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BY MIROJ SHAKYA |
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Lumbini: where the Buddha was born
'On the last day of Asada (June-July) on the moon festival day, Mayadevi dream that the Bodhisattva who was roaming in the Himalayas in the form of a white elephant, descends from the north, on the silver mountain and enters her womb from the right side. Thus on Lunar Uttarasal she receives a new conception." Asvaghose, in his biography, adds to this description that 'before conceiving the Queen saw in her dream a six-tusked, white, god-like elephant entering her body, and yet she felt no pain.
The future Buddhas was born in Lumbini Garden ( in the present day Basti district of Nepal), between the territory of the Sakyas and the Koliyas. His mother Queen Maya, on her way to her family home at Devadha, the capital of the Koliya, stopped for a while at Lumbini. It was as she was plucking flower from the asoka tree that she felt the beginnings of labour. The story handed down by tradition is that she delivered Siddharatha while standing, supporting herself by holding a sal tree. In Sanchi, a panel on the first gateway, depicts this auspicious scene of the Buddha's birth: 'Being entreated by the gods of the Tushita heaven, Bodhisattva descended tot he earth in the form of a white elephant. This elephant spoken of denotes power and wisdom.
Lumbini became a pilgrimage site very early. In BC 250, it is said, the Emperor Ashoka along with his teacher Upagupta visited the placed during a tour of Buddhist sites. While there, he had a pillar and a stone wall built to mark his visit. Later visitors, particularly the Chinese travelers Fa Hsien in the fifth and Hiuen Tsang in the seventh centuries mention a beautiful grove and describe a bathing tank of the Sakyas. The travelers also write of the asoka tree where the Buddhas was born, but the Ashokan pillar and wall were, according to their accounts, already dilapidated and broken with age. Hiuen Tsang writes that they were ruined not by age but by the thunderbolt of a malicious dragon.
After the visits of these early travelers. Lumbini slumbered in dusty obscurity till 1895 when the German archaeologist, Dr Alois Anton Fuhrer re-discovered the site. The Ashokan pillar was unearthed the following year and on it was found an inscription recording the visit of the Emperor Ashoka: 'Because the Lord Buddha was born here, he made the village of Lumbini free from taxes and subject to pay only one-eighth of the produce as land revenue instead of the usual rate'.
However, the location of Kapilavastu, the fortified town of the Buddha's father Suddhodana, was more difficult to identify. Some scholars have agreed that it is the present day Tilwara Kot in Nepal while others have claimed that it is modern piprahawa in India Both these places are close to Lumbini Garden and some scholars, trying to reconcile the conflict, state that both were the site of Kapilavastu at different times.
Early excavations at Piprahawa unearthed various artifacts, among which was a soapstone casket with the inscription: "This relic shrine of the divine Buddha is a donation of the Sakya Sukiti brothers associated with their sister, sons, and wives.' This strengthened Piprahawa's claim to be the site of Kapilavastu and the claim was further advanced when excavations carried out by K.M. Srivastava for the archaeological Survey of India in 1971 and 1974 yielded other artifacts.
To the devoted, more than the sites, it is the birth of the Buddha which is an opening act in the realization of an idea: knowledge based on compassion. In later traditions the Buddha already enfolds in himself all the attributes that he will eventually acquire and the birth scene is filled with signs signifying the future greatness of the child. The mother, Queen Maya is reported to have died within seven days of the birth of the child. Tradition passes on the Statement that, 'she who bears a Peerless One like me should not again indulge in love. Asvaghosa dealt with the scene more poetically, writing, 'when Queen Maya saw the vast poser of her son, like that of a divine seer, she was unable to bear the joy it caused her. Then she went to heaven to dwell there.' Later, in the finely sculpted gateway at Sanchi, a celestial ladder is shown with footprints above and below the ladder to signify the descending of the Bodhisattva.
