Enlightenment

Banner Source: Bodhi Tree

After years of constantly sticking with ascetic training, it was evident that Siddhartha still had not learned about suffering. The years of the harsh ascetic disciplines led him to hardly eating. He only ate fruit and very few grains of rice. However, this did not satisfy his hunger and nourish him properly. He gradually became weak and thin. His bones showed predominantly and the skin on his face became taut. Gautama came to the realization that he would never reach his goals if he did not take more nourishment and so he did. And so, he abandoned his super strict lifestyle of self-denial and asceticism.

Close to where he spent his time in meditation, there was a village named Uruvilva. There, the people showed kindness and gave Gautama food. It was at this village that he slowly began regaining his strength and beauty. After he ended his time participating in the harsh and brutal practices of asceticism, he was determined to penetrate the truth of life’s suffering. So he found himself a soft bed of grass and sat under a bodhi tree where he promised himself that he would not move from his seat until he reached his goal.

There under the tree he sat in a lotus position, with his eyes closed, and breathing deep into a meditative state. As the night passed and went forward, Gautama began to enter many different emotions. The evil demon, Mara, had vistied him and tried distracting him from his goals by tempting him away from his pursuit. Mara got into his head and created imagery of wealth and fortune, but Gautama did not flinch. He created imagery of divine beauty and temptation, but it did not work. Mara even went as far as trying to scare Gautama with awful images of starvation, suffering, and death. Despite Mara’s efforts to distract, Gautama remained composed, calm, and steadfast, never giving into the evil demon’s efforts. And so, out of exhaustion, Mara gave up and went away.

Moving forward from this event, Gautama found himself in intense deep meditation. He felt like he was ascending and floating. Slowly without him even realizing, he was seeing the world from a far away perspective. What he saw was himself, and all the past lives he lived. Seeing himself dying and being reborn time and time again as well as the kinds of lives his past lives had lived including the good and bad things. By seeing these things, he came to the realization that people are reborn when there is desire, when people desire things. In other words, the bad things one does in their lifetime causes a sort of ripple effect where in their next life they come back with unconscious efforts to correct them. What he also understood in that moment was that people who can acknowledge and recognize this pattern free themselves from desire and the cycle of death and being reborn. This understanding is something that can be described as reaching the perfect heaven known as nirvana. Gautama had reached this level of understanding deep while in his meditative state. He was glowing from the inside out. It was in this moment that Siddhartha Gautama had reached enlightenment and become the Buddha.

picture source: Mara

Author’s Notes:

In the final part of the storybook, Siddhartha Gautama strays away from ascetism and regains his strength again. He finds himself in a village where he goes to sit under a bodhi tree and is determined to understand life’s suffering. As he meditates under the tree, Gautama is thrown distractions by the evil demon Mara. Despite the demon’s efforts, Gautama remained unbothered, this ultimately allowing him to transcend into reaching enlightenment. What he realized was that those who want nothing from life free themselves from desire and the cycle of reincarnation which leads to reaching nirvana. Nirvana can be described as the enlightenment in which the mind is at complete peace and the soul is one with the universe. It is reached when one’s suffering and desires go away. Something that was not mentioned in the storybook was about the bodhi tree. When Siddhartha Gautama goes to the bodhi tree and sits under it, he sits in a lotus position. The lotus position can be described as sitting in a meditative state crossed-legged with one’s eyes shut was named after Buddha’s posture. Furthermore, while sitting under the bodhi tree, Gautama was facing East. This is symbolic in that it symbolizes darkness leaving and light coming in.

Bibliography: The Life of Buddha by Andre Herold