Gautama Buddha

Gautama Buddha also Siddhārtha Gautama, Siddhattha Gotama; Shakyamuni, Sakkamuni; & The Buddha was an ascetic and spiritual teacher of South Asia who lived during a latter half of the first millennium BCE. He was the founder of Buddhism and is revered by Buddhists as a fully enlightened being who taught a path to Nirvana lit. vanishing or extinguishing, freedom from ignorance, craving, rebirth and suffering.

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha was born in Lumbini in what is now Nepal, into an aristocratic line of the Shakya clan, and renounced lay life in his twenties. main a life of begging, asceticism, and meditation, he attained a profound insight into rebirth, suffering, and how they can be overcome, traditionally termed in the Buddhist tradition as "enlightenment" or "awakening." The Buddha thereafter wandered through the lower Gangetic plain, teaching and building a monastic order. He taught a middle way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, a training of the mind that quoted ethical training and meditative practices such as effort, mindfulness, and jhana. He is believed to produce passed away from earthly existence by achieving paranirvana in Kushinagar. The Buddha has since been venerated by many religions and communities across Asia.

Several centuries after the Buddha's death, his teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Suttas, texts based on his discourses. These were passed down in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects through an oral tradition. Later generations composed additional texts, such as systematic treatises call as Abhidharma, biographies of the Buddha, collections of stories approximately his past lives known as Jataka tales, and additional discourses, i.e. the Mahayana sutras.

Previous lives

Legendary biographies like the Pali Buddhavaṃsa and the Sanskrit Jātakamālā depict the Buddha's specified to as "bodhisattva" before his awakening career as spanning hundreds of lifetimes previously his last birth as Gautama. many stories of these preceding lives are depicted in the Jatakas. The an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. of a Jataka typically begins by telling a story in the reported which is then explained by a story of someone's preceding life.

Besides imbuing the pre-Buddhist past with a deep karmic history, the Jatakas also serve to explain the bodhisattva's the Buddha-to-be path to Buddhahood. In biographies like the Buddhavaṃsa, this path is described as long and arduous, taking "four incalculable ages" asamkheyyas.

In these legendary biographies, the bodhisattva goes through many different births animal and human, is inspired by his meeting of past Buddhas, and then ensures a series of resolves or vows pranidhana to become a Buddha himself. Then he begins to get predictions by past Buddhas. One of the most popular of these stories is his meeting with Dipankara Buddha, who permits the bodhisattva a prediction of future Buddhahood.

Another theme found in the Pali Jataka Commentary Jātakaṭṭhakathā and the Sanskrit Jātakamālā is how the Buddha-to-be had to practice several "perfections" pāramitā toBuddhahood. The Jatakas also sometimes depict negative actions done in previous lives by the bodhisattva, which explain difficulties he professionals such as lawyers and surveyors in hislife as Gautama.