That’s everyone’s birthright, which nothing could ever improve nor take away.

Not unlike Siddhartha, many of us enter the spiritual path when we encounter this the hard way.  Often it’s one or another form of loss, whether it’s of our health, job, partner, loved one.  Or, we encounter adverse circumstances, some kind of fundamental difficulty or challenge in life, and we’re suffering and need help.  And, we’ve encountered something in the dharma (teachings) that resonates with our own wisdom, which begins to awaken our own inner buddha. 

This inner buddha---our deepest wisdom, compassion, and openness---is shining through in recognizing that we’re suffering and longing for healing and freedom.  This happens because our problems and suffering don’t go all the way down, they’re not our true nature.  They’re held in our bigger space, our deepest compassion knows we can heal, and our deepest wisdom knows we can be free. 

This is beautifully described in one of the main texts on buddha nature, the Uttaratantra, which means “sublime continuum” in Sanskrit, when it says:

“If the Buddha element were not present,

There would be no remorse over suffering.

There would be no longing for nirvana,

Nor striving and devotion towards this aim.”  

Likewise, in Siddhartha’s outings, he not only witnessed suffering, but he also saw a mendicant, a wandering spiritual practitioner.  The peace he witnessed resonated.

He went through disillusionment of the life he knew.  What was the point of all that comfort, prosperity, status, if someday he and everyone he loved would lose it all?  He knew there had to be a deeper meaning to life, a deeper happiness.  A fundamental freedom from the cycle of suffering altogether.  He wanted this not only for himself, but for his loved ones, and for everyone.

This is what eventually motivated him to leave the palace and dedicate his life to spiritual practice.  He departed in the middle of the night, cut his long hair which was a sign of status, and traded his royal garments for simple mendicant robes.  (Somewhat hilariously, he did this by meeting a hunter who had been wearing them to try to fool animals, and gladly accepted the swap).

While many of us may not go quite that far, we often come into our spiritual paths from a similar angst as we understand that the palace we’ve come to chase isn’t working, or a wall got knocked down through tragedy. Or on the other hand, many of us feel that the palace society has told us we should want doesn’t feel aligned and authentic to us, that it’s not attainable anymore, or even that we’re witnessing it implode and we’re caught in the rubble. We may realize that the palace of some exists on the suffering of others and our planet. Our heart breaks.

We’re not wrong, and this is precious.  It’s how, like Siddhartha, we begin to leave the palace and enter a path more true to form. 

Siddhartha then sought out teachers, as ancient India was tremendously rich in various forms of spirituality---though none at the time which would unveil the total freedom he sought, later realized, and taught as the dharma.  That said, to an extent they prepared him for it, and in some of their own traditions, had an understanding that it was possible and that Buddhas had and would realize it.     

His first main teacher, Adara Kalama, taught him shamatha meditation all the way through it’s most profound stability, clarity, and strength.  While that was immensely helpful, it didn’t set his mind free, and he kept looking.  His second main teacher, Udraka Ramaputra, had a more severe approach, teaching the ascetic practices of the time that essentially attempt to be as hard on ourselves as possible to beat our way out of suffering…that also didn’t work, as many of us have learned as well:)

Siddhartha then eased up a bit, remembered a natural state of meditative ease he’d experienced as a child, began eating healthier food, and practicing a “middle way” between the two extremes: on one hand the indulgence he’d grown up with, which is based on the fallacy that pleasure can bring lasting happiness.  And on the other, the ascetism which falsely assumes that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us that has to be punished. 

Rather, Siddhartha arrived at a more natural style of practice, more aligned with the buddha nature. 

He then famously meditated through the night under a fig tree, first practicing shamatha, or peaceful abiding meditation, then practicing vipashyana, or insight meditation.  He gradually traced back the origin of cycles of suffering to the grasping of the mind itself, the mind which clings to thoughts as if they’re real, and plays them out across lifetimes, constantly chasing the next thing.

Dissolving this illusory fixation at the root once and for all, his mind was set free into its nature of limitless openness, wisdom, and compassion.   

This when he became a Buddha, or “awakened being”.  What he awakened to was his own buddha nature.  It’s free from suffering, wasn’t born, and doesn’t die.  There’s nothing to add or improve, and nothing to take away.  It just is.  It’s the nature of all beings.   

He described it this way:

“Profound and peaceful, free from complexity, uncompounded luminosity—
I have found a nectar-like Dharma.
Yet if I were to teach it, no-one would understand,
So I shall remain silent here in the forest.”

---Lalitavistara Sutra, 25.3

This Buddha nature was so simple, profound, and beyond concept that at first he didn’t think anyone would believe it.  But he was encouraged to teach.  He first thought of his two main teachers, but they’d both passed away.  He then remembered five of his friends with whom he had practiced asceticism, and traveled to where they were, a place that came to be known as Deer Park in Sarnath. 

They saw him coming, and initially were going to ignore him because they thought he’d given up, but as he walked closer, they could feel the profundity of his presence and prepared to meet him as a teacher.  When he arrived, he told them that he had indeed realized the freedom they’d sought together, a freedom beyond birth and death.

He then gave his first teaching, which came to be known as the “Turning the Wheel of Dharma Sutra”.  He encouraged his friends to practice the “middle way”, neither indulgence nor asceticism, and then taught the Four Noble Truths:

These Four Noble Truths are that there is suffering, the origin of suffering is the grasping mind, there is freedom from suffering, and there is a path to freedom from suffering. 

The next article will introduce them generally, and then the rest of our course will gradually go more into depth.