Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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But the new Buddha c ould not save the world vic ariously. Every single c reat ure
would have to put Gotama’s program int o practice to ac hieve it s own
enlightenment; he c ould not do it for t h e m. Yet at first , it seemed that the Buddha,
as we mu s t now c all Gotama, had decided against preac hing the Dh a mma that
alone c ould save his fellow c reatures. He would often be known as Sakyamūni, the
Silent One from the republic of Sakka, bec ause the knowledge he had ac quired was
ineffable and c ould not be described in words. Yet throughout the Ganges region,
people were longing for a new spirit ual vision, espec ially in the c it ies. T his b e c a me
c lear, the Pali texts t ell us, a lmo s t immed iat ely after the Buddha’s enlightenment,
when two passing merc hants, c alled Tapussa and Bhalluka, who had been in f o rme d
of the great event by one of the gods, c a me to the Bu ddha and paid h o ma g e to
h im. They b e c a me his first lay followers. Yet despite t his init ial success, the Buddha
was st ill reluc tant. His Dh a mma was too diffic ult to explain, he t old himself; the
people would not be prepared to undergo the arduous yogic and mo ra l disc iplines
that it required. Far from wishing to renounc e t heir c raving, mo s t people posit ively
relished t heir attachments and would not want to hear his message of self-
abandonment. ‘If I taught the Dhamma,’ the Buddha decided, ‘people would not
un derst and it and that would be exhausting and disappoint ing for me .’...
But who should be first to hear the message? The Buddha thought at onc e of
his f o rme r teachers Ālāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, but s o me gods, who
were wait ing nearby, t old him that they had both recently died. T his was a great
grief. His teachers had been good me n who would c ert ainly have understood his
Dhamma; now, through no fault of t heir own, they had missed t heir c hanc e and
were c ondemned to yet another life of pain. T his news c ould have given the Buddha
a new sense of urgenc y. He next rec alled the five bhikkhus who had practiced the
penit ent ial disc iplines of tapas wit h h im. They had fled from him in horror when he
had t aken his first me a l, but he c ould not allow t his rejection to c loud his judgment.
He remembered how helpful and supportive they had been during t heir t ime
together, and set out direc t ly to find t h e m. Hearing that they were now living in the
Deer Park out side Vārānasī (the mo d e rn Benares), he began his journey,
determined to set the Wheel of the Dh a mma in motion and, as he put it , ‘to beat
the drum of the deathless Nibbāna.’ He did not expect muc h. The Buddha
mist akenly believed that his teac hing would only be followed for a few hundred
years. But people had to be rescued, and the Buddha was c ompelled, by the very
nature of the enlightenment that he had achieved, to do what he c ould for t h e m.