74 Facts About The Buddha

The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order.

The Buddha's teachings were compiled by the Buddhist community in the Vinaya, his codes for monastic practice, and the Sutta Pitaka, a compilation of teachings based on his discourses.

The Buddha's given name, "Siddhartha" means "He Who Achieves The Buddha's Goal".

The Dharmaguptaka biography of the Buddha is the most exhaustive, and is entitled the Abhiniskramana Sutra, and various Chinese translations of this date between the 3rd and 6th century CE.

The "long chronology", from Sri Lankese chronicles, states the Buddha had a lifespan of 80 years and died 218 years before Asoka's coronation, thus from which it is inferred that he was born about 298 years before the coronation.

The Buddha's lifetime coincided with the flourishing of influential sramana schools of thought like Ajivika, Carvaka, Jainism, and Ajnana.

The Pali canon frequently depicts The Buddha engaging in debate with the adherents of rival schools of thought.

The Buddha's son is said to have been born on the way, at Lumbini, in a garden beneath a sal tree.

The earliest Buddhist sources state that the Buddha was born to an aristocratic Kshatriya family called Gotama, who were part of the Shakyas, a tribe of rice-farmers living near the modern border of India and Nepal.

The Buddha's father Suddhodana was "an elected chief of the Shakya clan", whose capital was Kapilavastu, and who were later annexed by the growing Kingdom of Kosala during the Buddha's lifetime.

The Buddha's Birthday is called The Buddha Purnima in Nepal, Bangladesh, and India as he is believed to have been born on a full moon day.

The Buddha travelled to the river Anomiya, and cut off his hair.

In later centuries, Gautama became known as the Buddha or "Awakened One".

The title indicates that unlike most people who are "asleep", a The Buddha is understood as having "woken up" to the true nature of reality and sees the world 'as it is'.

However the Buddha is unfazed and calls on the earth as witness to his superiority by touching the ground before entering meditation.

The Buddha proclaimed that he had achieved full awakening, but Upaka was not convinced and "took a different path".

MN 26 and MA 204 continue with the Buddha reaching the Deer Park near Varanasi, where he met the group of five ascetics and was able to convince them that he had indeed reached full awakening.

The Buddha then continued to teach the other ascetics and they formed the first, the company of Buddhist monks.

Various sources such as the Mahavastu, the Mahakhandhaka of the Theravada Vinaya and the Catusparisat-sutra mention that the Buddha taught them his second discourse, about the characteristic of "not-self", at this time or five days later.

The Buddha's sangha enjoyed the patronage of the kings of Kosala and Magadha and he thus spent a lot of time in their respective capitals, Savatthi and Rajagaha.

The Buddha's sangha continued to grow during his initial travels in north India.

The Buddha is said to have gifted Jeta's grove to the sangha at great expense.

The Buddha is eventually convinced by Ananda to grant ordination to Mahaprajapati on her acceptance of eight conditions called gurudharmas which focus on the relationship between the new order of nuns and the monks.

Strong, after the first 20 years of his teaching career, the Buddha seems to have slowly settled in Sravasti, the capital of the Kingdom of Kosala, spending most of his later years in this city.

The early texts depict the elderly The Buddha as suffering from back pain.

However, the Buddha continued teaching well into his old age.

Ajatashatru seems to have been victorious, a turn of events the Buddha is reported to have regretted.

The Buddha responds by saying that the Vajjikas can be expected to prosper as long as they do seven things, and he then applies these seven principles to the Buddhist Sangha, showing that he is concerned about its future welfare.

The Buddha says that the Sangha will prosper as long as they "hold regular and frequent assemblies, meet in harmony, do not change the rules of training, honour their superiors who were ordained before them, do not fall prey to worldly desires, remain devoted to forest hermitages, and preserve their personal mindfulness".

The Buddha then gives further lists of important virtues to be upheld by the Sangha.

The Mahaparinibbana depicts the Buddha as experiencing illness during the last months of his life but initially recovering.

Bhikkhu Mettanando and Oskar von Hinuber argue that the Buddha died of mesenteric infarction, a symptom of old age, rather than food poisoning.

The Theravada tradition generally believes that the Buddha was offered some kind of pork, while the Mahayana tradition believes that the Buddha consumed some sort of truffle or other mushroom.

The Buddha then repeated his final instructions to the sangha, which was that the Dhamma and Vinaya was to be their teacher after his death.

The Buddha then entered his final meditation and died, reaching what is known as parinirvana.

The Buddha's body was then cremated and the remains, including his bones, were kept as relics and they were distributed among various north Indian kingdoms like Magadha, Shakya and Koliya.

