Search and Enlightenment of the Buddha

Six hundred and twenty three years before Christ (B.C.), on the full moon day of May, in the Rupandehi district of the kingdom of Nepal today, at Lumbini, a lovely garden full of green shady Melly Salla groves, Sakya Prince Siddattha Gotama, the Buddha-to-be who would become the teacher of the greatest religion in the world, was born.

After seeing the Four Great Omens, namely, an old man, a sick man, a dead man and a holy hermit, Prince Siddattha understood the truth of life; he left his kingdom and renounced the world in 549 B.C.

 

The ascetic Gotama wandered about the valley of the Ganges, at first approaching famous teachers, Ālāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, and following their teachings. But their methods did not lead to super-knowledge, awakening, so he turned away from them. Next he joined a group of five ascetics and practiced the most severe ways of life for six years. Because he gave up food, he grew thinner and thinner, but still he did not reach his goal. Then he gave up the two extremes, indulgence in sensual pleasures (kāmasukhallikanuyoga) and self-mortification (attalikamathanuyoga) and followed the Middle Path (Majjhima-pātipada). To restore his health, he accepted the milky rice offered by a young lady called Sujāta and then he sat cross-legged under the big Bodhi Tree (the tree of enlightenment). He decided not to rise from his meditation until he gained wisdom. The Bodhisatta was so resolute in his great struggle for Buddhahood that neither Mara nor the evil forces could break through his calm concentration.

Finally, at midnight, he achieved the three-fold knowledge (the knowledge of his own former births, the knowledge of other being’s passing away and arising, and the knowledge of the total destruction of all impurities). He attained the freedom of mind and the freedom of wisdom and become the Buddha, the Fully Awakened One, the Conqueror of the Battle, who opened the Door of Deathlessness to all living beings, Nibbāna.
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