Hello everyone, welcome to watch the multi-dimensional weird talk.
Buddhism, as one of the world's three major religions, is the most widely believed religion in the entire Southeast Asian region, and although different sects have different doctrines, they all have the same respect for each other: Shakyamuni is the Buddha, which we call Rulai Buddha, who founded Buddhism.
Buddhism originated in ancient India around the 5th century BC, but Buddhism at that time was not actually accepted by ancient Indians for a long time after that, because it was the only atheistic religion, the so-called Buddha of Buddhism, not the meaning of God, but the enlightened people, it will not instigate people to worship it, Buddhism is actually more like a philosophical school, which is actually incompatible with vedaism that has been circulating in ancient India for thousands of years, so why did it gain so many followers in ancient India?
What was Buddhism like at the beginning of its founding?
So let's first look at the story of Shakyamuni and what he realized to be revered as a Buddha.
The Life of the Buddha
Shakyamuni was born around the 5th century BC, more than 2,500 years ago, during the Spring and Autumn Period in China and the heyday of ancient Greek civilization in the West.
This year of the 5th century BC is very interesting, and it can be said that most of the events that changed the fate of human thought after that occurred occurred at this point in time.
Buddha Shakyamuni was born at this time, China's Confucius And Menglaozhuang, the hundred sons and hundreds of families are also active in this time period, the Old Testament is organized into books at this time, the ancient Greek three sages: Socrates, Aristotle, Plato are also active in this time, and such as Pythagoras, Aesop, etc., it can be said that the influence of future generations began in the fifth century AD.
Human culture is suddenly in this time, the collective seems to blossom, and the wisdom of these people does not know where it comes from.
Shakyamuni, that is, the ancient India that was born in this period, was in the period of the sixteen kingdoms of the sixteen kingdoms, and there was constant war and conquest between them.
Shakya was a tribe of ancient India belonging to the Kshatriya caste that ruled the kapilava kingdom in northeastern India, and the king was known as the King of Pure Rice, and Shakyamuni was born to one of the wives of King Jingdi, Lady Mahhamaya.
Legend has it that one day, Madame Mahamoyed had a very strange dream, she dreamed of a white elephant with a snow-white body and six ivory, flying in the sky, and wherever the white elephant went, everyone on the ground threw themselves on the ground and worshipped it.
In the Indian religious understanding, the status of the elephant is very high, it is the son of the three main gods in ancient Indian mythology, Lord Shiva, so when Lady Mahamoyed woke up, she immediately told the King of Pure Rice about the dream of the white elephant, and the King of Pure Rice quickly invited the Brahmin high priest - Ahuta to interpret the dream, and after listening to this dream of Lady Mahamoyed, Azuta was happy and sad, telling Lady Mahama that what Lady Mahama was pregnant with must be a boy, and if this boy practiced in the future, he would be able to achieve far beyond his own achievements. He was able to become a saint worshipped by all, and then said that it was a pity that he did not have much life, and he did not have the opportunity to wait until the prince had realized the Tao and listen to his teachings.
Soon after, Lady Mahamoyed gave birth to Shakyamuni under the Lumbini Tree and named him Gautama. Siddhartha.
The dream that Lady Mahamoyed had seemed to foreshadow something, and a strange thing happened the moment Prince Siddhartha was born.
Legend has it that Prince Siddhartha, as soon as he left the mother's body, did not cry, and was actually able to stand and walk, he took seven steps in each of the four directions of southeast, south, and northwest, and then pointed to the sky above his head, and then pointed to the feet and said: Heaven and earth, I am the only one.
After saying this, his feet suddenly lost strength and fell to the ground, like a normal baby, and cried loudly.
Prince Siddhartha's mother died seven days after giving birth to Prince Siddhartha, and on the day of Lady Mahamoyed's death, the sky was filled with golden light, and all eight parts of the Heavenly Dragon were present to bless Lady Mahamoyed to go to The Heaven of Ryūryu.
Here, there is a very interesting point, the Buddha was just born to take seven steps to the southeast, south and northwest, and the mother died seven days later, not to mention whether the Buddha was really born to walk, even if it was made up by the believers later, but the number 7 is very interesting.
