buddha poornima message

[Guest guest]

 As MAY 8th is BUDDHA POORNIMA...............

BUDDHA

 

 

Gautma was born in the royal family in Kapilavastu a region north of Nepal.

While he an infant, his mother Maya died. The name he was given at birth,

Siddhartha - " expectancy fulfilled " is prophetic since he did acquire what he

wished for - liberation from earthly attachment. He loved his wife Yasodhara and

son Rahul. He was surrounded by luxuries and led the indolent life of a pampered

prince. But when he was 29, he was disillusioned with the short lived nature of

sensual pleasures when he saw a diseased old man and then a corpse; remembering

the serene expression on the face of a holy man he once met, Buddha decided that

if peace were to be found only in the path of renunciation he would renounce

life too and so on a midnight leaving his sleeping wife and son he mounted his

horse kanthaka and rode away from the palace. Bent upon finding a solution to

the miseries of human existence he traveled from place to place subsisting on

food he got by begging.

Hoping that scriptural knowledge may give him the peace he yearned for he

received scriptural injunction from scholars. Next he tried to be an ascetic and

nearly starved himself to death. Having learnt by experience that both the

extremes in his life indolence and stringent denial were bad Buddha came to the

conclusion that the middle path was the best path in all things. His wanderings

soon brought him to the city of Gaya in Bihar. It was here that after partaking

of a meal given by a peasant girl, he went and sat under a Bo Tree. The

meditation he began went on uninterrupted for six nights and days. Legend has it

that Mara tried to disturb his meditation first by the help of bewitchingly

beautiful damsels and then by the threats of monsters. Unmoved by either

temptation or fear Gautama continued to pray and then attained enlightenment and

began to be known as Buddha " the Enlightened One " .

 

He went to Benares and there impressed by the audience of his speech five monks

begged him to accept them as his disciples. He took pity on them, accepted them

as his disciples and it is to them that he gave his first message, the message

of the four noble truths as it has since come to be known. The four Truths he

preached were:

 

1. Life is sorrowful

 

2. Desires cause misery

 

3. Stopping to crave for sensual delights is the first step towards achieving

peace.

 

4. Spiritual poise is gained by " Right views, right intentions, right speech,

right action, right   

      living, right effort, right thinking, right concentration " .

 

Buddha spent the rest 'of his life saving thousands of people by his simple

message of love and service. Steering clear of sophisticated theological

discussions he used to warn people that our experiences in life are the fruits

of our own thoughts and actions and that the consequences of evil actions are

bound to be evil. He always stressed the need for abstaining from every form of

evil - lust, greed, falsehood, calumny - and assiduous cultivation of loving

concern for fellow men. While acknowledging the inexorable turning of the wheel

of life and man's repeated rebirths as animal, demon or human being depending on

his past actions he preached that the way out of this cycle of birth and death

is through adherence to the Path of the noble Truths. Nirvana is the name he

used to indicate freedom from rebirths and the consequent freedom from desire

delusion and death. Discipline was the watchword in Buddha's monasteries.

Inmates had. to take an oath to

stick to chastity and poverty and lead very austere lives with possessions kept

to the barest minimum.

 

King Bimbisara became a staunch devotee of Buddha and the mango grove he

presented to Buddha was for many years the centre from which Buddha preached. In

time with money gifted from other devotees many monasteries were built in and

around that grove in Rajgir, Bihar. The Buddha used to spend most of his time in

a solitary retreat in the forests. In his presence even ferocious beasts behaved

like gentle lambs. It was mostly the influence of the Buddha that put an end to

the heinous custom of animal sacrifice prevalent in the Hindu rituals of the

time. On his 80th year Buddha set out on a tour that was to be his Mahaprasthan

and He spent the final day of his earthly existence in Kusinagar, Dr. Kasiaas it

is now called. He asked his chief disciple Ananda to help him lie down on a

straw mattress between two trees. The unscannal flowers on the trees appeared to

the onlooker as tearful adieus of Nature to its beloved son. His parting words

to his grieving

disciples were " Strive earnestly " .

 

He left no message in the written form. His teachings were passed on orally. It

was only around 480 BC many centuries after his demise that the first attempt to

preserve his teaching in the form of writing was made. The most moving and the

most authentic message of the Buddha however was and continues to be his life of

supreme compassion.

 message about buddha poornima in you tube links

 

-1

 

-2

 

-3

 

-4

 

-5

 

 

Regards

Bharathi.A