The miraculous birth was followed by a bath given by the nagas ( creature said to be half human, half snakes) and tradition has it thus: 'Just born, the Bodhisattva stands firmly on his feet and takes seven steps, his face towards the north. Shaded by the white parasol, he looks to each cardinal point and speaks the following words in stentorian tones (like the roar of a lion), "I am the first, I am the best of all beings." He then proceeds to take a step in each direction and in each direction he utters an appropriate word suggesting that the beneficent rain of his Law would now shower on all the people-the good and the bad.'
The newly born child was taken to his father Suddhodana at Kapilavastu. At the court, the sage Asita prophesied the future greatness of the child: 'For my time to depart has come , just when he is born who shall understand the means, so hared to find, of destroying birth, For he will give up the kingdom in his indifference to worldly pleasures, and, through bitter struggles grasping the final truth, he will shine forth as a sun of knowledge in the world to dispel the darkness of delusion.'
Suddhodana on hearing this promise of greatness named his son Siddharatha, 'he who has accomplished his aim'. The future greatness of Siddharatha was ensured; if he carried out his kingly duties he would become the Chakravartin Raja, a universal monarch but even if he chose to give up his power he would emerge as a great teacher, a Tathagata. Chakravartin Raja or Tathagata, Siddharatha had an exceptional destiny to fulfill. It is, of course, not possible to be sure of his personal name and actually the early texts do not mention Siddharatha.
In stories culled from later traditions, the early life of Siddharatha is depicted as a moral evolution, a gradual unfolding of knowledge leading to the quest for supreme "Enlightenment'. With his mother dead, Siddharatha was cared for by his maternal aunt, Mahaprajapati Gotami, who became his father's second wife. Siddharatha, the young prince, spent his youth in comfort and luxury: 'I was delicately nurtured. In my father's house, lotus pools of blue, red and white lotuses were made for me; I used sandalwood powder from kasi; Kasi cloth turban, jacket, tunic and cloak. I had three palaces, one for winter, one for summer and one for the rainy season. Three palaces to gratify the five senses.
Siddhartha's education was that of a noble of those times, It is reported that when the Emperor Ashoka visited Kapilavastu he was shown a schoolroom and a gymnasium. 'It is here, O Great King, that the Buddha learnt to here, and here that he became an expert, as suited to his noble birth, in the art of handing elephants, horses, chariots and the use of arms, etc.' Siddhartha was educated, befittingly, both in the literary and in the martial arts, The Sakyas were particularly noted for their excellence in archery and Siddhartha was reputed to be skilled in this, as the was also in every other field.
In his nineteenth year Siddharatha was married to his cousin Yasodhara, daughter of Dandapani Sakya. It is said that when he presented a costly necklace to Yasodhara she declined to accept it and said, 'No, our aim is not to despoil the prince of his ornaments, but rather to become an adornment to him. The poet Asvahose merely mentions that Yasodhara was 'virtuous and endowed with beauty and gentle bearing." They had one son, Rahula.
Even in the midst of luxury and a sheltered life, Siddharatha is shown to have had a keen sense of life's meaning, The first not of his later preoccupation was sounded at the scene of the Symbolic ploughing of the fields. The feast of sowing us being celebrated and Suddhodana has the child Siddharatha brought out. However, his attendants leave him attended under the shade of a tree, for they, too, are busy watching the symbolic ploughing in which the Sakya chief ploughs with a gold-ornamented plough. Siddharatha, under the shade of the tree, sits in a yogic posture and attains the first of the four degrees of meditation, these degrees actualized along the way to the Buddha's 'Enlightenment'. In later life he narrates this incident to his disciple Agivssena, 'I know that while my Sakya father was ploughing and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose apple tree, aloof from the pleasures of the senses, aloof from the unskilled states of mind, entering on the first meditation, which is accompanied by initial thought, is born of aloofness and is rapturous, and joyful , and while abiding therein, I thought, could this be the way to awakening? then following any mindfulness, Agvissena, there was the consciousness: this itself is the way of awakening....
This incident, referred to as the 'First Meditation', shows symbolically, that this first encounter of Siddharatha was inextricably and peculiarly linked with agriculture. It was as if far removed from the material cares of the world, Siddharatha, seeing this process of growth and decay, of creation, begins to think and meditate.
