Before we begin today's story, let's be clear about the concept that the Sanskrit word for "Buddha" that we often say today translates to "Shakyamuni."
Shakyamuni was born in the ancient Indian state of Kapilava, which is probably in the territory of present-day Nepal. It was the distant year 565 BC, when China was in the Spring and Autumn Period, and our ancient sage Confucius was born in this period.
Strictly speaking, Shakyamuni was the second generation of the rich and the second generation of officials.
His father was the king of the Kapilava kingdom, called the King of Pure Rice. Her mother was Mahāyāyāya, the daughter of King Shanjue, the lord of a nearby town, Celestial Arm City.
Her mother is a famous bridesmaid, and her father is the head of a country. Shakyamuni's starting point is not high.
Soon after the two married, Mahāyāyāyā became pregnant. However, according to the local customs at that time, women need to return to their mother's house to give birth when they get married.
Mahāyāyāya set out with a pregnant child and traveled from the Kapilava kingdom to the City of the Heavenly Arm. This section of the road is actually not far, that is, the distance from the small town to the countryside, if there is a bus at that time, it may be thirty minutes.
But no one had a record of giving birth to a child, and Mahamoyed misestimated his due date, and before he could return to his mother's house, he gave birth to the child directly on the way to a place called Lumbini Garden (now the village of Botaliyah in southern Nepal).
This child is Shakyamuni.
How are children born? Not necessarily true, but dramatic.
Mahamoyed strolls through the garden, surrounded by lush trees and birds singing. She looked up and saw a towering ancient tree, and Mahamayah touched a hanging branch with his hand, and Shakyamuni was born.
Shakyamuni became the prince of the Kapilava kingdom.
Young babies are born differently, which surprises everyone. An astrologer named Azuta came to the palace, saw Shakyamuni shakyamuni asleep, and made the following prophecy:
This Son is extraordinary and can save the world.
The King of Pure Rice loves his son and loves him. A magical palace was built for his son, and the name of the palace was called: The Palace of four hours.
This "four-hour palace" is too cattle, as long as you enter the palace, all year round will become spring. Inside the palace, people do not know the geometry outside the window, can not distinguish the changes from spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring to autumn, nor can they feel the pain of life, old age, illness and death.
This is an abstract statement, and the four seasons cannot always be like spring. It was just a bustling and magnificent palace, and although it was unremarkable, it cut off Shakyamuni's connection with the outside world.
The prince with the golden spoon was protected.
Since then, Shakyamuni has lived a happy life of "hearing nothing out of the window with both ears and reading only the books of the sages."
He's talented and learns anything. When he reached the age of twelve, he had become the most learned person in ancient India, and could be called the "little prodigy of India".
Time was like an arrow, the sun and the moon were like shuttles, and Shakyamuni soon grew to sixteen years old, and had reached the age when it was time to get married. Shakyamuni married his cousin Yayuthara, and inbreeding did not allow them to give birth to deformed children, and many years later they gave birth to a white and fat little boy named Rahu.
If nothing had changed, Shakyamuni might have inherited his father's throne in the near future, become the king of a distant ancient country, and finally dissipate into the dust of history.
But one thing changed shakyamuni's fate.
Because this prince of the ancient kingdom has been in the "Four Times Palace" since he was a child, and the door is not out of the second door, although he is intelligent, he has been isolated from the outside world for a long time - this is a person who only knows the happiness and happiness of the world, but does not know the sufferings of the world.
Because of a time when Shakyamuni drove out of the city to play, he learned that this world is not only as big as the "Four Times Palace". He witnessed the hardships and deaths of the people of Li.
Someone died of illness and there was no cure for it. Someone hurts someone because they are jealous and resentful.
Birth, old age, illness, death, resentment, love and separation, unavoidable.
All kinds of human forms, all kinds of life.
The impact of the new world made the young man suddenly realize that he had only lived in the "Truman's World" carefully woven by his father.
Shakyamuni made a decision at this moment, and quickly put it into action— he ran away from home one day at the age of 29 after leaving his prince's seat, his wife, and his son.
The confused young man has left everything behind, ready to find an uncertain future.
I think Shakyamuni should be a sentimental person, and he may be a person who can't see these sorrows and pains, so he decided to go on the road and find a way to solve the sufferings of the world.
But just as contemporary literary and artistic youth go to Tibet to wash their hearts, this process is extremely painful and boring.
After leaving The Kapilava, Shakyamuni chose to go wandering and asking for food.
Yes, you read that right, there is a tradition in the later generations of monks who love to transform their lives, because that's what the ancestors of Buddhism did.
This is not unusual, Shakyamuni asked for food was a helpless move, because before that, he had always been a prince and nobleman who had reached for food to open his mouth, and he had no life experience and no life skills. If you don't want to eat, you can't live.
