Original subtitles

2,500 years ago,

nestled in a fertile valley

along the border between India

and Nepal, a child was born who

was to become the Buddha.

The stories say that before his

birth, his mother, the queen

of a small Indian kingdom,

had a dream.

A beautiful white

elephant offered the queen

a lotus flower and then entered

the side of her body.

When sages were asked to

interpret the dream, they

predicted the queen would give

birth to a son destined to

become either a great ruler or

a holy man.

One day, they said, he would

either conquer the world or

become an enlightened being,

the Buddha.

People like stories.

It is one of the ways we learn.

The story of the Buddha�s life

is an archetypal journey.

But it is a means to an end.

It is not an end.

Within ten months,

as a tree lowered a branch to

support her, a baby boy was

born, emerging from her side.

Seven days later, the queen

died.

"The world is filled with pain

and sorrow," the Buddha would

one day teach.

"But I have found a serenity,"

he told his followers, "that you

can find too".

Everybody understands

suffering.

It is something that we all

share with everybody else.

It's at once utterly intimate

and utterly shared.

So Buddha says, "that's

a place to begin.

That's where we begin".

No matter what your

circumstances, you will end up

losing everything you love.

You will end up aging.

You will end up ill.

And the problem is that we need

to figure out how to make that

all be all right.

What he actually said was

that life is blissful.

There's joy everywhere,

only we're closed off to it.

His teachings were actually

about opening up the joyful or

blissful nature of reality,

but the bliss and the joy is

in the transitoriness.

"Do you see this glass?

I love this glass.

It holds the water admirably.

when I tap it, it has a lovely

ring.

When the sun shines on it, it

reflects the light beautifully.

But when the wind blows and the

glass falls off the shelf and

breaks or if my elbow hits it

and it falls to the ground,

I say, 'of course.'

But when I know that the glass

is already broken, every minute

with it is precious".

The Buddha can shine out

from the eyes of anybody.

Inside the buffeting of

an ordinary human life, at any

moment, what the Buddha found,

we can find.

in southern Nepal,

at the foot of the Himalayas,

is one of the world's holiest

places, Lumbini; where,

according to the sacred tales,

the Buddha was born.

Today Buddhist pilgrims from

all over the world make their

way here to be in the presence

of the sage whose life story is

inseparable from centuries of

anecdotes and legends.

There are countless stories

of the Buddha.

Each tradition, each culture,

each time period has their own

stories.

We have lots of visual

narratives and artwork from

all over Buddhist Asia.

But the first written material,

actually... the first biography,

say, of the Buddha...

really, we don't see that before

about 500 years after his death.

For the first few centuries,

Buddhist narrative was oral.

Historically, it is based

on something certainly

that happened.

There must have been someone

who corresponded with Gautama

Buddha, but we don't know.

We don't know how much of it is

pure fairy tale and how much of

it is historic fact.

But it doesn't matter.

It touches something that we all

basically know.

The relevance of it is in

the message of the story,

the promise of the story.

Like any good story, it has

a lot to teach.

So the story of his life, then,

is a beautiful way of telling

the teaching.

"He who sees me sees

the teaching," the Buddha said,

"and he who sees the teaching

sees me".

Born some 500 years before the

birth of Jesus, the Buddha would

grow to manhood in a town

vanished long ago.

For nearly three decades,

he would see nothing of the

world beyond.

The tales say he was the son

of a king, raised in a palace

with every imaginable luxury.

He was called Siddhartha

Gautama, a prince among a clan

of warriors.

"When I was a child," he said,

"I was delicately brought up,

most delicately.

A white sunshade was held over

me day and night to protect me

from cold, heat, dust, dirt,

and dew.

My father gave me three

lotus ponds:

One where red lotuses bloomed,

one where white lotuses

bloomed,

one where blue lotuses bloomed".

The father wants him to be

a king; wants him to conquer the

world and to be the emperor of

India, which at that time was

16 different kingdoms.

And it was predicted that he

would be able to conquer

wherever he wanted if he

remained as a king.

So the father was creating this

artificial environment to

coddle him.

His father wanted to prevent

him from ever noticing that

anything might be wrong with

the world because he hoped that

he would stay in the life they

knew and loved and not go off,

as was predicted at his birth,

and possibly become a spiritual

teacher rather than a king.

Shielded from pain and

suffering, Siddhartha indulged

in a life of pure pleasure:

every whim satisfied,

every desire fulfilled.

"I wore the most costly

garments, ate the finest foods.

I was surrounded by beautiful

women".

"During the rainy season,

I stayed in my palace, where

I was entertained by musicians

and dancing girls.

I never even thought of

leaving".

When he was 16, his father,

drawing him tighter into palace

life, married him to his cousin.

It wasn't long before they fell

in love.

He was totally in love

with her.

There is a story that on their

honeymoon, which was about ten

years long, at one time, they

rolled off the roof that they

were making love on while in

union, and they fell down but

landed in a bed of lotuses and

lilies and didn't notice they

had fallen.

And so, the stories

say, he indulged himself for

29 years, until the shimmering

bubble of pleasure burst.

