Siddhartha’s path to enlightenment
The Four Sights
Siddhartha saw four things he had never seen before. He was shocked and didn’t really understand what he had seen.
- The first sight was an old man. Siddhartha had never seen anyone old before and questioned his chariot driver, Channa, about what he was looking at. Channa explained that when people get older they physically decline.
- The second sight was illness. When Siddhartha saw an ill person by the side of the road, he was upset as he had never seen anyone who was ill before. Channa explained that, during their lives, people get ill.
- The third sight was a dead person being carried. Channa explained that everyone dies eventually.
- The fourth sight was a holy man walking through the street. This person made Siddhartha curious, as the holy man was looking to understand truth.
His path to enlightenment
Siddhartha wanted to find out about why people suffer and how it might be possible to end this suffering. He decided that he would leave the palace and his family behind to go into the world to try to find some answers. He gave up all his possessions and expensive clothes to try to understand more about suffering.
Siddhartha became an A person who gives up the pleasures of normal life., which means he lived a simple life with no possessions and refused to do anything that would give him pleasure. He also tried to be disciplined in Thinking quietly as a spiritual or religious exercise. Connection of the mind and soul with the Divine using breathing and other techniques. In Buddhism, using one of a set of techniques or exercises for calming the mind, developing positive emotions and understanding the way things are. to try to understand suffering. He To abstain from all food and drink, typically as a religious observance. for long periods of time and this caused him to suffer even more. Eventually he was so weak that he ate some rice, and this made him realise that he still didn’t understand how to get rid of suffering. He realised that the way to live was the Also known as the Eightfold Path, in Buddhism the Middle Way represents the state between living a life of self-indulgence and one of denial. It is the ideal way to live. between luxury and poverty.
Siddhartha continued to meditate over time and eventually became The realisation of the truth about life. In Buddhism it releases a person from the cycle of rebirth.. He then became known as the Buddha, which means ‘enlightened one’.
The creation of the Sangha
The The Buddhist community of people who practice the faith, usually used to mean the community of monks and nuns. , which is the Buddhist community of monks, was founded by the Buddha in the 5th century BC. The Sangha is made up of people who want to dedicate their lives to a disciplined way of life, follow the Buddha’s teachings and have a simple life.
The teaching of the Buddha (his doctrine) were passed on by word of mouth, first of all by his immediate followers and later through the teachers of the growing Community of monks or nuns.. His teachings were not written down until hundreds of years after his death. These writings are known as the The Pali term for the collection of Buddhist scriptures. .