Buddha Purnima is a Buddhist festival that celebrates the birth of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, later known as Gautama Buddha. Gautama Buddha is the founder of the religion Buddhism. The day is also known as Buddha Day, Buddha Purnima and Buddha Pournami.
Gautama Buddha, originally named Siddhartha Gautama, was born into a royal family in Lumbini, Nepal. Despite being raised in luxury, he became disillusioned with his princely life after encountering the realities of aging, sickness, and death. These experiences prompted him to leave his palace and become a wandering ascetic in search of spiritual truth and liberation from suffering. His quest for understanding led him to practice severe asceticism before eventually discovering the Middle Way, a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification.
Buddha achieved enlightenment while meditating under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India. After years of searching, he realized that neither extreme asceticism nor indulgence could lead to true enlightenment. Instead, he discovered the Middle Way, which emphasizes a balanced approach to life and spiritual practice. The Middle Way involves ethical conduct, mental discipline, and wisdom, leading to the cessation of suffering and attainment of Nirvana.
The Eightfold Path is a central teaching of Buddhism that outlines the steps toward achieving enlightenment and liberation from suffering. The eight components are:
Many scholars hesitate to make specific claims about the history of Buddha's life due to the lack of contemporaneous historical records and the reliance on later textual sources, which often contain mythological and hagiographical elements. The details of Buddha's life are primarily derived from religious texts written centuries after his death, which makes it challenging to separate historical facts from later embellishments.
Traditional dates for Buddha's death vary among different Buddhist traditions. In the Eastern Buddhist tradition (China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan), Buddha's death is traditionally dated to 949 BCE. In the Kalachakra tradition using the Ka-tan system of calculating time, Buddha's death is believed to have occurred around 833 BCE. These differences arise from variations in historical chronologies and cultural interpretations.
Two primary chronologies are used to date Buddha's lifetime:
Buddha's definition of karma focuses on intention. He taught that actions are morally significant not simply due to their external performance but because of the intentions behind them. This contrasts with the Jain and Brahmin definitions, where karma often refers to physical actions and their consequences. For Buddha, mental intention (volition) plays a crucial role in determining the karmic outcomes of actions.
Dependent origination (Paticca Samuppada) is a fundamental Buddhist teaching that explains how all phenomena arise in dependence upon other phenomena. It illustrates a chain of cause-and-effect relationships that lead to the existence of suffering (dukkha). According to this doctrine, suffering arises from a series of conditioned processes, starting from ignorance (avijja), leading to volitional formations (sankhara), consciousness (vinnana), name and form (nama-rupa), the six sense bases (salayatana), contact (phassa), feeling (vedana), craving (tanha), clinging (upadana), becoming (bhava), birth (jati), and ultimately, aging and death (jara-marana). Understanding and breaking this chain through insight and wisdom is key to ending suffering.
Anatta, or non-self, is a central concept in Buddhism that denotes the absence of a permanent, unchanging self. According to this teaching, individuals are composed of temporary psycho-physical elements and processes without an enduring essence. Anatta is positioned as a Middle Way between eternalism (the belief in a permanent soul or self) and annihilationism (the belief that the self ceases to exist entirely at death). Buddhism teaches that clinging to the idea of a permanent self leads to suffering, and realizing the truth of anatta helps one achieve liberation.
The Middle Way is a fundamental teaching of Buddha that advocates for a balanced approach to life and spiritual practice. It avoids the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification, instead promoting a path of moderation and ethical living. The Middle Way is embodied in the Noble Eightfold Path, which provides practical guidelines for ethical conduct, mental discipline, and wisdom. This balanced approach helps individuals overcome ignorance, craving, and attachment, leading to liberation (Nirvana).
Buddha viewed the ideal life as one of homelessness, celibacy, and simplicity. He taught that renunciants (monks and nuns) should live a life free from material possessions and attachments. Buddhist monks and nuns were expected to beg for their food, own only minimal possessions (a begging bowl and three robes), and rely on the generosity of the lay community for their basic needs. They were not allowed to store food, eat after noon, or use valuable items like gold or silver. This lifestyle was meant to foster detachment from worldly desires and facilitate spiritual growth.
According to Buddha, there are two types of happiness: