Life of Siddhartha before Buddhahood (Sims)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Eliroc, Sims Fiction (Chp. 4)

Charioteer Cunda and Prince Siddhartha see a pyre (simsfiction.wordpress.com)

Prince Siddhartha, 29, on the verge of quest

...Although Siddhartha's father ensured that the prince was provided with everything he could want or need, Siddhartha was always a little troubled and dissatisfied.
 
As much as he tried, the opulent life in the palace could not fulfill him. It was disappointing and so had to get bigger and bigger. Siddhartha was growing tired of his lavish lifestyle.

 

At night, he had dreams he could not explain. He sensed something was off, but he did not know what.

Yasodhara (Bimbadevi, Rahulamata...)

“What is the meaning of these dreams? Is there something beyond these walls?” he thinks aloud.

“What is it, My Lord? What’s going on?” asks (Bimbadevi who is known as) Yasodhara trying to comfort him.

 

“Nothing, a bad dream, don’t worry,” Siddhartha replies, while sitting up and covering his face with his hands.

 

“But you look so troubled, My Lord. Is it something I have done? Please, tell me what is bothering you. Let me help!” Yasodhara insists.

“Everything is all right. You’re the perfect wife, and I love you very much. I just need fresh air. Go back to sleep. I’ll go for a walk in the garden. The sun is almost up,” the prince answers gently, while getting up and walking toward the door.

 

But Yasodhara is too worried to fall asleep again. She changes and follows him to the garden.

She finds him mesmerized by the sound of a beautiful song. As she approaches, his gaze still resting upon the female musician, he asks, “Yasodhara, what is this song? I've never heard it before. It’s so melancholic and beautiful.”

 

“It is a song from a far away land, My Lord, evoking the beauty of a country she knew as a child. The mountains and the lake she can never forget.”

 

“How strangeDo such places exist? Places as beautiful as here?” Siddhartha asks.

 

“There is only suffering beyond these walls, My Lord.”

 

“You speak like my father. What do you mean suffering?”

 

“Your father loves you very much. He’s given us everything we could ever want. There’s no need to go anywhere else when there is such beauty around us.” Yasodhara insists, trying to bring his thoughts back to the beautiful life of the palace.

 

“It’s true. We have everything, and everything is perfect. So what is this feeling I have, Yasodhara? My dreams? If the world is so beautiful, why have I never seen it? I’ve not even really seen my own country. My father will not stop the chariot and allow us to walk in the villages, see the common life, talk to the people. I must see the world, Yasodhara, with my own eyes!”

 

With these words, Siddhartha goes off. Yasodhara lingers a while, lost in her thoughts. She is familiar with the prophecies and fears the day Siddhartha sees the real world, which may be closer than the king imagined.

Overcome by curiosity, Prince Siddhartha orders Channa, his faithful charioteer and friend, to show him the world beyond the palace walls. Unnoticed by his father, they set upon a series of rides through the countryside.

 

On this first journey, Siddhartha notices an old man painfully making his way. He had never ever seen old age of such decrepitude. And not understanding what is wrong with the man, he asks Channa, “What is the matter with this good man? Why is he walking like this? And why is his face all shriveled?”

Aging, the first sign/divine messenger

“That’s an old man, My Lord.”

 

“Old? What do you mean?” asks the prince as he approaches the man to study his features.

 

“Old age destroys strength, memory, beauty...”

 

“Why? What did he do to become old?”

 

“Do, My Lord? He was born. Everybody becomes old eventually. It is natural and belongs to life.”

 

“It happens to everybody? Even you?” Siddhartha asks alarmed, still resting his gaze upon the old man.

 

“Yes, My Lord. Even a prince cannot avoid it. It is a natural aspect of life. No one avoids it at all.” More

Life of the Buddha (video)

Mindah-Lee Kumar (EnthusiasticBuddhist.com); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Four Signs (smith.edu)

The Buddha (the "Enlightened or Awakened One") was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama, future king of the Shakyas. He is also known as Shakyamuni, the "Sage (muni) from the Shakya Clan."
 
He was born approximately 2,600 years ago into a royal family. Where is disputed, likely in what is now Afghanistan, on the northwest border of Gandhara, India. But earlier British archeological work determined it was Nepal, just north of India, and the controversy has been on ever since.  (See ranajitpal.com).

Prince Siddhartha lived a protected and carefree life of luxury, until one day he came face to face with the harsh realities of life he had always been protected from seeing: old age, sickness, and death. (The fourth sign was the sight of renunciation offering a possibility of escape from certain suffering). It is believed that the devas (fairies) contrived it all, ensuring that he would eventually see these four momentous signs.

