Dear sangha
I am currently reading The Historical Buddha by Hans Schumann which is, as far as it can be, a historical rather than hagiographical account of the life of Prince Siddhartha and his transformation into the Buddha and the political and cultural environment of that time.
It has a similarity of approach to Stephen Batchelor's more recent work, in making the Buddha very much feel like a human being dealing with human problems albeit from a new perspective. Although the Mahayana image of Shakyamuni teaching to hundreds of buddhas and bodhisattvas with light streaming from his third eye points to a different truth, the historical Buddha is, to me, more accessable as a person living in a constantly changing world that he has little control over.
This passage about the early days of Prince Siddhartha after his homeleaving tells of the hardship and fears of living alone in the forest. How many of us would have been tempted to return to the safety and luxury of the palace?
"The loneliness of the forest is hard to bear, it is hard to take pleasure in being alone... When at night I stayed in such frightening and fearful places, and an animal passed by, or a peacock broke a twig, or the wind rustled among the leaves, I was filled with terror and panic."
-- Majjhima Nikāya 4 (Pāli Text Society translation)
That said, we cannot know for sure that those are the words of the Buddha, or a reasonable paraphrase, either, but it does give an idea of what he must have faced during that initial period of hermitage.
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-
I am currently reading The Historical Buddha by Hans Schumann which is, as far as it can be, a historical rather than hagiographical account of the life of Prince Siddhartha and his transformation into the Buddha and the political and cultural environment of that time.
It has a similarity of approach to Stephen Batchelor's more recent work, in making the Buddha very much feel like a human being dealing with human problems albeit from a new perspective. Although the Mahayana image of Shakyamuni teaching to hundreds of buddhas and bodhisattvas with light streaming from his third eye points to a different truth, the historical Buddha is, to me, more accessable as a person living in a constantly changing world that he has little control over.
This passage about the early days of Prince Siddhartha after his homeleaving tells of the hardship and fears of living alone in the forest. How many of us would have been tempted to return to the safety and luxury of the palace?
"The loneliness of the forest is hard to bear, it is hard to take pleasure in being alone... When at night I stayed in such frightening and fearful places, and an animal passed by, or a peacock broke a twig, or the wind rustled among the leaves, I was filled with terror and panic."
-- Majjhima Nikāya 4 (Pāli Text Society translation)
That said, we cannot know for sure that those are the words of the Buddha, or a reasonable paraphrase, either, but it does give an idea of what he must have faced during that initial period of hermitage.
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-
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