His father does everything

he can to never let him leave,

never let him see the suffering

that life is.

But one day, he goes outside,

and he's traveling through the

kingdom, and he has the first

of four encounters.

He sees an old man.

And he asks his attendant,

and the attendant says,

"Oh, that's change.

One doesn't always stay young

and perfect".

Then on the next tour outside,

he sees a sick man and doesn't

quite understand what it is.

He asks his attendant,

and the attendant says,

"Oh, that happens to all of us".

Everybody gets sick, and

don't think, "you are a prince;

you will not get sick".

Your father will get sick.

Your mom will get sick.

Everybody will become sick.

Then he sees that it isn't

just this sick person;

in fact, it's universal.

And something is stimulated

inside of him.

So he keeps getting the chariot

driver to take him out, and he

sees, you know, horror after

horror.

And on his third trip

outside, he... he meets a corpse,

and he recognizes impermanence

and suffering and death as the

real state of things;

the world that he had been

protected from, shielded from,

kept from seeing.

And he was shocked.

You know, he was shocked, and

he realized, "this is my fate

too.

I will also become old.

I will also become ill.

I will also die.

How do I deal with these

things?"

These are universal questions

in any human being's life:

what it's like to be in a body

inside of time, and our fate,

and how do we navigate that?

It really is a tale of the

transformation from a certain

naive, innocent relationship

to your own life to wanting

to know the full story, wanting

to know the full truth.

And then the fourth trip

outside, he sees a spiritual

seeker: someone who has decided

to live a life completely other

than his life in order to escape

from impermanence, suffering,

and death.

So he has this sort of

traumatic encounter with the

pain and suffering of life.

We try to protect our

children.

We don't want to let our

children see all the pain

that's in the world.

But at a very early age, at

a time before he could remember

anything, at a time before

there was conceptual thought,

he already suffered the worst

kind of loss that one could

suffer.

Suddenly and mysteriously,

his mother died when he was

a week old.

So something tragic happened,

you know, right at the

beginning.

That might be what it takes to

become a Buddha�is that you

have to suffer on such

a primitive level.

29 years old,

profoundly troubled, Siddhartha

was determined to comprehend

the nature of suffering.

He resolved to leave the palace.

His wife had just given birth

to a baby boy.

Siddhartha called him Rahula,

"fetter".

He names his son "fetter".

He names his son "ball and

chain".

"This is the fetter that will

keep me tethered to this life.

This is what will keep me

imprisoned".

Late one summer

evening, Siddhartha went into

his wife's room.

A lamp of scented oil lit up.

His wife lay sleeping on a bed

strewn with flowers, cradling

their newborn son in her arms.

He gazed from the threshold,

deep in thought.

"If I take my wife's hand from

my son's head and pick him up

and hold him in my arms,

it will be painful for me to

leave".

He turned away and climbed down

to the palace courtyard.

His beloved horse Kanthaka was

waiting.

As he rode toward the city's

northern wall, he leapt high

into the air.

Mara, the tempter god of desire,

was waiting.

"You are destined," Mara told

him, "to rule a great empire.

Go back, and worldly power will

be yours".

Siddhartha refused.

He left grief and probably

absolute puzzlement and dismay

in the hearts of wife, in the

infant son, who was innocent and

yet was suddenly fatherless,

and, of course, his own father.

But there is no knowledge won

without sacrifice.

And this is one of the hard

truths of human existence:

in order to gain anything,

you must first lose everything.

Siddhartha was alone

in the world for the first time.

On the bank of a nearby river,

he drew his sword.

"Although my father and

stepmother were grieving with

tears on their faces," he said,

"I cut off my hair.

I put on the yellow robes and

went forth from home into

homelessness.

I had been wounded by the

enjoyment of the world,

and I had come out longing to

obtain peace".

Siddhartha wandered south,

toward the holy Ganges river.

Once a great prince, now he

became a beggar, surviving on

the charity of strangers.

he slept on the cold ground in

the dark forests of banyan,

teak, and sal that covered the

northeastern plain; frightening

places where wild animals

roamed and dangerous spirits

were said to live.

He is going out to see what

there is.

He's a seeker.

He doesn't have a teaching yet.

He doesn't have

an understanding yet.

He doesn't have an insight yet.

He doesn't have a solution yet,

but he recognizes the problem.

Siddhartha could not

expect help from the religion

of the time, the ancient Vedic

religion, steeped in ceremony

and ritual.

Some of its rituals still live

on in ceremonies conducted by

Hindu priests, who chant Vedic

formulas more than 2,500 years

old.

For centuries, the

Vedic rituals had commanded

respect for the gods and

inspired conviction.

But by Siddhartha�s time, the

rituals no longer spoke to the

spiritual needs of many Indians,

leaving a spiritual vacuum

and a sense of foreboding.

The gods become less

important than the rituals

themselves.

It's a period of great unrest.

It was a period of social

upheaval, social change.

Cities were growing,

generating new wealth and

spiritual hunger.

As one ancient voice cried out

in despair:

"The oceans have dried up;

mountains have crumbled;

the pole star is shaken;

the earth founders;

the gods perish.

