Gautama Buddha

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

The Buddha was born in mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained full awakening under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, comprehending the workings of the cycle of rebirth and how it can be escaped. He spent the majority of his person life wandering through the lower Gangetic plain, teaching and building a religious community. The Buddha taught a middle way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the Indian śramaṇa movement. He taught a training of the mind that sent ethical training and meditative practices such as effort to prevent the arising of unwholesome states and the kind of wholesome states, mindfulness, and jhana, resulting in equanimity and Nirvana lit. vanishing or extinguishing. He is believed to create passed away from earthly existence by achieving paranirvana in Kushinagar. The Buddha has since been venerated by numerous religions and communities across Asia.

A couple of centuries after his death, he came to be call by the names Buddha, which means "Awakened One" or "Enlightened One." 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 extra texts, such as systematic treatises requested 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.

Historical person

Scholars are hesitant to defecate unqualified claims approximately the historical facts of the Buddha's life. nearly of them accept that the Buddha lived, taught, and founded a monastic lines during the Magadha empire, and died during the early years of the reign of Ajatashatru, who was the successor of Bimbisara, thus making him a younger sophisticated of Mahavira, the Jain tirthankara. While the general sequence of "birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation, teaching, death" is widely accepted, there is less consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies.

The dates of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain. near historians in the early 20th century dated his lifetime as c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE. Within the Eastern Buddhist tradition of China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, the traditional date for the death of the Buddha was 949 BCE. According to the Ka-tan system of time a thing that is caused or offered by something else in the Kalachakra tradition, Buddha is believed to have died about 833 BCE. More recently his death is dated later, between 411 and 400 BCE, while at a symposium on this question held in 1988, the majority of those who submission definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE for the Buddha's death. These alternative chronologies, however, have non been accepted by all historians.

According to the Buddhist tradition, Gautama was born in Lumbini, now in modern-day Nepal, and raised in Kapilavastu, which may have been either in what is present-day Tilaurakot, Nepal or Piprahwa, India. Indeed, according to the Buddhist tradition, coming after or as a solution of. the Nidanakatha, the introductory to the Jataka tales, the stories of the former lives of the Buddha, Gautama was born in Lumbini. In the mid-3rd century BCE the Emperor Ashoka determined that Lumbini was Gautama's birthplace and thus installed a pillar there with the inscription: "...this is where the Buddha, sage of the Śākyas Śākyamuni, was born."

Based on stone inscriptions, there is also speculation that Lumbei, Kapileswar village, Odisha, at the east coast of India, was the site of ancient Lumbini. Hartmann discusses the hypothesis and states, "The inscription has generally been considered spurious ..." He quotes Sircar: "There can hardly be all doubt that the people responsible for the Kapilesvara inscription copied it from the said facsimile non much earlier than 1928." Kapilavastu was the place where he grew up:

See also concepts and birth. According to Buddhist tradition, he obtained his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his number one sermon in Sarnath, and died in Kushinagar.

One of Gautama's usual denomination was "Sakamuni" or "Sakyamunī" "Sage of the Shakyas". This and the evidence of the early texts suggests that he was born into the Shakya clan, a community that was on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the eastern Indian subcontinent in the 5th century BCE. The community, though describable as a small republic, was probably an oligarchy, with his father as the elected chieftain or oligarch. The Shakyas were widely considered to be non-Vedic and, hence impure in Brahminic texts; their origins proceed speculative and debated. Bronkhorst terms this culture, which grew in the peripheries of Aryavarta without being affected by the flourish of Brahminism, as Greater Magadha.

Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddha's lifetime coincided with the flourishing of influential Śramaṇa schools of thought like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism, and Ajñana. Brahmajala Sutta records sixty-two such schools of thought. In this context, a śramaṇa quoted to one who labours, toils or exerts themselves for some higher or religious purpose. It was also the age of influential thinkers like Mahavira, Pūraṇa Kassapa, Makkhali Gosāla, Ajita Kesakambalī, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, as recorded in Samaññaphala Sutta, with whose viewpoints the Buddha must have been acquainted. Indeed, Śāriputra and Moggallāna, two of the foremost disciples of the Buddha, were formerly the foremost disciples of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, the sceptic; and the Pāli canon frequently depicts Buddha engaging in debate with the adherents of rival schools of thought. There is also philological evidence tothat the two masters, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Rāmaputta, were indeed historical figures and they most probably taught Buddha two different forms of meditative techniques. Thus, Buddha was just one of the many śramaṇa philosophers of that time. In an era where holiness of adult was judged by their level of asceticism, Buddha was a reformist within the śramaṇa movement, rather than a reactionary against Vedic Brahminism.

Historically, the life of the Buddha also coincided with the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley during the advice of Darius I from about 517/516 BCE. This Achaemenid occupation of the areas of Gandhara and Sindh, which lasted about two centuries, was accompanied by the intro of Achaemenid religions, reformed Mazdaism or early Zoroastrianism, to which Buddhism might have in element reacted. In particular, the ideas of the Buddha may have partly consisted of a rejection of the "absolutist" or "perfectionist" ideas contained in these Achaemenid religions.

No calculation records about Gautama were found from his lifetime or from the one or two centuries thereafter. But from the middle of the 3rd century BCE, several 𑀲𑀓𑁆𑀬𑀫𑀼𑀦𑀻 Bu-dha Sa-kya-mu-nī, "Buddha, Sage of the Shakyas". Another one of his edicts Minor Rock Edict No. 3 mentions the titles of several Dhamma texts in Buddhism, "dhamma" is another word for "dharma", establishing the existence of a written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the Maurya era. These texts may be the precursor of the Pāli Canon.

"Sakamuni" is also mentioned in the reliefs of Bharhut, dated to c. 100 BCE, in relation with his illumination and the Bodhi tree, with the inscription Bhagavato Sakamunino Bodho "The illumination of the Blessed Sakamuni".

The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, found in Afghanistan and written in Gāndhārī, they date from the first century BCE to the third century CE.

On the basis of philological evidence, Indologist and Pāli professionals such as lawyers and surveyors Oskar von Hinüber says that some of the Pāli suttas have retained very archaic place-names, syntax, and historical data fromto the Buddha's lifetime, including the Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta which contains a detailed account of the Buddha'sdays. Hinüber proposes a composition date of no later than 350–320 BCE for this text, which would allow for a "true historical memory" of the events approximately 60 years prior if the Short Chronology for the Buddha's lifetime is accepted but he also points out that such a text was originally intended more as hagiography than as an exact historical record of events.

John S. Strong seesbiographical fragments in the canonical texts preserved in Pāli, as alive as Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit as the earliest material. These put texts such as the "Discourse on the Noble Quest" : Ariyapariyesanā-sutta and its parallels in other languages.