The Life of Buddha
Gautama Buddha, the historical Buddha, lived between 563 and 483 BC in the area known now as the Indo-Nepalese region. As a bodhisattva, he had passed through thousands of existences before coming to Earth for his ultimate transmigration.
This last lifetime he began as a son of the King of the realm Sakya,Sudhodana, who ruled at Kapilavastu, in Ancient India on the border of present-day Nepal, and was born in a village called Lumbini into the warrior tribe called the Sakyas (from where he derived the titleSakyamuni, meaning "Sage of the Sakyas").
According to ancient tradition, Queen Maya, his mother, first had a dream of a beautiful white elephant coming down into her womb, and this was interpreted as a sign that the Buddha, or a universal emperor, was about to be born. When her time came, Queen Maya went into the garden and gave painless birth to the bodhisattva. He immediately walked, spoke, and was received by Brahma.
Five days after his birth, the young prince received the name ofSiddhartha. When his parents took him to the temple, the statues of the gods prostrated themselves before him, great were the rejoicings of the people over the birth of this illustrious prince. Also at this time a devout old man named Asita came down from the Himalayas to meet the newborn prince. An ascetic of high spiritual attainments, Asita was particularly pleased to hear this happy news. Having been a tutor to the King, he visited the palace to see the royal baby. The king, who felt honoured by his unexpected visit, carried the child up to him in order to make the child pay him due reverence. To the surprise of all, the child's legs turned and rested on the matted locks of the ascetic.
Instantly, the ascetic rose from his seat and recognizing in the young child the 80 signs that are pledges to a highly religious vocation, and foreseeing with his supernormal vision the child's future greatness, saluted him with clasped hands. The Royal father did likewise. The great ascetic smiled at first and then was sad. Questioned regarding his mingled feelings, he answered that he smiled because the prince would eventually become a Buddha, an Enlightened One, and he was sad because he would not be able to benefit from the superior wisdom of the Enlightened One owing to his prior death and rebirth in a Formless Plane.
After seven days Queen Maya died, and her place as mother was taken by her sister, whose devotion and love became legendary.
When the young prince was in his twelfth year, the king called the wiseBrahmans in council. They revealed that Siddhartha would devote himself to asceticism if he cast his eyes on age, sickness, or death ~ and, if he were to meet a hermit.
Wanting his son to be a universal monarch instead, the king surrounded the palace with a triple enclosure and guard and proclaimed that the use of the words death and grief were forbidden. The most beautiful princess in the land, Yasodhara, was found for his bride, and after Siddhartha proved himself in many tournaments calling for strength and prowess, when he was 16, the two were wed.
Siddhartha was kept amused and entertained for some time by this privileged life behind the palace walls until one day his divine vocation awoke in him, and he decided to visit the nearby town. The king called for everything to be swept and decorated, and any ugly or sad sight to be removed. But these precautions were in vain for while Siddhartha was travelling through the streets, an old wrinkled man appeared before him. In astonishment the young prince learned that decrepitude is the fate of those who live life through. Still later he met an incurable invalid and then a funeral procession. Finally heaven placed in his path an ascetic, a beggar, who told Siddhartha that he had left the world to pass beyond suffering and joy, to attain peace at heart.
Confirmed in his meditation, all these experiences awakened in Siddhartha the idea of abandoning his present life and embracing asceticism. He opened his heart to his father and said, "Everything in the world is changing and transitory. Let me go off alone like the religious beggar."
Grief-stricken at the idea of losing his son, the king doubled the guard around the walls and increased the pleasures and distractions within. And at this point, Yasodhara bore him a son whom he called Rahula (meaning "chain" or "fetter"), a name that indicated Gautama's sense of dissatisfaction with his life of luxury, while the birth of his son evoked in him much tenderness. His apparent sense of dissatisfaction turned to disillusion when he saw three things from the window of his palace, each of which represented different forms human suffering: a decrepit old man, a diseased man, and a corpse.Yet even this could not stop the troubling thoughts in his heart or close his eyes to the realizations of the impermanence of all life, and of the vanity and instability of all objects of desire.