 

The Buddha, wandering teacher (WQ)

The four sights or signs changed the course of Siddhartha's life. Rather than becoming king as he had been raised, he embarked on a spiritual QUEST on behalf of all beings to find liberation from the suffering of the world.

He would eventually discover the truth of suffering (disappointment) and how to bring about its end. He achieved enlightenment, a profound and irreversible awakening, under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India.

And from that moment on he was known by the title "the Buddha." (See also the BBC documentary Life of the Buddha, which tells the story very well in less than 50 minutes. Here is a condensed collage version set to music that takes even less time).

The Buddha and Sports (Superb Owl, Part 2)

Ashley Wells, Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Silacara Bhikkhu (A Young People's Life of the Buddha) ORGANIZED SPORTS (PART 1)

Siddhartha: Does he have a concussion? Channa: No, this guy's, uh, never mind (SF).

    

QB Colbert and a bunch of B's on the gridiron

Siddhartha the Bodhisat (Buddha-to-be) was living the household life, being raised with a great education to become a leader, a prince in the Shakya (Sakya) clan in frontier northwest India (Afghanistan, not Nepal).
 

That Siddhartha is great!

In Siddhartha's bodily attainments, he was well endowed just as he was in mind (intellect) and character (virtue). The girls, Shakyan cousins and princesses, looked on in admiration to various contests.   Although gentle in manner, he was bold in the practice of all the sports of his country. He was a cool and daring horseman, a marksman with bow and arrow, and an able and skillful chariot-driver. In the latter sport, he won many chariot races against the best drivers in the country. Yet, for all his keenness in trying to win a race, he was kind and compassionate towards the horses who helped him to win so often. He would frequently let a race be lost rather than urge his weary, panting horses beyond their strength.

Not only towards his horses but towards all creatures, Siddhartha seemed to have a heart full of compassion. He was a ruler’s son and had never himself had to suffer hardship or distress. Yet, his kind heart seemed to know by sympathy how others felt when they were afflicted or in pain, whether these others were men or animals. When he was kind to others, as far as he could, he tried to relieve any suffering they were already enduring.

Devadatta utterly ruined himself later.

Once when he was out walking in the country with his cousin Devadatta [brother of his future wife, Bimba, more popularly known as Yasodhara], who had his bow and arrows with him. Devadatta shot a swan that was flying overhead. The arrow hit the swan and it fluttered, painfully wounded, to the ground. Both boys ran to pick it up, but Siddhartha reached it first. Holding it gently, he pulled the arrow out of its wing, put some cool leaves on the wound to stop it from bleeding, and stroked and soothed the hurt and frightened bird. Devadatta was very much annoyed to see his cousin take the swan from him in this way, and he called on Siddhartha to give him the swan because he had brought it down. Siddhartha, however, refused to give him the swan, saying that if the bird had been killed then it would have been his. But as it was alive, it belonged to the one who saved it, and so he meant to keep it. Devadatta maintained that it should belong to him because he tried to kill it.

Devadatta, Siddhartha, and the wounded swan (daobingan/photobucket.com)

  

Siddhartha proposed and Devadatta agreed that their dispute be settled by a full council [one is reminded of a loya jirga or grand assembly] of the wise men of the country. The council, accordingly, was called and the question put before them. Some in the council argued one way, some in the other, some siding with Devadatta, others with Siddhartha. But at last one man in the council, whom nobody had ever seen before, rose and said: “A life certainly must belong to one who tries to save it; a life cannot belong to one who is only trying to destroy it. The wounded bird by right belongs to the one who saved its life. Let the swan be given to Siddhartha.” All of the others in the council agreed with these wise words, and Prince Siddhartha was allowed to keep the swan. He cared for it until it was cured; then he set it free, letting it fly back to its mates on the forest-lake. More

The Land of the Shakyas (Sakastan, Sakae, and Sakala?) with their capital at Kapilavastu (Kapisa?) not the future "Nepal" between Kashmir and Kosala. (See ranajitpal.com).

 
The Big Game

We'll see who wins at the big festival celebration and feast (daobingan/photobucket)

 
Once, after practicing with his many Shakya clan cousins, young Siddhartha had great prowess in sports yet remained humble. He engaged in equestrian sports, raced chariots, swam, ran, shot targets, had a white pony/stallion named Kanthaka.

Kanthaka and Siddhartha (BDE)

He was good, and the other boys were jealous. The girls looked on admiringly from the sidelines of their very patriarchal society out in the frontier between East and West along the Silk Road that enriched their land (janapada, the clan's territorial holdings), where Indian traders traveled into Central Asia near Gandhara. The great ancient monuments in Bamiyan were marvels of the day, later converted to representations of their greatest son. (They are so ancient that only Madame Blavatsky has proposed their age and original purpose).