In Buddhism, the world is considered to be made up of dharma, but what is Dharma? Earth, water, fire, wind, emptiness, seeing, and consciousness are the seven laws, and everything in the world is composed of these seven laws, and so are people, in addition to the seven emotions, seven impurities, and seven mental realms, and later the saying that it takes seven hundred and forty-nine days to enter the six reincarnations, it can be said that the number 7 is of great significance in Buddhism, which is also the meaning of the Buddha's seven steps to the southeast, south, and northwest.
The number 7 is significant not only in Buddhism, but also in the Old Testament Genesis, saying that God took 7 days to create all things in the world, and in the Babylonian Sumerian mythological system this number also appears repeatedly, believing that the Creator arrived at the earth on the seventh day, so the earth represents the 7th, the 7th celestial body, the 7th station.
Later, Siddhartha was raised by his nursing mother in the palace, and when he was 8 years old, the King of Pure Rice began to find teachers for Siddhartha to teach him culture, martial arts and other knowledge.
At this time, the pure rice king's heart was very troubled, because he was a son of Siddhartha, if it was true that as the priest at that time said, his son would become a saint in the future, then who would inherit his country, so the pure rice king did not allow Siddhartha to leave the palace, so that he could not access religion, and as soon as he became an adult, he arranged a marriage for him.
Prince Siddhartha married three wives and a child of his own, named Rohora, so that the King of Pure Rice was also relieved, and for more than ten years, Prince Siddhartha basically lived a superior life like a royal family, and helped his father take care of some government affairs.
However, the turning point in his life came when Siddhartha was 29 years old, and one day he went out hunting with his guards, and happened to meet an old man who was seriously ill and sat under a tree waiting to die, and the old man was thin and only had a layer of skin left, muttering to himself.
Prince Siddhartha stepped forward and asked what the old man was saying. The old man said that he was praying to the gods, asking the gods to end his suffering and lead him to heaven.
However, since he was a child in the deep palace, Siddhartha, who was forbidden by his father to contact religion, did not understand why the old man prayed, how the gods received him, and how to end his suffering.
So this night, the picture of the old man waiting to die under the tree could not be dispersed in his mind for a long time, and he naturally could not experience the suffering of ordinary people when he lived a superior life, he thought, in this world where people come, why are some people born without worry, some people are born without food, why are some people healthy, some people are plagued by diseases, why do people die, if they will die, then why should they be born?
These questions kept popping up in Siddhartha's mind, stirring him up all night. So he decided, to devote himself to religion, to find answers to these questions, and Prince Siddhartha began his journey of practice, and we all called him Shakyamuni afterwards.
The Buddha's Path to Dharma
Shakyamuni first met the number theorist, Arojagaran, one of the six philosophical schools of Brahmanism, who also practiced the Vedas and the Upanishads as scriptures, but unlike the number theory school, which did not recognize the existence of a creator god in this world, was a faction of atheism, so they were also called the outer path by the traditional religion of India.
They believe that the formation of all things in the world has a basic "cause", this "cause" is also called "self-nature", everything in the world is born of "self-nature", what does "self-nature" mean? That's what consciousness means.
From the first awakening of meditation, from the awareness of my heart, from my heart to the five dusts...
That is to say, the first birth from nothingness is consciousness, from consciousness is born the self, from the self is born the five basic senses, seeing, hearing, smelling and touching, and then all things are born, and everything is born from the birth of a consciousness.
If you want to understand everything in the world, then you must first awaken your own consciousness, and the way to awaken consciousness is meditation, that is, meditation, from pureness, to purity, to silence, and finally to the state of no-self, only in the state of no-self can you awaken your self-consciousness and see the essence of everything in the world.
So in the future, Shakyamuni also lived such a spiritual life according to the teachings and teachings of Arojaram, and it was not long before Shakyamuni had reached everything that Araragaran taught and entered the state of no-self, but Shakyamuni was not satisfied with this, thinking that this could not penetrate the true meaning of all things in the world, so he chose to withdraw, and he who had not yet attained enlightenment followed the practice of another guru, Udagyu Mazi, and realized a higher level than no-self: the state of meditation that is not thinking or thinking.
So what is non-thinking? Non-thinking is to achieve the state of no-self, not thinking about anything, and non-thinking means that you can't think about nothing completely, is it confused?
That is, to forget the self, to isolate all external information brought to you by the five senses, and to enter the state of no-self, but entering the state of no-self does not represent the awakening of consciousness, so it is necessary to awaken consciousness in this state, and Shakyamuni did it, but he thinks that this is still not the state of liberation, but at this time Shakyamuni has not been able to find a teacher.