I�m like a frog in a dry well".

A lot of people aren't

satisfied with the religion

that they grew up in.

And when prince Siddhartha

decides to give up his life,

he's doing something that lots

of other people were doing.

Siddhartha joined

thousands of searchers like

himself, renunciants: men and

even a few women who had

renounced the world, embracing

poverty and celibacy, living on

the edge, just as spiritual

seekers still do in India today.

Now, at this time in India,

there were lots of renunciants

out there.

It's a flourishing renunciant

tradition.

There are many different people

who have given everything up

and practice austerities and

meditate in order to escape from

the cycle of death and rebirth.

The notion of reincarnation

is something that's part of

Indian culture, part of Indian

civilization, part of Indian

religion, that was there long

before the Buddha, and it was

the... in a sense, the problem

that the Buddha faced.

Suffering didn't begin

at birth and finish with death.

Suffering was endless,

unless it was possible to find

a way out, become enlightened,

become a Buddha.

In his time, there was

a sense of death not being final

but of death leading inexorably

to rebirth and of beings,

suffering beings, bound to the

wheel of death and rebirth.

It is said that

Siddhartha had lived many lives

before this one,

As countless animals...

innumerable human beings...

and even gods;

across four incalculable ages,

the sacred texts say,

and many aeons,

experiencing life in all

its different forms.

Siddhartha�s previous lives,

many aeons, sometimes as

a human being, sometimes as

an animal, but then gradually

using his practice, becoming

more higher and higher

and deeper, deeper.

The idea is, from life to

life, to progress more and more

towards the enlightenment and

become wiser and wiser.

Some beings will stubbornly

insist on their ignorance and

their egotism, and they will

charge ahead, grabbing and

eating what they can in front

of themselves and being

dissatisfied but thinking that

the next bite will do it.

And they will die and be reborn

and die and be reborn

infinite times.

It could take them, you know,

a billion lifetimes if they are

very stubborn, you know.

And becoming a Buddha,

becoming enlightened, is the

only way of getting out of the

continual cycle of death and

rebirth.

Now, rebirth here isn't the

popular notion that, you know,

in my past life, I was

Cleopatra floating down the

Nile or Napoleon.

It's as if every life is going

through junior high school

again, over and over and over.

With the authority of

the priests worn thin and

wisdom seekers like Siddhartha

roaming the countryside,

holy men emerged, teaching their

own spiritual disciplines.

Siddhartha apprenticed himself

to one of them, a celebrated

guru who taught that true

knowledge could never come from

ritual practice alone.

It was necessary to look within.

"You may stay here with me,"

the guru told him.

"A wise person can soon dwell

in his teacher's knowledge and

experience it directly for

himself".

Siddhartha set himself to learn

the rigorous practices the guru

prescribed.

The teachers of the time are

already teaching forms of yoga

and meditation, teaching that

the self-reflective capacity

of the mind can be put to use

to tame the mind, to tame the

passions.

That was already established in

India.

And there were probably so many

schools of yoga and meditation

in those days, just as there

are now.

Although yoga appears

to focus on controlling the

body, it is in fact an ancient,

spiritual discipline,

a form of meditation,

harnessing the energies

of the body to tame the mind.

Some yogis learn to sit without

moving for hours, breathing

more and more slowly until they

seem to be barely breathing

at all.

All kinds of trance states

are possible through meditation.

If you hold the mind, if you

concentrate the mind on

a single object, you know,

be it a word or a candle flame

or a sound, it's possible to

transport the mind into all

kinds of interesting places.

The person who was to become

the Buddha was very good at all

of those practices.

He was a super student, doing

these practices, taking them to

their limit, and no matter what

he did in these practices,

he was still stuck in the pain

that he set out with.

He ascends to these very

rarified states of

consciousness, but it's not

permanent, and it does not bring

penetrating truth into the

nature of reality.

So these become a temporary

escape from the problem of

existence, but they don't solve

the problem.

Siddhartha apprenticed

himself to another popular guru,

but the results were the same.

"The thought occurred to me,"

he said later, "this practice

does not lead to direct

knowledge, to deeper awareness".

Disenchanted, he left this

master too.

Siddhartha continued to drift

south, still searching for the

answer to his questions:

Why do human beings suffer?

Is there any escape?

He's trying and trying and

searching and searching,

and he already experienced

extreme luxuries, so now he

tries extreme deprivation.

Among the renunciants,

asceticism was a common

spiritual practice: punishing

the body as a way to attain

serenity and wisdom.

Siddhartha fell in with five

other ascetics and soon was

outdoing them in mortifying the

flesh, subjecting his body to

extremes of hardship and pain.

The body represents

a fundamental problem.

Old age brings a decrepitude to

the body.

Sickness brings pain and

suffering to the body.

And death is ultimately the

cessation of the functioning of

the body.

So there was a sense that if

you could punish the body

sufficiently, you could escape

its influence.

You could transcend some of the

limitations that the body

seemed to impose.

The ascetic pursues the truth

by taking the requirements of

survival down to the absolute

minimum possible:

barely enough food to stay

alive, no protection from

the elements, no heat,

sit in the cold, sit in the

rain, meditate fiercely for all

the hours of awakening.