The second major experience which dramatically changed Siddharatha's life was the confrontation with the fundamental questions of human existence: old age, illness and death. These are presented as four signs which Siddharatha sees-an old man, a sick man, a corpse and finally a monk. Upon this, he was compelled to consider the meaning of his life and question his worldly obligations. Everything is subject to decay and death: life is transient but the monk shows him a way out of this bondage. Siddharatha resolved to renounce the life of the householder and seek a way out of this cycle of birth and decay and find true happiness.
The second sign appeared when Siddhartha, leaving by the sought gate of the city, sees 'a diseased man, dried up, overcome with fever, weak, with his body immersed in his own filth, helpless and protectorless, and breathing with difficulty.' Sickness too, it struck him, was an inevitable and inescapable fact of human existence, He saw a corpse when leaving the city by the west gate, and around it, sailing, sorrowful and disconsolate relatives. Asvaghosa writes that Siddhartha was so disconsolate that even the efforts of he women in his palace failed to distract him from the inevitability of death.
'Yes, father, I do see affliction of the body. Disease close upon health and death upon life. And father, I consider an old man as but and other dead man. Death comes on father, it is this affliction of the physical body I see. Yes father, I see the decay of wealth. Everything is empty, void, vain, deceptive and false.'
It was the fourth sign which showed the way out of this dilemma, a way to resolve this crisis faced by Siddhartha. While riding his favourite horse Kanthaka, Siddhartha came upon a Sramana, a homeless wanderer who tells him, 'I dwell wherever I happen to be, at the base of a tree or in a deserted temple, or on a hill or in the forest, and I wander without ties or expectations, in search of the highest goals accepting any alms I receive.
Siddhartha then became aware not only of the fleeting nature of life, the continuous cycle of creation and destruction but also of a possible way out of this incessant cycle. He became aware that not everything was transient, that there were permanent goals to which he could aspire to.
While Siddhartha was growing weary of the world and preparing to leave home, his father Suddhodan was making preparations to hand over the affairs of government to his son and heir. To further reinforce his ties to his home and family, his wife conceived.
'It is a letter which has come to me,' he is supposed to have said, though some writers are of the opinion that Rahula, meaning 'bond', had already been born.
In later accounts, dramatic scenes of Suddhodana eloquently pleading with his son not to renounce family and home, not to abandon his worldly duties, are depicted. Siddharta remained gently adamant. His father, he argued, could not give him freedom from old age, sickness and death. He remained firm in his resolve to go and seek the answers to these questions,. Suddhodana was finally persuaded to give his reluctant consent.
Siddhartha before leaving went to see his son but dared not touch him ... 'If I lift the Queen's h and to take my son in my arms she will awake and thus my departure will be hampered. When shall become the Buddha I will come back and see him.' He left his wife and son sleeping undisturbed.
Siddharatha was accompanied by his groom chandaka and his horse Kanthaka. In later writings it appears that both attempted to make him abandon his plans, bgut convinced by his irrefutable arguments, they eventually helped him to leave, The 'Great Departure' is garnished with all the requisite miraculous happenings: the gods put the inhabitants of Kapilvastu into a deep slumber, the hooves of Kanthaka were silenced, and the gates of the city opened on their own accord, allowing siddhartha to leave quietly and undisturbed.
The next morning found them some distance from Kapilvastu and after crossing the Anoma river, Siddhartha removed his rich garments and exchanged them for the torn clothes of a passing hunter and then cut off his hair. Siddhartha, the prince was thus transformed physically into a mendicant and his favourite horse, witnessing this sacrifice, 'Kneeling on his forelegs licked (his master's) feet with his tongue and dropped hot tears.'
Siddhartha proceeded southward to the kingdom of Magadha, then ruled by Bimbisara. The journey was both physical, taking him away from his home, the small sakya state, towards the flourishing monarchy of Magadha, as well as one which was intellectual, as it set in motion, events that would transform the young prince Siddhartha into the Tathagata.
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