Reading Diary B: The Life of Buddha

The Life of Buddha

Siddhartha the Hermit: This story has so many beautifully written sentences that describe settings or truths. Instead of just talking about dawn or a horse, Buddha uses descriptive words, so unusual, that they catch the reader’s attention. For example, to describe dawn, the author starts off the story by saying, “When the sun finally peered between the eyelids of night.” Later on, Buddha gives a helpful, profound teaching. He says, “Unhappiness is born of desire; that man it to be pitied who is a salve to his passions.” This is such a counter-cultural stance in our society because we are taught to please ourselves in order to gain happiness, whether that is through success, money or perfection. This instead teaches that feeding your fleshly desires is the demise to a happy life.

(Buddha Statue, Bojjannakonda)

The Tree of Knowledge: Many of the miracles in this story seem to be experienced or granted for convenience instead of to show the glory of Buddha. Some of the other miracles could belong to a fairy tale because of the good vs. evil theme. This is especially true when Mara, the Evil One, raised the banks of the pool to prevent Buddha from escaping and then Buddha prayed to the Goddess that lived in the tall tree on the bank to help him climb out.

Siddhartha Becomes the Buddha: There was one large paragraph in the story that almost threw me off because of the repetition and complexity, but at the end, it concluded that ignorance is at the root of old age and death. While I had to think on this for some time, I think this makes some sense in relation to Buddhism. From the start of humanity, men and women were ignorant, which means they needed something more powerful than themselves to save them from the darkness within them.