The step of renunciation, of

shedding everything, of dying,

the feeling that one is dying

to one's life as it was,

is essential to being reborn

as someone who sees.

Ascetics can still be

seen in India, firm in the

belief that by subduing the

flesh, they can gain spiritual

power.

emaciated, exhausted,

Siddhartha punished himself for

six years, trying to put an end

to the cravings that beset him.

He tortures himself, trying

to destroy anything within

himself that he sees as bad.

The spiritual traditions of that

time said you can be liberated

if you eliminate everything

that's human: you know,

everything that's coarse

and vulgar, every bit of anger,

every bit of desire.

If you... you know, if you wipe

that out with force of will,

then you can go into some kind

of transcendental state.

and the Buddha tried all that,

and he became, you know,

the most anorectic of the

anorectic ascetics.

He was eating one grain of rice

per day.

He was drinking his own urine.

He was standing on one foot.

He was sleeping on nails.

He did it all to the utmost.

"My body slowly became

extremely emaciated,"

Siddhartha said.

"my limbs became like the

jointed segments of vine or

bamboo stems.

My spine stood out like a string

of beads.

My ribs jutted out like the

jutting rafters of an old,

abandoned building.

The gleam of my eyes appeared

to be sunk deep in my eye

sockets, like the gleam of

water deep in a well.

My scalp shriveled and withered

like a green bitter gourd

shriveled and withered in the

heat and wind".

What he was trying to do was

pushing his body to the most

extreme that he could.

But then he realized that

from that, he cannot gain what

he wants.

Trying to torture the body,

the body becomes too much.

The whole attention is given to

the body, nothing else.

He surrendered himself

completely to the hard training

that he was given.

And what he discovered, having

tried this completely for many

years, was that he had not

answered his question.

It hadn't worked.

he was on the verge of death,

dying, unawakened, when he

remembered something.

he remembered a day when he was

young and sat by the river with

his father and the perfection

of the world as it was simply

gave itself to him.

Years before, when

Siddhartha was a small boy, his

father, the king, had taken him

to a spring planting festival.

while he watched the ceremonial

dancing, he looked down at the

grass.

He thought about the insects

and their eggs...

destroyed as the field was

planted.

He was overwhelmed with sadness.

One great taproot of

Buddhism is compassion, which

is the deep affection that we

feel for everything because

we're all in it together...

be it other human beings, other

animals, the planet as a whole,

the creatures of this planet,

the trees and rivers of this

planet.

Everything is connected.

It was a beautiful

day.

His mind drifted.

As if by instinct, he crossed

his legs in the yoga pose of

meditation.

And the natural world paid him

homage.

As the sun moved through the

sky, the shadows shifted, but

the shadow of the rose apple

tree where he sat remained

still.

He felt a sense of pure joy.

the joy that he found is in

the world that is already

broken.

It's in this transitory world

that we're all a part of.

And the fabric of this world...

despite the fact that it can

seem so horrible, the underlying

fabric of this world actually

is that joy that he recovered.

That was his great insight.

"But," he says, "i can't sustain

a feeling of joy like this

if i don't take any food,

so i better eat something".

And then at that moment,

a village maiden mysteriously

appears carrying a bowl of rice

porridge.

And she said to him, "here,

eat".

that moment of generosity and

release when he accepted the

rice was a decision towards

life.

It was what in the Christian

tradition might be called

"grace," that you cannot do it

completely on your own.

And in Christianity, the grace

comes from the divine.

In the story of the Buddha,

the grace comes from the

ordinary, kind heart of a girl

who sees somebody starving and

says, "eat".

There's something beautiful.

whenever I remember that story,

it makes me so happy because

I see the heart of Buddha

as the person he was, like the

Siddhartha.

This dish was the dish he used

to be fed by his stepmother,

rice pudding.

He was missing that so much.

and then he remembered maybe

further and further, and he

remembered about his wife,

about his son.

And the deepest emotions that

he had suppressed, they

overpower.

They came up.

They were still there.

And he had a feeling of missing.

He had a feeling of seeing his

son and a feeling of being near

his loved ones.

They were so powerful.

Oh, this must have soaked his

whole entire being.

He was actually an utter

failure.

He had been clinging to the path

of asceticism.

And when he took the food, what

followed was a return of his

original question.

Life is painful.

Life involves change.

This is still a problem.

The problem didn't disappear.

It wasn't long before

the ascetics who had been

Siddhartha�s companions found

him eating and turned away in

disgust.

"Siddhartha loves luxury,"

they said.

"He has forsaken his spiritual

practice.

He has become extravagant".

But the man who will become

the Buddha realizes that extreme

deprivation isn't the way to go.

We can live as normal human

beings.

We can eat and drink.

And, in fact, we kind of need

to eat and drink and be normal

human beings in order to break

through, in order to attain the

kind of realization that he was

looking for.

Siddhartha had put his

faith in two gurus.

They hadn't helped him.

He had punished his mind and

body.

That had almost killed him.

Now he knew what he must do.

to find the answer to his

questions, he would look within

and trust himself.