His mind made up, he awoke one night and, casting one last look at his wife and child, mounted his horse Kataka and rode off accompanied by his equerry Chandaka. At the city gates Siddhartha turned over his horse to Chandaka, then he cut off his hair, gave up his sumptuous robes, and entered a hermitage where the Brahmans accepted him as a disciple. Siddhartha had now and forever disappeared. He became the monkGautama, or as he is still called, Sakyamuni, the ascetic of the Sakyas.
For many years Gautama studied the doctrines until, having felt the need to learn more elsewhere, he traveled and fasted. His two teachers had showed him how to reach very deep states of meditation (samadhi). This did not, however, lead to a sense of true knowledge or peace, and the practice of deep meditation was abandoned in favour of a life of extreme asceticism which he shared with five companions. But again, after five or six years of self-mortification, Siddhartha felt he had failed to achieve true insight and rejected such practices as dangerous and useless.
Resolved to continue his quest, Siddharta made his way to a deer park atIsipatana, near present day Benares. Here he sat beneath a tree meditating on death and rebirth. Discovering that excessive fasts destroy strength, he learned that as he had transcended earthly life, so must he next transcend asceticism. Alone and weak, he sat beneath the sacredBodhi tree of wisdom, and swore to die before arising without the wisdom he sought.
Mara, the demon, fearful of Gautama's power, sent his three beautiful daughters to distract him. When that failed, Mara sent an army of devils to destroy him. Finally Mara attacked Gautama with a terrible weapon capable of cleaving a mountain. But all this was useless, and the motionless monk sat in meditation.
It was here that Siddharta attained a knowledge of the way things really are; it was through this knowledge that he acquired the title Buddha(meaning "awakened one"). This awakening was achieved during a night of meditation, which passed through various stages as the illumination that Gautama had sought slowly welled up in his heart. He knew the exact condition of all beings and the causes of their rebirths. He saw beings live, die and transmigrate. In meditating on human pain, he was enlightened about both its genesis and the means of destroying it.
In this first stage he saw each of his previous existences, and then understood the chain of cause and effect. In the second he surveyed the death and rebirth of all living beings and understood the law that governs the cycle of birth and death. In the third he identified the Four Noble Truths: the universality of suffering, the cause of suffering through selfish desire, the solution to suffering and the way to overcome suffering. This final point is called the Noble Eightfold Path, this being eight steps consisting of wisdom (right views, right intention) ethics (right speech, right action, right livelihood), mental discipline (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration), which ultimately lead to liberation from the source of suffering.
When day came, Gautama had attained perfect illumination, and had become a Buddha. The rays emanating from his body shone to the boundaries of space. He stayed in meditation for seven more days, and then for four more weeks he stayed by the tree. Through his process of enlightenment he discovered that all sentient beings in this universal life possess buddhahold, and all are future potential buddhas.
From that time he had two alternate paths: he could enter Nirvanaimmediately, or else he could stay and spread enlightenment. After Brahma came in person to beg him to preach the law, Buddha yielded and stayed on the earth. For many years he traveled and taught his wisdom about the force of love and the destruction of all desire.
Although initially hesitant to share his insight on the grounds that humanity might not be ready for such a teaching, the Buddha decided to communicate his discovery to those willing to listen. His first converts were the five ascetics with whom he had lived when he himself followed the lifestyle of the ascetic. To these he preached his first sermon in the Deer Park at Benares, outlining to them the Four Noble Truths. Out of this small group the community of monks (or Sangha) grew to about 60 in size and came to include Buddha's cousin, Ananda, and his son, Rahula. Later the Buddha was persuaded by his stepmother and cousin to accept women into the sangha.
The remaining 45 years of the Buddha's life were spent journeying around the plain of the Ganges, teaching and receiving visitors.
