Read about It. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 7 стр.

palace, each of which represented different forms of human suffering: a        night of meditation, which passed through various stages as the illumi-
decrepit old man, a diseased man, and a corpse. Yet even this could not        nation that Gautama had sought slowly welled up in his heart. He knew
stop the troubling thoughts in his heart or close his eyes to the realiza-     the exact condition of all beings and the causes of their rebirths. He saw
tions of the impermanence of all life, and of the vanity and instability of    beings live, die and transmigrate. In meditating on human pain, he was
all objects of desire.                                                         enlightened about both its genesis and the means of destroying it.
       His mind made up, he awoke one night and, casting one last look                In this first stage he saw each of his previous existences, and then
at his wife and child, mounted his horse Kataka and rode off accompa-          understood the chain of cause and effect. In the second he surveyed the
nied by his equerry Chandaka. At the city gates Siddhartha turned over         death and rebirth of all living beings and understood the law that gov-
his horse to Chandaka, then he cut off his hair, gave up his sumptuous         erns the cycle of birth and death. In the third he identified the Four No-
robes, and entered a hermitage where the Brahmans accepted him as a            ble Truths: the universality of suffering, the cause of suffering through
disciple. Siddhartha had now and forever disappeared. He became the            selfish desire, the solution to suffering and the way to overcome suffer-
monk Gautama, or as he is still called, Sakyamuni, the ascetic of the          ing. This final point is called the Noble Eightfold Path, this being eight
Sakyas.                                                                        steps consisting of wisdom (right views, right intention), ethics (right
       For many years Gautama studied the doctrines until, having felt         speech, right action, right livelihood), mental discipline (right effort,
the need to learn more elsewhere, he traveled and fasted. His two teach-       right mindfulness, right concentration), which ultimately lead to libera-
ers had showed him how to reach very deep states of meditation                 tion from the source of suffering.
(samadhi). This did not, however, lead to a sense of true knowledge or                When day came, Gautama had attained perfect illumination, and
peace, and the practice of deep meditation was abandoned in favour of a        had become a Buddha. The rays emanating from his body shone to the
life of extreme asceticism which he shared with five companions. But           boundaries of space. He stayed in meditation for seven more days, and
again, after five or six years of self-mortification, Siddhartha felt he had   then for four more weeks he stayed by the tree. Through his process of
failed to achieve true insight and rejected such practices as dangerous        enlightenment he discovered that all sentient beings in this universal life
and useless.                                                                   possess buddhahold, and all are future potential buddhas.
       Resolved to continue his quest, Siddharta made his way to a deer               From that time he had two alternate paths: he could enter Nirvana
park at Isipatana, near present day Benares. Here he sat beneath a tree        immediately, or else he could stay and spread enlightenment. After
meditating on death and rebirth. Discovering that excessive fasts de-          Brahma came in person to beg him to preach the law, Buddha yielded
stroy strength, he learned that as he had transcended earthly life, so         and stayed on the earth. For many years he traveled and taught his wis-
must he next transcend asceticism. Alone and weak, he sat beneath the          dom about the force of love and the destruction of all desire.
sacred Bodhi tree of wisdom, and swore to die before arising without                  Although initially hesitant to share his insight on the grounds that
the wisdom he sought.                                                          humanity might not be ready for such a teaching, the Buddha decided to
       Mara, the demon, fearful of Gautama’s power, sent his three             communicate his discovery to those willing to listen. His first converts
beautiful daughters to distract him. When that failed, Mara sent an army       were the five ascetics with whom he had lived when he himself fol-
of devils to destroy him. Finally Mara attacked Gautama with a terrible        lowed the lifestyle of the ascetic. To these he preached his first sermon
weapon capable of cleaving a mountain. But all this was useless, and           in the Deer Park at Benares, outlining to them the Four Noble Truths.
the motionless monk sat in meditation.                                         Out of this small group the community of monks (or Sangha) grew to
       It was here that Siddharta attained a knowledge of the way things       about 60 in size and came to include Buddha’s cousin, Ananda, and his
really are; it was through this knowledge that he acquired the title Bud-      son, Rahula. Later the Buddha was persuaded by his stepmother and
dha (meaning «awakened one»). This awakening was achieved during a             cousin to accept women into the sangha.

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