Bodh Gaya is a small

town in northeastern India.

Throngs of pilgrims have come

here from all over the world

for more than 16 centuries.

For Buddhists, there are

hundreds of holy places but

none more sacred than this one.

Bodh Gaya is the sacred point

from which the Buddhist faith

radiates.

Some pilgrims travel great

distances, reciting prayers and

prostrating themselves every

step of the way.

It is their Mecca and Jerusalem.

Their holy of holies is not the

imposing temple beside them but

a simple fig tree: ficus

religiosa, the Bodhi tree.

The tree, it is said,

is descended from the Buddha�s

time.

Every pilgrim knows the story

of how Siddhartha, after

accepting the rice milk from

the young girl, put aside the

rags he was wearing, bathed

himself in a nearby river, and,

strengthened, sat down in the

shade of the Bodhi tree,

and began to meditate.

It was springtime.

the moon was full.

Before the sun would rise,

Siddhartha�s long search would

be over.

He sat down under a bodhi

tree, in the shelter of the

natural world in all of its

beauty and fullness,

and he said, "I will not move

from this place until I have

solved my problem".

"Let my skin and

sinews and bones dry up,

together with all the flesh and

blood of my body," he said.

"I welcome it.

but I will not move from this

spot until I have attained the

supreme and final wisdom".

All at once, Mara, Lord of

Desire, rose to challenge him.

With an army of demons,

he attacked.

Siddhartha did not move,

and their weapons turned into

flowers.

Mara is the ruler of this

realm of desire, this world

that we all live in.

And what he's afraid Siddhartha

is going to do when he attains

enlightenment and becomes the

Buddha is conquer that world.

That is, he's going to do away

with desire.

He's going to... he's going to

wreck the whole game.

Mara did not give up.

He sent his three daughters to

seduce him.

Siddhartha remained still.

When he faces Mara, he faces

himself and his own destructive

capacity.

But he's not the warrior

trying to do battle with those

qualities.

He's discovered his own

capacity for equanimity.

He has become like, you know,

the top of the great Himalayan

mountains, you know:

the weather is passing over him,

storms are raging around him,

and he sits like the top of the

mountain... impassive...

not in a trance state, you know,

totally aware of everything.

So he frustrates Mara.

Siddhartha resisted

every temptation Mara could

devise.

The Lord of Desire had one

final test.

He demanded to know who would

testify that Siddhartha was

worthy of attaining ultimate

wisdom, and his demon army

rose up to support him.

Siddhartha said nothing.

he reached down and touched the

ground, and the earth shuddered.

Mara's demons fled.

the Buddha reaches down and,

with his finger, touches the

Earth.

he says, "the Earth is

my witness".

He said, "Mara, you are not

the Earth.

the Earth is right here, beneath

my finger".

And the Earth is what we're

talking about...

accepting the Earth, not owning

the Earth, not possessing the

Earth, but the Earth just as it

is: abused and exploited and

despised and rejected and

plowed and mined and spat on

and everything else, you know.

It's still the Earth, and it's...

it is... it's...

we owe everything to it.

Siddhartha meditated

throughout the night,

and all his former lives passed

before him.

He remembers all his

previous lives, infinite numbers

of previous lives, female and

male and every other race and

every other being in the vast

ocean of life-forms.

And he remembered that all

viscerally.

So that means his awareness

expanded to be... so that all the

moments of the past were

completely present to him.

He gains the power to see

the process of birth, death,

and rebirth that all creatures

go through.

he's given this sort of cosmic

vision of the workings of the

entire universe.

As the morning star

appeared, he roared like a lion.

"My mind," he said,

"is at peace".

The heavens shook, and the bodhi

tree rained down flowers.

He had become the "Awakened

One," the Buddha.

Something new opens up for

him, which he calls "Nirvana"

or which he calls "awakening".

He said, "at this moment,

all beings and I awaken

together".

So it was not just him.

It was all the universe.

He touched the Earth.

"as Earth is my witness,

seeing this morning star, all

things and I awaken together".

It's not like entering

a new state.

It's uncovering or surrendering

to the reality that has always

been there.

He realized he'd always been in

Nirvana, that Nirvana was always

the case.

Your reality itself is Nirvana.

It's the unreality, it's your

ignorance that makes you think

you're this self-centered

separate being trying to

fight off an overwhelming

universe and failing.

You are that universe.

You're already enlightened.

He's saying the capacity for

enlightenment... that your

awake-ness already exists within you.

Nirvana is this moment seen

directly.

There is nowhere else than here.

The only gate is now.

The only doorway is your own

body and mind.

There's nowhere to go.

There's nothing else to be.

There's no destination.

It's not something to aim for

in the afterlife.

It's simply the quality of

this moment.

Just this.

Just this, this room where

we are.

Pay attention to that.

Pay attention to who's there.

Pay attention to what isn't

known there.

Pay attention to what is known

there.

Pay attention to what everyone

is thinking and feeling,

What you're doing there.

Pay attention.

Pay attention.

For weeks, the Buddha

remained near the Bodhi tree,

peaceful and serene.