The kind Indian people did not let Shakyamuni go hungry, and by begging for food all the way, Shakyamuni visited two people.
He understood that it was not enough to study this level of meaning in life, and it was not enough to grope for it on his own, he needed to find some predecessors.
The first predecessor was called Karama, and it was with this master that Shakyamuni learned a sport, yoga.
The second predecessor was called Maputla, where Shakyamuni learned a great deal of philosophical and religious knowledge.
This experience of learning from others made Shakyamuni's vision broaden and his thoughts richer, and he finally became an active person who entered the world. But this is far from his dream of saving the world from the sea of suffering.
So he said goodbye to his mentor and embarked on a journey of searching again, and I was too shallow to explain Gamuni's state of mind at that time.
All I know is that he always wanted to find an answer. But until he found the answer, he didn't know what the problem was.
Shakyamuni walked through the jungle, over streams, and up snow-capped mountains.
But he was not alone, and in the process of wandering, Shakyamuni gained five fans. Like Shakyamuni, they were ascetics, people who wanted to penetrate the truths of the world. Six homeless people drifted in the forest for six full years. For six years, they still want food for a living.
It is okay to have two days a day, and it is okay to have a month or two months, but in the long run, the need for food has led to a significant decline in Shakyamuni's physical fitness.
He went from being a pampered little prince to a disheveled tramp.
Not only that, but at this time Shakyamuni was on the verge of collapse.
He gave up the throne, abandoned his beloved wife, his infant, everything, he gave up.
But he still didn't find what he wanted.
Shakyamuni came to the river and looked at himself in the dirty water. He suddenly began to wonder if he had made the right choice and whether he was doing the right thing. Thinking about it, Shakyamuni decided not to practice asceticism anymore.
Because if you practice asceticism again, the truth on earth has not yet been found, and you will first toss yourself to death. So he jumped into the river, washed away the dust and dirt from his body for the past six years, and decided not to live the life of an ascetic again.
Shakyamuni, who had taken a bath without eating, was so weak that he almost fell into the river.
Five fans were stripped of their powder because of Shakyamuni's ascetic practice halfway, but Shakyamuni was not alone, and the shepherd girl who passed by the river offered Shakyamuni a cup of mellow goat milk.
A cup of goat's milk gave Shakyamuni a life extension. He regained his spirits, bid farewell to the kind shepherd girl, and went alone to Bodh Gaya (present-day Gaya, Bihar, India) and sat under a Bipolo tree (Bodhi tree) and sat cross-legged.
When you sit down, you will sit like a Buddha.
Yes, Shakyamuni became a Buddha.
It was so sudden, it was so unexpected. There are no bizarre encounters, and there may not be any hardships.
That's it.
What is a Buddha? Does the Buddha have superpowers? Will a Buddha live forever?
The answer is no, Buddhas are the same as people, but Buddhas and people are not exactly the same.
He thought something under the tree, saw through something, learned something. The history books don't record it, and I don't know. Because if I knew, I wouldn't have to write articles in the headlines and would have become a Buddha.
But it is not difficult to imagine that Shakyamuni must have had an epiphany and understood the true meaning of life for all things in the world.
The Dharma is mysterious and does not dare to speculate. But Shakyamuni's many years of fruitless pursuits became a Buddha in a single thought.
What we can know is the vow he made under the tree: If I do not prove it now, the supreme bodhisattva would rather break this body than end up with this throne.
After becoming a Buddha, Shakyamuni did not forget the five fans who followed him, and he accepted these five people as disciples. These five men became the first five disciples of Shakyamuni and were known as the "Five Bhikkhus."
"Bhikkhu" means a man who is a monk.
The number of "bhikkhus" is increasing, from ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, to a number of countries.
Buddhism flourished and spread in ancient India, becoming one of the world's three major religions and surviving to this day.
Shakyamuni was not a heartless man, he used to go back to visit his parents and loved ones, but more time he devoted himself to spreading the Dharma.
On February 15, 543 B.C., Shakyamuni presided over the last lecture, passed away, and flew away from the sky.
This is the story of Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism.
You may find it strange that the story of the life of a religious leader who is like a moon by people is so monotonous and boring?
History doesn't have to be legendary, because reality happens all the time.
Shakyamuni's special status and influence in history are unprecedented and unmatched, but his story is short and ordinary, far less legendary and interesting than that of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign emperors.
This is normal, because the Buddha also had life, old age, illness and death and love and hate separation, and although he became a Buddha, he never left people.
From this point of view, the Buddha is a human being, and everyone is a Buddha.
Here is the history is very interesting, after reading remember to pay a little attention to Oh ~