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1. The Background to Buddhism
The Buddha
‘So, Ananda, you must be your own lamps, be your own refuges....
Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for
refuge to anything but yourselves.’ With these final instructions to
his disciples, Siddhattha Gotama, known as the Buddha, entered his
mahaparinibbana, now estimated to have been between 400–350
BCE.^1 His last words to his disciples were ‘All complex phenomenon
are transitory. Strive with diligence.’
Born nearly 80 years earlier as Gotama to an aristocratic family
of the Sakya tribal oligarchy (and therefore called Sakyamuni, the
‘holy man of the Sakyas’) in what is now Nepal, he had left home
at the age of 29 to search for the truth behind suffering and death,
beginning a life of almost ceaseless wandering. At first this meant
joining the already existing groups of wandering renouncers, or
samanas; here he sought answers to the problem of human suffering,
learned techniques of meditation, and, in his last group, endured
agonising austerities. Finding the answers, the techniques and the
austerities futile, he abandoned them and struck out on his own,
and finally sat down under a pipal tree, considered sacred since the
time of the Indus civilisation, resolving not to move until he had
won his way through to liberation. It was then, on the banks of a
river in what is now Bodh Gaya that he attained Enlightenment.
Tradition records that at first he was reluctant to teach, but convinced
(^1) 486 BCE has been the date accepted up to now by most Indian and other scholars.
However more recent evidence suggests a significantly later date (Cousins 1996;
Keay 2001: 62–63).