Tired of being trapped by life, Siddhartha lets go of Kanthaka, his royal position, inheritance, and trapping telling his servant Channa to give back to his father (BDE).

  

Setting out on a quest on Kanthaka (SF)

Like earlier Vedic Brahmanism (pre-Hinduism) later Islam (post-Zoroastrianism) and original Judaism (pre-Christianity), the Buddha never allowed anthropomorphic representations. India did not have them until the Indo-Greco artists in this area started making them, then no one was going to be left behind.
 
All of the "gods" (devas, brahmas, and avatars) became beautiful ancient Greek-style gods (demigods) and chimera hybrids. Buddhism led the way in spite of the Buddha having it otherwise. When one sees the Buddha one does not see the Buddha, according to the Buddha, because to see the Buddha proper means seeing the Dharma, namely, seeing Dependent Origination.

Kanthaka and Siddhartha (wiki)

But we settle for superficial appearances, and those are greatest in Afghanistan, the original land of Siddhartha's family. The area has always been contentious (as pointed out by Fitzgerald and Gould InvisibleHistory.com), long before the British empire drew the Durand Line or the Soviet Union fought the covert CIA/overt Mujahadeen (God's Army). Russia and America suffered defeat there, like the Greeks (Alexander the Great) and British before them. Of course, we are still suffering defeat, because anyone can conquer Afghanistan, but no one seems to be able to rule and administrate it. Even when a "Taliban" is created out of angry Arab ex-cons from Pakistan and elsewhere, foreigners in tribal Afghanistan, still there is no ruling the wandering bands and their unique ways. Pashtuns are not the indigenous people. It is a country of Gandharans, Shakyans, Hazaras, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Turkmens, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, other Central Asians, Indians, Persians, and Iranians.

(K4V) Buzkashi (kok boru) is the Afghan national sport. It is a popular sport

among south Central Asians. Its Turkic name is kökbörü, kök = "blue," börü =

"wolf," denoting the grey wolf, the holy symbol of the Turkic people. More

SAVAGES? Like savages we Americans play to the crippling death on a mock (battle)field tossing around a laced up carcass of an animal. Much like the British play rugby. How strange, then, that we laugh at the Afghan sport of polo using the carcass of an animal. Somehow, they're the "savages." We invade them, engage in war crimes, rape women and children, kill civilians, assassinate by remote control drones, plunder a nation, make war propaganda reels like "Lone Survivor" for the people back home to feel good about war profiteering... and they're savages. Invaders, 1. Conquered, 0. USA! USA! USA! lol

Ancient Buddhist caves of India (video)

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; History Channel, "Ancient Aliens"

Bamiyan near the real Kapilavastu

The Ajanta cave complex is not, in fact, the world's oldest series of Buddhist caves. That honor would likely go to the cliff caves and former monastic residences in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which are 2,600 years old (not in Nepal as we are taught; see RanajitPal.com for startling and controversial details).

 

The Buddha's extended family, many of whom became Buddhist monastics during his life chose to live nearby and travel to see him in Magadha, India to the east. Prominent family members included: 

Ancient "India" (Maha Bharat) used to extend west to Iran (Persia), when Pakistan and Afghanistan were frontier lands in a region known as Gandhara. They only became separate countries recently after British partition.

 

His stepmother (Maha Pajapati, the first Buddhist nun in history), his former wife (Bimba Devi, Subhaddaka, Yasodhara, Rahula-mata, "Rahula's mother," the expert debater Ven. Bhaddakaccānā), his son (Rahula, who became "foremost in doing quiet good"), his half-brother (Nanda), his half-sister (Sundari-Nanda), his father (Suddhodana, not a monastic but enlightened while still a king), and his many cousins (such as beloved Ananda who memorized the "Discourse Collection" or sutras as heard from the Buddha, as well as Anuruddha and others), and at least one famous in-law, Devadatta (the Buddhist "Judas" figure), Yasodhara's brother.

Physical descriptions of Siddhartha with curly black hair, golden skin, and blue eyes make him far more likely to be Central Asian rather than Indian as we imagine it today.

  

The former northwest Indian frontier

His biological mother, Maya Devi, who passed away a week after his birth, was reborn in a world called Tavatimsa, where the Buddha visited her to teach her the liberating Dharma he taught the rest of his family on Earth. (Maya Devi's sister and co-wife, Maha Pajapati, had both married Siddhartha Gautama's father, King Suddhodana; she adopted him right away, raising the prince, heir-apparent, and future Buddha as her own son).

 

Many family members, particularly females, would likely have chose to remain in the vicinity of ancient Kapilavastu, the capital of the Shakya clan's territory (janapada), after ordaining. They would have practiced the Buddha's teachings in familiar company, adopting a wandering ascetic ethos with monasteries serving in a capacity more like California's missions, with itinerant religieux traveling between them up the Silk Road through a prosperous crossroads (now impoverished, war torn Afghanistan) These connected caves alongside massive Buddha statues contain the world's oldest oil paintings.