"There are two extremes which are to be avoided: a life of pleasure ~ this is low and ignoble, unworthy and useless, and runs counter to the affairs of the spirit; and a life of fasting ~ this is sad, unworthy and useless. Perfection has kept its distance from these two extremes, and has found the middle way which leads to repose, knowledge, illumination, and Nirvana. So here is the sacred truth about pain: birth, old age, sickness, death, and separation from that which one loves, are pain. And this is the origin of pain: it is thirst for pleasure, thirst for existence, thirst for impermanence. And here is the truth about the suppression of pain: it is the extinction of that thirst by the destruction of desire.
"Charity, knowledge and virtue are possessions that cannot be lost. To do a little good is worth more than accomplishing works of a difficult nature. The perfect man is nothing unless he pours out kindness on his fellow creatures, unless he consoles the abandoned. My doctrine is a doctrine of mercy. The way of salvation is open to all. Destroy your passions as the elephant would trample down a reed hut. But I would have you know that it is a mistaken idea to believe that one can escape from one's passions by taking shelter in hermitages. The only remedy against evil is healthy reality."
And so Buddha travelled and preached. He performed many miracles, and converted his family and many followers. During his life the Buddha had taught that no one was to succeed him as leader of the Sangha. Instead, his followers were to take his teaching and rule as their sole guides. By the time he reached the age of 80, Sakyamuni began to feel old. He visited all of the monasteries he had founded and prepared to meet his end.
Before the Buddha's death, he became severely sick. He journeyed northwest to the banks of the river Hiranyavati, walking with his disciples, and ate the food offered by a blacksmith. His illness had progresses, and at the end, he came to the river and took a bath. Then he made a rope bed among eight sal trees, with each direction having two. He lay down on his side, right hand supporting his head, the other resting on his body. All later reclining Buddhas (called Buddha's Nirvana) are in the same posture.
The Buddha's disciples kept watch on him after they were told the Buddha was going to nirvana. At night, a scholar of Brahman went to see the Buddha, but was stopped by the Buddha's disciple Ananda. Hearing this, the Buddha called the scholar Subhadda to his bed and spoke him. Thus the scholar became the Buddha's last disciple. The final exhortation of the Buddha to his disciples was that they should not be sorry for losing their tutor. (See the last sermon of the Buddha for further elaboration.)
Growing weaker, he spoke one last time: "Do not say we have no master now. The doctrine I have preached will be your master when I have disappeared. Listen, I beg you: ALL CREATIONS ARE IMPERMANENT; work diligently for your liberation."
Having pronounced these final words, Buddha went into the jhana stages, or meditative absorptions. Going from level to level, one after the other, ever deeper and deeper, he reached ecstacy. Then he came out of the meditative absorption for the last time and passed into nirvana, leaving nothing whatever behind that can cause rebirth again in this or any other world.and finally passed into Nirvana.
After his death, Buddha's remains were cremated, as became the Buddhist tradition. The passing away, or the final nirvana, of the Buddha occurred in 483 BC on a full moon day in the month of May, known in the Indian calendar as Wesak.
За энэ удаад Грекийн эртний бурхдын түүхийг тавилаа. Орчуулж амжаагүй учир Англиар тавилаа. Англи хэлтэй хүмүүс уншаад ойлгоно биз. :D
The myths of Ancient Greece chronicle a very interesting tale of human existence, filled with iconic gods and goddesses that controlled the destiny of mortals. These deities were said to come from forces of nature that were referred to as Titans in Hesiod’s epic Theogony. They were said to be the first twelve children of Uranus (Father Sky) and Gaea (Mother Earth). The Titans were elemental rather than human, however their story is filled with more passion, greed, heroism, and violence than a modern day drama
In Greek mythology, the stages of mortal existence are separated into ages. The first of these was the Golden Age when the Titans ruled, and it represented a time when peace and harmony reigned. The tranquility was not all that it appeared though, and it came at a rather horrific price. Uranus was displeased with the younger children that Gaea gave birth to after the first twelve, considering the many arms of the Hecatonchires and the one-eyed Cyclopes to be hideous. He imprisoned them in Gaea’s womb, which was Tartarus, the very pit of the Earth. This put Gaea in great agony, both physical and emotional and it led her to encourage the twelve children that remained free to overthrow Uranus.