He was tempted to retire into

a profound solitude, instead of

trying to teach others what it

had taken him six long years to

discover for himself.

He wants to stay there.

He's very happy.

He doesn't want to go out.

He says to himself, "No one is

going to understand this.

You know, people are going to

think I'm crazy.

They're going to think I'm

nuts".

Buddha saw the nature of the

people: envy and jealousy and

the strong negative mental

states.

All the people in the world,

they are like the fishes

wriggling in the very shallow

water.

So Buddha, he himself afraid to

teach the people.

The myth is that a god

comes to the Buddha.

Brahma comes on his knees and

says, "Please, we need you.

Why don't you try talking about

what you just understood?

'Cause the world needs... the gods

need it, and the men need it".

You know, "the people need it".

And then Buddha decided to

give his teachings...

because of a great compassion.

It's not an ordinary compassion.

When you feel the feelings

of others, you automatically

don't want them to feel bad.

You feel the feeling of your

hand; you don't put it

in the oven.

I mean, you're not being

compassionate to your hand.

You just feel the pain,

so you're not gonna

put it there.

So if you feel other's pain,

you're going to do your best to

help them alleviate it.

When somebody becomes

enlightened, something blooms

in his heart.

It's like a flower blooms, and

it cannot hold the fragrance.

It has to naturally release.

so it's like he naturally had

to release his radiance.

He has to share this joy that

was in his heart.

35 years old,

the Buddha would devote the rest

of his life to bringing his

teachings... the Dharma,

the fundamental laws of

all things... into the world.

But as he had feared, it would

not be easy.

As he set off to share what he

had learned, he met a wandering

ascetic.

"Who is your guru?"

the ascetic asked him.

the Buddha said he had no guru,

that he had attained

enlightenment on his own.

"It may be so," the ascetic said

and walked away.

On his first attempt to teach,

the Buddha had failed.

Buddha meets someone who

doesn't see anything special

about him, because the awakened

Buddha doesn't look any

different from anybody else.

He is ordinary.

Buddhism is not about being

special.

Buddhism is about being

ordinary.

And it is not about the

continual exudation of bliss.

It is about walking a normal

human life with normal human

beings, doing normal human

things, and this reminds you

that you yourself might be

a Buddha.

At this moment, the person

you're looking at might be one.

It's an interesting practice;

just each person you see as you

walk down the street: "Buddha?

Buddha?

Buddha.

Buddha.

Buddha".

from Bodh Gaya, the

Buddha walked west nearly 200

miles and crossed the Ganges

river.

He was still searching for a way

to explain to others what

he feared was unexplainable,

the path to the enlightenment

he himself had experienced.

In a deer park in Sarnath,

not far from the Ganges,

he would try again.

His five former companions were

still practicing the

austerities he himself had

abandoned.

"From far off, they saw me

coming and, on seeing me,

made a pact with one another,"

the Buddha recalled.

"Friends, here comes

Siddhartha, living luxuriously,

straying from his ascetic

practice.

He doesn't deserve to be bowed

down to".

These are his buddies, who

were just disappointed and

disgusted with him for giving in

after they'd all been trying

to starve themselves into

enlightenment.

So they... they're a little

distrustful at the beginning.

They refer to him as an

equal, and he then tells them,

"No, that's not the term you

should use when you refer to

a tathagata, a being who's gone

beyond".

And so he sets them straight.

and they then become the first

people to hear the content of

what he realized under the

Bodhi tree.

His first teaching

would later be called �setting

in motion the wheel of the

Dharma� because it brought the

Buddha's message into the world

for the first time.

He did not propound a dogma.

Instead, he spoke from his own

experience, out of his own

heart.

He had known the abandon of the

sensualist and the rigors of

the ascetic.

Now he would disavow both of

them.

The Buddha said, "I've

discovered a new way, and it's

not the path of asceticism,

and it's not the path of sensory

indulgence.

It's the middle way".

What the Buddha was always

doing was saying, "Everything

needs to be balanced".

So, you know, the middle way

was always balancing between,

you know, excesses on this side,

excesses on the other side.

"fair goes the dancing

when the sitar is tuned.

Tune us the sitar neither high

nor low,

and we will dance away

the hearts of men.

But the string too tight

breaks...

and the music dies.

The string too slack has

no sound, and the music dies.

There is a middle way.

Tune us the sitar neither low

nor high,

and we will dance away

the hearts of men".

The path to

enlightenment lay along the

middle way, the Buddha taught,

and the ascetics listened.

Now he would answer the question

that six years before had

provoked his spiritual journey:

the question of suffering.

Buddhists don't have

a creation story.

There is no creator deity.

It's not really of interest.

It's not an issue.

What's of interest is the

problem of human suffering and

the solution to human suffering.

Pretty much everything else,

all right, is beside the point.

The Buddha's analysis

of suffering came in the form

of what have come to be called

"the Four Noble Truths".

There is no commandments or

anything.

The first Noble Truth is that

there is suffering in this

world.

Generally, this "suffering" has

been mistranslated.

"Suffering" is not entirely

accurate to the word that the

Buddha probably used.