Ainslie Embree writes that many sermons credited to the Buddha are the works of later teachers, so there is considerable doubt about his original message.

The Buddha posits that the Fourth Noble Truths, the Eightfold path and Dependent Origination, which are commonly seen as essential to Buddhism, are later formulations which form part of the explanatory framework of this "liberating insight".

Edward Conze argued that the attempts of European scholars to reconstruct the original teachings of the Buddha were "all mere guesswork".

The Buddha then explains how the difference between a noble person and an uninstructed worldling is that a noble person reflects on and understands the impermanence of these conditions.

Karma is not the only cause for one's conditions, as the Buddha listed various physical and environmental causes alongside karma.

The Buddha's teaching of karma differed to that of the Jains and Brahmins, in that on his view, karma is primarily mental intention.

The Buddha instead held that all things in the world of our experience are transient and that there is no unchanging part to a person.

The Buddha saw the belief in a self as arising from our grasping at and identifying with the various changing phenomena, as well as from ignorance about how things really are.

Furthermore, the Buddha held that we experience suffering because we hold on to erroneous self views.

The Buddha taught a path of training to undo the samyojana, kleshas and asavas and attain vimutti.

In various texts, the Buddha is depicted as having studied under two named teachers, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta.

Likewise, samsara, the idea that we are trapped in cycles of rebirth and that we should seek liberation from them through non-harming and spiritual practices, pre-dates the Buddha and was likely taught in early Jainism.

The early Buddhist texts depict the Buddha as promoting the life of a homeless and celibate "sramana", or mendicant, as the ideal way of life for the practice of the path.

The Buddha taught that mendicants or "beggars" were supposed to give up all possessions and to own just a begging bowl and three robes.

For example, in Samyutta Nikaya 111, Majjhima Nikaya 92 and Vinaya i 246 of the Pali Canon, the Buddha praises the Agnihotra as the foremost sacrifice and the Savitri meter as the foremost meter.

The Buddha did not see the Brahmanical rites and practices as useful for spiritual advancement.

The Buddha especially critiqued animal sacrifice as taught in Vedas.

The Buddha critiqued the Brahmins' claims of superior birth and the idea that different castes and bloodlines were inherently pure or impure, noble or ignoble.

The Buddha's teaching then is a single universal moral law, one Dharma valid for everybody, which is opposed to the Brahmanic ethic founded on "one's own duty" which depends on caste.

The early texts depict the Buddha as giving a deflationary account of the importance of politics to human life.

The Buddha taught them to "hold regular and frequent assemblies", live in harmony and maintain their traditions.

The Buddha then goes on to promote a similar kind of republican style of government among the Buddhist Sangha, where all monks had equal rights to attend open meetings and there would be no single leader, since The Buddha chose not to appoint one.

Some scholars have argued that this fact signals that the Buddha preferred a republican form of government, while others disagree with this position.

Digha Nikaya 2 describes how king Ajatashatru is unable to tell which of the monks is the Buddha when approaching the sangha and must ask his minister to point him out.

Likewise, in MN 140, a mendicant who sees himself as a follower of the Buddha meets the Buddha in person but is unable to recognize him.

The Buddha is described as being handsome and with a clear complexion, at least in his youth.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the figure of Sakyamuni The Buddha retains his central role as the historical The Buddha who lived and taught in ancient India.

The Buddha is sometimes seen as a Buddha who simultaneously appears in countless forms, subverting any fixed notion of a singular historical presence.

The Mahaparinirvana Sutra reinforces this doctrine by denying that the Buddha truly enters parinirvana.

In Islamic sources, The Buddha is called Budd or Shakyamuni.

Ibn Hazm defines the Buddha as a person who is not born, does not eat or drink, and does not die.

The Buddha is compared to various Islamic figures by Muslim heresiologists.

The Buddha is further identified with the prophet Dhu al-Kifl, supposedly related to his birthplace in Kapila-Vastu.

The Buddha furthermore compares Buddha's teachings with that of Muhammad: The teaching of the omnipresence of dukkha, as formulated in the Four Noble Truths, is compared to 90:04, stating that "humans are created in "pain toil and trial"".

Some early Chinese Taoist-Buddhists thought the Buddha to be a reincarnation of Laozi.

In Sikhism, The Buddha is mentioned as the 23rd avatar of Vishnu in the Chaubis Avtar, a composition in Dasam Granth traditionally and historically attributed to Guru Gobind Singh.

The earliest artistic depictions of the Buddha found at Bharhut and Sanchi are aniconic and symbolic.

Iconic representations of the Buddha became particularly popular and widespread after the first century CE.