(C2C) Michael Cremo is not the only "forbidden archeologist." Johnathan Gray (beforeus.com) from Australia talks about amazing discoveries that get at explanations beyond mainstream filtered-science, which seems bewitched by its "consensus reality" that ignores sacred histories (such as the Brahminical Vedas or Buddhist Jatakas), extraterrestrial visitations, mythologies, and discoveries with interpretations such as a former global civilization and advanced technologies superior to what we have now. The world and human life on it is aeons old.

But how the Ajanta Caves was created remains a mystery. Like the great pyramids of Egypt and precise stone structures all around the world -- like the world's largest pyramid in Bosnia -- they could not have been constructed by humans without extraterrestrial assistance. "Visitors" with advanced technology, whether remembered as mythical figures (akasha-devas, Sakka, the catumaharajikas, asuras, nagas, garudas, yakkhas, and gandharvas -- or "shining ones" from space, the Four Great Sky Kings, titans, reptilians, avians, celestial ogres, and celestial messengers) or as verifiably "ancient aliens" depicted on the eponymous History Channel program. 

 

Of course, it is more fun and esteem-building to imagine our clever forbears, we humans with primitive tools, created these astounding masterpieces without help, direction, or advanced technology. Homo sapiens, hooray. Shining ones (devas)? We'll see it when we believe it, because it will seem to take an act of faith to see what the evidence has been trying to tell us for centuries.

Unravelling the Mysteries of Mind and Body

Wisdom Quarterly, new Dharma book by Sayalay Susila edited by Dhr. Seven

The Sayadaw, Sayalay, and Seven set out the Buddha's "Higher Teaching"

  

(Aidan McRae Thomson)

Wisdom Quarterly is overjoyed to announce that Unravelling the Mysteries of Mind & Body Through Abhidhamma, the much awaited new book by the accomplished Buddhist monastic Sayalay Susila and Wisdom Quarterly editor Yogi Seven, is now available on Amazon.

We are pleased to see our efforts come to fruition and have the opportunity to share this work of Dharma, the culmination of Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw's accessible teachings on this delicate and complex topic.

 

All proceeds from the book go to support the establishment of Appamada Vihari, Sayalay Susila's new meditation center, offering an opportunity for all to accumulate supportive merit to advance on the Buddhist path toward enlightenment in this very life.

Why would anyone go on a meditation retreat?

 
ABOUT

Ven. Sayalay Susila, Grand Canyon

Unravelling the Mysteries of Mind & Body Through Abhidhamma was originally derived from a series of PowerPoint presentations and talks on the Abhidharma (Buddhism's "Higher" or "Ultimate Teachings"). 

It is based directly on instructions by famed Burmese Buddhist Meditation Master Pa Auk Sayadaw -- presented by the Chinese-Malaysian nun Ven. Sayalay Susila on her trips around the U.S. and Canada in 2002.

How much longer will the liberating Dharma survive in the world? (Mikecogh/flickr.com)

 
Repeatedly told how helpful these were, Sayalay developed them into a startlingly clear visual presentation and eventually a book, now in its second completely re-edited edition.
 
At first glance the Abhidharma can appear so complicated as to be impenetrable. It may, therefore, seem dull and irrelevant, a mere commentary to the sutras rather than a systematic treatment of what is needed to attain enlightenment -- the details, the explanations, the factors explained in extreme detail.
 

The Buddha among devas explaining the Abhidharma leading to final liberation

 
That it has been largely overlooked outside of Burma comes as no surprise. But the Sayadaw, Sayalay, and Seven have made Abhidharma accessible by employing direct and concrete language, clear analogies, and simple anecdotes primarily based on the experiences of real meditators in Asia, America, and Europe over many years. 

The essence of Abhidharma is drawn out from its vast and complex matrix. Doing so makes it utterly practical, relating to everyday life in a way practitioners find meaningful for ordinary living. The way to realization is through concentration-and-insight meditation instruction to tie together theory and practice.

First edition (holybooks.com)

In this way analytical knowledge is made available for direct personal realization in meditation (bhavana, cultivation and development of various kinds). By providing clarity, this book helps practitioners come to a knowing-and-seeing, or knowledge and vision, of Abhidharma as a path revealed by the historical Buddha. It shows that its application, not its theoretical grasping, leads to happiness, mundane and supramundane. 
 

May all beings -- humans, devas, and others -- share in the blessings of this offering of liberating wisdom.

Who sees the Dharma (Dependent Origination) sees the Buddha (MN 28; Mikecogh)