It means something closer to

"dissatisfaction" ...that,

you know, we're never quite

happy, and if we are, that's

gone in an instant, anyhow.

And he says that this

suffering, this

unsatisfactoriness, doesn't

arise by itself; it has causes.

Our own mind causes it.

While the Second Noble

Truth asserts that suffering

has a cause, the Third Noble

Truth makes an astonishing

claim.

You really can be free of

suffering by understanding

the cause of suffering.

But nobody tells you that,

and so that was a huge

announcement.

The problem, Buddha

taught, is desire,

how to live with the confused

and entangling desires of our

own minds.

People often misunderstand

Buddhism as saying:

"In order to wipe out suffering,

you have to wipe out desire".

If that was what the Buddha was

saying, then where does the

desire for enlightenment fit in,

you know?

The Buddha's saying:

"Be smart about your desires".

With the Fourth and

final Noble Truth, the Buddha

laid out a series of

instructions for his disciples

to follow, a way of leading the

mind to enlightenment called

"the Noble Eightfold Path,"

the cultivation of moral

discipline, mindfulness,

and wisdom.

They are, as I like to think

of them, a set of possible

recipes that you can try on

your own life and see which one

makes the best soup.

The Buddha didn't speak

for long, but when he was

finished, the five skeptical

ascetics had been won over.

They became his first disciples.

Word quickly spread of the sage

teaching in the deer park at

Sarnath.

Hundreds came to hear him and

became disciples too.

Many were wealthy merchants or

their sons, living just five

miles away in a thriving

trading center on the Ganges,

the holy city of Benares.

Today Benares is the most sacred

city in all of India, as it has

been for millennia.

Even before the time of the

Buddha, pilgrims came here to

worship their gods and bathe in

the holy river of heaven.

You see people purifying

themselves bathing in the

Ganges.

You see priests performing

rituals.

You see corpses, because that's

the best place to end one's

life.

So you see going on there

a great range of religious

activity, and much of it

of the type that does go back

to the Buddha's time.

Many of today's sacred

ceremonies on the Ganges echo

the ancient practices of the

Vedic priests, the Brahmans.

In the Buddha's day, only the

Brahmans could mediate between

the gods and men.

Only they could conduct the

holy rituals that were said to

preserve the universe itself.

The Brahman priests stood at

the pinnacle of a rigid social

hierarchy: a sacred system of

caste.

Beneath them were the warriors,

the caste to which the Buddha

belonged.

Below them were farmers.

at the bottom were the

servants and, still lower,

outcastes.

Those social groups are not

merely social conventions, but

rather, they're hardwired into

the nature of the universe.

You're supposed to stay in that

group, and the survival of

society depends upon your

continuing to perform the

function associated with that

social status.

Caste was irrelevant

to the Buddha.

So were priestly rituals to

preserve the universe.

His teachings focused on the

universe within.

The Buddha said you could be

from any caste.

What makes you noble is if you

understand reality, you know,

if you're a good person.

If you're a wise person,

then you're noble.

In time, a devoted

gathering of monks formed around

the Buddha at Sarnath, near the

Ganges.

Broken stones and fallen

pillars mark what remains

of what grew to be a vibrant

monastic community, the Sangha.

It took the Buddha many,

many years to find his way.

But he didn't want it to be

so hard for people, and so

he established a community who

could live together and help

one another.

In a ceremony evoking

the beginning of the Buddha's

own spiritual journey,

fledgling monks of all ages

say good-bye to their families

and homes and join the Sangha.

I go to the refuge of the

Buddha, I go to the refuge of

the Dharma, and I go to the

refuge of the Sangha.

the Sangha is an embodiment

of Buddha's experience and

wisdom.

What happens if people practice

this thing?

Are they truly happy or not?

Are they joyful or not?

So I think Buddha wanted us to

lead a perfect example of his

teaching: an alive teaching,

a teaching that walks,

a teaching that can talk,

a teaching that can laugh.

So I would say sangha is just

like a living example of

Buddha's teaching.

the first Sangha was

a radical institution,

open to people of every caste

and, remarkable for the times

in which the Buddha lived,

to both men and women.

The Buddha was part of

a culture deeply suspicious of

women.

The attitude towards women

at the time was very critical,

and many things were impossible

for them.

So that was a very

revolutionary thing to do that

in that times of India.

By ordaining women as

nuns, the Buddha gave women the

chance to escape the drudgery

of daily life.

Life was so hard for most women

that entering the Sangha was

a liberation, as we know from

their ecstatic, heart-rending

poems.

"So freed! So freed!

So thoroughly freed am I...

from my pestle, my shameless

husband, and his sunshade

making, my moldy old pot with

its water-snake smell.

Aversion and passion I cut

with a chop.

Having come to the foot of

a tree, I meditate,

absorbed in the bliss.

'What bliss!'"

Bliss, Nirvana, the Buddha

taught, could be found in the

fleeting moment through the

practice of meditation.

The Buddha showed his followers

how to come to terms with their

own roiling thoughts and desires

by paying attention to them,

by becoming aware,

becoming mindful.

As an ancient poem counsels:

"Like an archer, an arrow,

the wise man steadies his

trembling mind, a fickle and

restless weapon".

