Buddhism-The Religion Of Eight-Fold Path

Buddhists truly believe that their master, the Buddha descended from Heaven to save mankind. The murals in the beautiful and rare museum in Sarnath depict the soul of the Buddha living in Heavens where he was one with God since the beginning of time. There he waited the hour he should be revealed time. That day, according to Buddhists, came in 563 BC. The Buddhist soul, called the Bodhisattva, left his heavenly home to assume the form and nature of men.

The picture story of Buddha depicted on the walls of the Senath museum, tells about the miraculous birth for which God had selected Mahan Maya, wife of King Ludhiana Gautama of the Skye dynasty in the Himalayan valley of the Ganges. It portrays the annunciation and birth of the child the Lumina Gardens and tells of the prediction of the king soothsayers that this first or son, Siddhartha Gautama, would abandon his right to the trine if ever he becomes acquainted with the suffering in the world.

King Ludhiana commanded his people: “Never let the eyes of my son behold either sorrow or death. “ And in the place grounds Prince Gautama saw only the apparent happiness of his father’s court. In hid journeys to the cities couriers preceded him so that northing the form of sadness should ever mar his path. For 30 years, Prince Siddhartha Gautama lived in make-believe world, enjoying a kind of make-believe peace.

Because there were miracles during this sheltered existence, the murals told the stories of these, too. Tenderly they recorded how the young prince fell asleep in the shade of with the sun, the prince’s tree remained constant in deference’s to the holy child.

At the age 12, the prince astounded his teachers with his superior knowledge. At 16, he so distinguished himself at archery that he won the eight to marry his cousin, Isadora, a girl who it is said was born on the same day as Gautama.

Suffering and Sadness:

At the age of thirty, prince Gautama was suddenly confronted full force with life’s realities. Although the couriers had carefully prepared the reroute of the princely procession, there appeared in the princes’ path an old man sorrowfully trudging his burdened way along the road. Abet further on, sick man huddled, bowed down with disease. And finally amid the mourner’ cries, the prince beheld a corpse that was being carried to the waiting funeral pyre.

These three scenes were staged by the gods as it were, to acquaint Prince Gautama with the tragedy of age, suffering and the sorrow of death, forgone or all of which nonbeing is spared. The divinely human drama plunged Siddhartha Gautama into deep sadness. He could never forget what he had seen, nor could ever erase form his mind the contrast which he observed a serene and peaceful monk reflectively walking the same highway of life. Surely, the religious man had found the answer to life’s riddles. Surely, the man who set his heart on God would find peace.

Divinity in Every Man:

Haunted by his thoughts, Siddhartha made his choice. His final decision was to run away form his family, leaving behind his son Rahall and wife Yashodhra whom he very much loved, at night in a desperate search for God. This night is referred to by everyone as the night of the great renunciation.

Having left his father’s house, Gautama was severely tempted. Gods disguised as devise offered the kingdoms of the earth only if he would bow down and serve them. He fasted and prayed. He fasted so strenuously that he fell into a dead faint. His five discipleship who knew him only as a seeker like they were convinced that he was especially holy because he mortified his body more than they. But one day the wandering Siddhartha said to them, “Starving myself and torturing myself is bringing me no nearer the answers to my questions than when I lived in ease and pleasure in my father’s house.”

That was a human cry. It is the cry of every man who seeks the cause of suffering, who finds that every supreme happiness is accompanied by suffering, and who tries to reconcile suffering with a merciful hon. man is deserted by his friends as his disciples deserted Gautama. But there are also men who continue the quest, as Bodhisattva did, and such a man is inevitably led to the both tree.

Buddha tree is symbolized in the Museum’s murals at Senath, as the tree of knowledge. This particular one was depicted as a fig tree and stood at Gaya of Magadha. Here beneath this tree Siddhartha Gautama sat. He was determined not to rise until he had solved the riddle of suffering and pain. He said he would not let God ignore him until He had blessed him. And here at midnight branches were in heaven and whose roots clutched the heart of the earth, he received his illumination.

And what did that mean? It meant that he had discovered a series of truth. He “relived the endless cycles of cause and effect within the universe.” He had reached a conclusion: “From good must always come good, and form evil, evil.” This illumination had come from the retracing of his steps back to Heaven form whence he came, where from thebegining of time, he had been always taught: “The true self is God, and God is the true self. “ Finally he had found the answer to the question of suffering which he was later to expend at Senath.

The truth of the matter was this: A man had come to the tree of knowledge as pilgrim; he arose as Buddha-the Enlightened One; and the time of his transfiguration is referred to by his followers as the Sacred Night.

The sermon the Buddha preached at Senath is called: “Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Law.” And the heart of it is the riddle and solution of suffering based on four noble truths: (1)  the of suffering (2) the cause of suffering (3) the cessation of suffering (4) the way that leads to the cessation of suffering.

“Here, O my disciples,” said the Buddha, “this is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering; old age is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, dejection and despair are suffering. Contact with unpleasant is suffering; sickness is suffering. And this is the because of suffering: the craving thirst, which leads to rebirth, combined with pleasure and lust, finding pleasure here, there, namely the craving for passion, the craving for existence, the craving for vanity. Now the cessation of suffering isto ceases form attachment. Attachment originates in craving, and craving originates in ignorance. To cease form suffering, ceaseattachemtn; to cease form attachment, cease form craving; to cease form craving, cease from ignorance..... And now, my disciples he noble truth of the way that leads to cessation of suffering is the noble eight-fold path, namely: (i) right views, (ii) right intentions, (iii) right speech, (iv) right action, (v) right livelihood, (vi) right effort, (vii) right mindfulness and (viii) right concentration.

So great was the appeal not only of his words but of his logic, and his life that young men and women began flocking to Senath, drawn by the light of the Enlightened One. The people of nearby Banaras complained that Buddha was robbing the city of its youth. He answered them by sating he had comet to rumen men’s hearts form fruitless speculation to an awareness of truth. He had come to teach the cause and cure of suffering, to lift men above their pettiness’s, to distinguish between reality and illusion. His way was uniquely devoid of talk about God or gods; he had little to say about prophecy, less to say about worship, and even less about the deification of himself.

Statues of the Buddha are now found n almost every part of the world. There are golden ones that are truly works of art. There are relics connected with Buddha and shrines for housing his disciples who spread his religion to different parts of the world.

The Buddha did not deny the existence of God. He said God is the universal being. The faith of Buddha was beyond the concept of caste or creed.