Siddhartha Gautama was born in the lap of luxury, a prince of the Shakya clan, his father made sure he had a very sheltered upbringing. However, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t prevent the young prince, who hitherto believed the world was perfect, from seeing death and suffering. And those sights caused such a deep uneasiness within him, that he abandoned everything in the quest of the truth. Like Siddhartha, we encounter suffering in our daily life, but the glamour and attraction of Maya is so enticing, that we have numbed to the eventuality that awaits us all, for after joy, there will be suffering.
He wandered the forests with five companions, including Kaundinya, a scholar in his royal court who had predicted his destiny of enlightenment when he was born. They led a life of extreme austerity and fasting. However after six years of self-mortification, when Siddhartha was almost near-death, a farmer’s wife, Sujata offered him some simple kheer (milk & rice). Some versions narrate something simple and yet incredibly profound that she said to him, when he refused at first, which would later become the genesis of his transformational teaching of the Middle Way. This shocked his companions who thought he had fallen prey to the indulgences of the body and abandoned him.
The four noble truths and the Middle Way: the foundations of Buddhism
Having consumed the simple meal, and getting some of his energy back, the young prince realised the cursory role that the physical body had to play in his quest for knowledge, at least in this earthly realm. It is believed that shortly after this, whilst meditating under the Bodhi Tree in Gaya, he attained complete knowledge of the self and the nature of reality, or Nirvana.
Now enlightened, the Buddha travelled to the outskirts of Kashi, where in a deer park in what is modern-day Sarnath, he was reunited with his companions. Despite an initial sense of resentment, when the Buddha spoke, they couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the divinity that was radiating off him. The Buddha delivered his first sermon, where he laid out the four noble truths relating to the eventuality of suffering, its cause and how it could be transcended by following the eight-fold path of righteousness in every aspect of living.
He also spoke about the importance of neither depriving the body, nor being lost in the pursuit of sense pleasures, or the famous Middle Way, which is the very foundation of his teaching. The beautiful Dhamek Stupa, built by the great Emperor Ashoka, marks this location and can be seen to this day in Sarnath.
This timeless teaching applies today, as much as it did then, as we constantly struggle to strike a balance between remaining true to dharma and the vagaries of the mind. A bad experience can trigger an immediate sense of vairagya or renunciation, where we oscillate towards one extreme, only to be drawn in by the glamour of the world again. It is only when we tread on the Middle Way, that we can live in the world, and yet not be of it.