So Shakyamuni and the five disciples who followed him at that time went deep into the mountains and practiced asceticism in the mountains for 6 years.
Because the mainstream way of practice in ancient India at that time was asceticism, eating only one meal a day, a meal that normal people simply could not eat, in order to torture their own bodies and force their consciousness to awaken, such a method can still be seen now.
Later, due to the long-term inability to eat in the mountains and enduring hunger, one day Shakyamuni fainted on the edge of the woods, and a shepherd girl who happened to be shepherding sheep in the mountains met Shakyamuni who had fainted, so she drank goat milk for him and saved him.
Sakyamuni, who had been saved by the shepherd girl, realized that this asceticism that tormented his body could not understand any truth at all, and that this asceticism of not having enough to eat and wear without warmth was two extremes from his life in the palace, and since life in the palace did not allow him to realize the truth, how could the asceticism realize the truth?
So Shakyamuni, who had figured it out, decided to take the Middle Way, that is, neither asceticism nor food, and he came to Bodh Gaya, sat down under the Bodhi tree, and made up his mind: Let me have my skin left, and let me have my tendons, and let me have bones, and let my flesh and blood dry up. Unless I can realize all wisdom, I will never get up from this seat.
Until the night of the seventh day, Shakyamuni was under the stars, looking at the stars, and finally attained enlightenment, became a Buddha, what did he realize?
Buddha enlightenment
The enlightened Shakyamuni began his journey of speaking, and along the way people continued to join Shakyamuni's ranks, including princes, beggars, and traders, who traveled all over ancient India for the sake of purifying sentient beings.
At the age of eighty, on the way to the northwest with his disciples, Shakyamuni told his disciples that he was about to attain nirvana, and he told his disciples Ananda to lay his bedding on the ground, with his head facing north, his body facing to the right, his right foot resting on his left leg, and he asked the disciples to surround him and speak for them one last time.
That night, Shakyamuni died under the two trees of Pasa.
Later, one of Shakyamuni's ten great disciples, Mokkhaya, gathered 500 arhats for His Holiness and sang the scriptures around Shakyamuni, and then the disciples compiled the words and deeds of the Buddha's life and compiled them into: Sutras, Laws, and Treatises, and took the disciples of the three Tibetan Buddhas throughout ancient India at that time, and in the later Ashoka period, Buddhism was first transmitted to India.
Later, Buddhism became more and more widespread, divided into many different sects, each with its own practice and scriptures, but the only sutra that they all practiced was the Ahan Sutra, which recorded the Buddha's enlightenment: the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Twelve Causes.
The Dharma that the Buddha understood
The Buddha believed that all sentient beings are suffering, and the cause of suffering stems from three points, namely greed and anger, which begin at the birth of a person.
Man's birth is the manifestation of the five aggregates, and the five aggregates refer to the five senses of man, until death is the separation of the five aggregates and the disappearance of the five senses.
In the process of birth and death, our whole life is impermanent, all dependent on causes, dependent arising, a correlation between this and that, this life, and the other, it is not what we now call cause and effect, but a kind of impermanence that you cannot control, impermanence means that in life, life and old age, illness and death, love and separation, unavoidable, and so on, are beyond our own control.
And it is precisely because we can't control life, old age, illness and death, and we get lost, so we are afraid, we want to live a little longer, we are afraid of death, we want to get a little more, we are afraid of losing, people will always be afraid of these impermanences that they cannot change, which is the three poisons of human greed and anger, so the Buddha believes that this is the reason why all sentient beings are suffering.
To give up these three poisons, we can cut off the causes of all suffering, and to break these three poisons, people have to practice what the Buddha said about the Noble Eightfold Path, which means, in a nutshell, that all evils can be done, and all good is practiced.
To put it more shallowly, in fact, what the Buddha realized was a kind of philosophical thinking, from the emergence of the universe to the birth of man, everything was because of dependent birth, and the end point was the extinction of fate, so when the Buddha was born, he pointed to heaven and earth and said: Heaven and earth, solipsism, this I do not refer to myself, but to wisdom, or according to Buddhism, it refers to the eighth consciousness, understanding that dependent birth and destruction, everything is impermanent, there is no need to seek the wisdom of self-trouble.
This is actually similar to Lao Tzu's philosophical concept, of course, if you have a deeper understanding, different ideas, welcome to discuss in the comment area, well, this issue of the program is here, we will see you in the next issue.