The only one of the twelve children that would do the deed was Cronus, the youngest. He already was envious of his father’s power, and relished the chance to take over. Gaea made him a sickle which was to be used to castrate Uranus upon his next visit to her. When Uranus arrived to meet with Gaea, Cronus attacked him, cutting off his genitalia with four of his brothers holding their father down. Some accounts say that Uranus died at this point, others keep him alive but with no real power. Hesiod wrote that Uranus was furious at the betrayal, calling Cronus and his brothers and sisters titanes or “strainers”. This was said to indicate they had stepped or strained over the line of their accepted place. He also predicted that Cronus would reap what he sowed and be defeated by one of his children.
There are differing accounts as to the exact number of Titans, as many of their descendants also share the name. The ‘elder gods’ or the original twelve Titans are as follows:
Cronus
Rhea
Hyperion
Oceanus
Coeus
Crius
Iapetus
Themis
Thea
Mnemosyne
Phoebe
Tethys
They ruled the universe unopposed until history repeated itself and they were overthrown by their own children, the gods of Olympus.
Cronus is often referred to as the god of time and was the leader of the Titans. He took his sister Rhea as his wife, but he was in constant fear of his father’s prediction about one of his children defeating him. He impregnated Rhea many times, but upon each birth Cronus would devour the child, hoping to keep the prophecy from coming to pass.
Rhea, the Titan goddess of fertility, was angered by Cronus swallowing her children. When she became pregnant with Zeus, she decided enough was enough. She had Zeus secretly, hiding him away in Crete and presented Cronus with a stone wrapped to look like an infant. Cronus swallowed the stone, unaware that one of his children had survived.
Hyperion was the Titan god of light and his children were Eos (the dawn), Helios (the sun), and Selene (the moon). His mate was Theia, who was said to create the beautiful blue in the sky, and he was one of the four who assisted Cronus in defeating Uranus by holding him down as the castration was done. He is also known as a ‘watcher from above’.
Oceanus was said to be the Titan god of the great River Okeanos, a large freshwater stream that circled what they believed was the flat earth. The Ancient Greeks believed that all of the celestial bodies came from this river, and that Oceanus was in charge of raising and lowering them each day. He remained neutral both in the uprising against his father and in the Titanomachy ten year war against the Olympian gods.
Coeus was the Titan god of knowledge and intellect, and is one of the brothers that assisted Cronus in gaining control from Uranus. The legends have Coeus as the central or “north” pole, indicating that he was holding down his father from the north when Cronus emasculated him. He was married to his sister Phoebe and the constellations and oracles revolved around them.
Crius was the Titan that seemed to blend in rather than stand alone. He assisted Cronus in defeating their father by holding him down from the south, and was one of the ones banished to Tartarus at the end of the Titanomachy. He is mostly noted for his children and grandchildren. Together with his half sister Eurybia, he fathered Astraios (god of dusk) Pallus, (god of war) and Perses, (god of destruction) and was grandfather to Hekate (goddess of magic).
Iapetus was the Titan god of mortal life span, which during the Golden Age was said to be much longer than modern times. He is the father of Atlas and is thought to have held the west pillar of Uranus when Cronus attacked him. He was also the father of Prometheus and Epimethius who were said to have a major role in the creation of mortals and other earthly creatures.
Themis was the Titan goddess of law and order and was the interpreter of the divine rule of the gods. These laws were in essence the conscience of humanity, and the ability to determine right from wrong. She was one of the first wives of Zeus and it was inferred that he consulted with her in matters of divine law. Out of all the Titan goddesses, she is the one most closely associated with her mother Gaea ( Gaia is spelled many different ways but this one seems to be the right way as it was first spelled).
