Shakyamuni mantra

The Buddha’s biography: Teaching

At first the Buddha was unsure whether his insight — subtle as it was — could be communicated. According to legend, as he debated whether or not to teach, Brahma Sahampati (”Brahma, Lord of the Earth”) appeared and entreated the Buddha to share his insight with others.

Brahma Sahampati is most senior of the Mahabrahma deities, a collection of gods (but not creator gods — those don’t exist in Buddhism) with subtle forms and long life. Brahma Sahampati points out, in a famous simile, that there are some in the world “with but little dust on their eyes” who would be receptive to the Buddha’s teaching.

This tale can be taken to represent the arising of altruistic side of the Buddha’s awakening. Awakening, it seems, is not a single event but a succession of changes. The Buddha first found liberation from suffering by penetrating into the impermanent and contingent nature of all experiences, and only later did compassion arise. It is only after his initial insight that he became aware that that insight could also benefit others.

Buddha teaching first five disciples.

The Buddha then had to think about whom to teach. He became aware psychically that Uddaka Ramaputta and Alara Kalama, his former teachers, were dead, and so his mind turned to the five ascetics who had deserted him when he abandoned asceticism. Therefore he set off in search of his former companions.

When the five ascetics first saw Shakyamuni approaching them at at the Deer Park in Isipatana, near Benares (modern-day Varanasi) they decided to snub him, but it soon became obvious that something was different about him and they welcomed him with warthm and curiosity.

The Buddha was able to persuade the ascetics that he had not, by giving up asceticism, abandoned the spiritual path, and he told them that he was now a Tathagatha, a Arhat (worthy one), a Buddha.

Then began what must have been an extraordinary seminar in Awakening. Although the texts describe the Buddha making a standard presentation of the four noble truths and the eightfold path, he must surely at this early stage have been groping for ways to express the depth of the insight that he had gained. Eventually, Kondañña came to see what the Buddha meant and understood: “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.”

The successful transmission of the lineage of Awakening from the Buddha to Kondañña is seen in the Buddhist tradition as being, if anything, even more significant than the Buddha’s own enlightenment. When Kondañña gained insight the earth is said to have shaken and a cry is supposed to have gone up from the very heavens:

“At Varanasi, in the Deer Park at Isipatana, the Blessed One has set in motion the unexcelled Wheel of Dhamma that cannot be stopped by priest or contemplative, devas, Mara, or God or anyone at all in the cosmos.”

None of this happened when the Buddha himself became enlightened. That was a more sedate and a quieter affair, with no supernatural partying! So why is it so important that the Buddha managed to communicate his experience?

We should consider first that the Buddha was not, according to tradition, the first human being to become enlightened. Millennia previously, tradition holds, there had been another Buddha, Kassapa, who had established his own lineage, but this had died out. Also, there had been many other “Pratyeka Buddhas” or solitary Buddhas, who had been unable to establish lineages. The reasons for this are muddled. Pratyeka Buddhas are sometimes said to be lack ability in teaching or to lack sufficient compassion to teach, but this doesn’t fit with the descriptions of Pratyeka Buddhas in the Indian oral tradition, where Pratyeka Buddhas are depicted as living in communities with disciples.

But whatever the reason, the point is that enlightenment had been both lost and found many times over, and so it was marvelous first of all that Siddhartha had become the Buddha, but even more significant that he had managed to start a transmission lineage: something that is of great significance to us, 2,500 years later, as we continue to participate in this lineage.

Eventually, all five of the ascetics “got it” and the Buddha entreated his enlightened disciples to go out and teach out of compassion in order to benefit living beings:

“Go forth for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the welfare, the good and the happiness of gods and men.

“Let no two of you go in the same direction. Teach the Dharma which is beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle and beautiful at the end.

“Proclaim both the letter and the spirit of the holy life completely fulfilled and perfectly pure.”

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