Thea represented sight and clarity, and was also the goddess that brought beauty to precious stones. She was the mother of the Sun, Moon, and Dawn. She was the keeper of the Phthiotis oracle, or a portal to deeper knowledge. Three of her sisters were keepers of the other oracles, while Themis had access to all four of them.
Mnemosyne was the Titan goddess of memory and oral history. She was the mother of the Muses, who inspired the songs and writings for posterity. The Lebadeia oracle was in her possession and she was responsible for the language and chronicling the history through words to be remembered.
Phoebe was the Titan goddess of deeper thinking intellect. As the wife of Coeus they had a balance between higher consciousness and logical reasoning. Phoebe is often associated with radiance or brilliance and was the keeper of the Delphoi oracle. Prophecy also went hand in hand with her knowledge and many sought her counsel.
Tethys was the wife of Oceanus. Her duty was to constantly provide fresh water throughout the earth to replenish it. She was the mother of the fresh streams and rivers as well as the clouds. She would take from her mate Oceanus new water which she would then feed into her children so the streams could grow.
There were descendants of these original twelve that were also referred to as Titans. Gods and goddesses such as Aesteria, Eos, Prometheus, Atlas, Leto, and others were the children of the original twelve, and continued ruling and developing the earth and heavens for many years during the Golden Age. However, the burning prophecy of Uranus to Cronus came to pass when Zeus, who had been hidden away at birth by his mother Rhea rose up against his father to defeat the Titans. This war was known as the Titanomachy, and lasted approximately ten years. It ended with the Titans defeat and Zeus banishing them to the depths of Tartarus. It was then that the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus began their rule.
The Titans were deposed from power, however their legacy remained in those who defeated them. The legends speak not just of powerful deities but the very forces of nature that created the heaven and the earth. The days of gods and goddesses are long gone but the myths of their existence remain. Temples and monuments, crumbling yet still standing are a testament to this time as well as poetry and artifacts. The knowledge that has been gained in the thousands of years humankind has existed has not diminished the ancient tales that speak of a time when people walked with the gods and goddesses along with the forces of nature that created them.
Below is a family tree of the gods from the beginning.
Угийн бичиг
Цагаа хараад хэдэн цаг болж байгаагаар нь юу болж байгайгаа мэдье. Та санаандгүй цагаа харахад юу болж байгаагаа мэдэх боломжтой юм.
01:01 аз жаргал ирнэ
01:10 инээнэ
02:02 тэр чамд хайртай
02:20 шохойрхол
03:03 чамд амжилт хэрэгтэй
03:30 түүнд итгэ
04:04 дурлана
04:40 өөрийгөө чимэхгүй зүйлд битий оролц
05:05 цайн зүйл чадна
05:50 түүний тухай сонсоно
06:06 чи хэн нэгэнд хэрэгтэй
06:00 чамайг бардам гэж боддог
07:07 сайхан өдөр болно
08:08 уулзалт болно
09:09 азтай байна
10:01 цагийг зугаатай өнгөрүүлнэ
10:10 түүнд итгэ
11:11 чи үзэсгэлэн гоо
12:12 үнсэлт
12:21 шүлэг унш
13:13 тэр чамайг бодож байна
13:31 мөрөөдөл биелэнэ
14:14 ухаалаг бай
14:41 хүслээ шивнэ
15:15 бие биедээ дурлана
15:51 тэр чамд хайртай
16:16 хэрэггүй зүйлийг март
17:17 инээнэ
18:18 төлөвлөгөө бүү хий
19:19 тэр чамаас урвана
20:20 болсон зүйл давхцана
21:21 тэр чамайг сонирхож байна
22:22 сайхан үерхэл ирнэ
23:23 түүнтэй ярилц
23:32 өөр хүнд дурлана
24:24 чамайг хайрлаж байна
24:42 чамайг зэрэг бодож байна
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
N