Many times, our mind is not

peaceful enough.

So we realize that perhaps we

need to understand more about

mind itself and how to balance

the emotions, how to balance

our mind, and try to cultivate

more happiness.

The difficulties come from

within.

One experiences unexpected

things from one's mind:

the most dangerous skeptical

doubts, doubts about one's

self, doubts about the Buddha.

Physical is... we can get from...

from the food and from the

supplement of vitamins and...

yeah, and for the mind, this is

the only way we have to...

only medicine.

Meditation is not about

getting rid of anger or getting

rid of lust or getting rid of

jealousy.

Even while becoming a monk,

often we experience angers;

it happens.

And it often happens when people

start teasing you, like,

"shaven bald-head person".

But it gives a good chance for

us to realize that, "Okay,

let's see, this anger arises.

What is it?"

What most often happens in our

ordinary life is that whenever

we experience these emotions,

we get stuck into it.

It starts twisting us.

But Buddhism is going through

inside it and getting out of it

peacefully.

And I think that gives us more

joy.

And that makes human life more

full, more round.

It's not like... we are not living

a partial truth, but it's like

the whole of things together.

It takes time to comprehend

this.

and then by practicing again

and again, the practitioner

becomes very balanced, and one

reaches the state of very strong

equanimity, equanimity towards

the physical and mental objects.

And this is the base camp

for the summit:

enlightenment.

"After washing

my feet," a disciple said,

"I watch the water going down

the drain".

"I am calm.

I control my mind, like a noble

thoroughbred horse.

Taking a lamp, I enter my cell;

thinking of sleep,

I sit on my bed.

I touch the wick.

the lamp goes out:

Nirvana.

My mind is freed".

"The mind is

as restless as a monkey,"

the Buddha taught.

Who you are, what you think of

as your "self," is constantly

changing...

like a river, endlessly flowing,

One thing today,

another tomorrow.

There's water in a river,

then there's water in a glass,

and then the water is back

in the air, and then it's back

in the river.

The water's there,

but what is it?

That's a way to think about the

self in Buddhism.

one moment you're angry.

The next moment you're laughing.

Who are you?

"A seed becomes

a plant.

Wisps of grass are spun into

a rope.

A trickling stream turns into

a river".

The self comes, and the self

goes.

Simply notice how from one

moment to another, your self is

actually not as much the same

as we think it is.

What the Buddha realizes is

that if we can get rid of this

fundamental misunderstanding

of the nature of the self based

on egotism, we won't cling to

things; we won't screw up

everything we do because

we're thinking about it

in the wrong way.

Once you stop centering your

feelings about your feelings on

your self, what naturally arises

is simple compassion:

compassion for your own

suffering, compassion for

the suffering of others.

Even the most abstract

of the Buddha's teachings had

a practical, ethical dimension.

Compassion, the Buddha taught,

comes from understanding

impermanence, transience, flow:

how one thing passes into

another, how everything and

everyone is connected.

"When this is,

that is.

From the arising of this

comes the arising of that.

When this isn't, that isn't.

From the cessation of this

comes the cessation of that".

This is always connected

to that.

Everything is connected

to everything else.

You never live by yourself.

You live always within a family,

a society, or culture.

You constantly interact with

other people all the time.

So our happiness depends on

their happiness as well.

How can we be happy if we are

the only one happy in...

on, you know, just an island

of happiness within an ocean

of misery?

Of course, that's not possible.

Compassion stirred the

Buddha to send his monks out

into the community.

Sworn to chastity and poverty,

they wandered the roads,

bringing the Buddha's teachings

into the world.

"Go forth, monks, for the

happiness of the many,

out of compassion for the world.

There are beings whose eyes have

little dust on them, who will

perish if they do not hear

the teaching.

But if they hear the teaching,

they will gain liberation".

The monks exist by begging.

we think of begging as kind of

a bad thing.

Begging in this tradition is

a good thing.

It's a sign of spiritual purity.

You're not allowed to beg

tomorrow's lunch today...

only today's lunch.

Then you can't eat from noon

until dawn the next day.

Then you have to go out and get

another lunch.

And then in exchange for lunch,

you give a lecture,

unless they say, "we don't want

to hear about it".

Then you don't.

But that's the only thing...

but that forces you to interact

with the lay community.

And if you're not serving

them, if you're not doing

something useful for them, they

won't put anything in your bowl,

and that will be the end of your

community.

The Buddha himself

wandered across northeast India,

teaching and gathering new

disciples everywhere he went.

You didn't have to become

a monk or a nun to become

a Buddhist.

The Buddha's teachings were

for everyone.

"Everything is

burning.

What is burning?

The eyes are burning.

Everything seen by the eyes

is burning.

The ears are burning.

What is burning?

Everything heard by the ears

is burning.

The nose is burning.

Smells are ablaze.

The tongue is burning.

Tastes are ablaze.

The body is burning.

The mind is burning".

We're on fire.

We may not know it, but we're

on fire, and we have to put

that fire out.

We're burning with desire,

all right?

We're burning with craving.

Everything... everything about us

is out of control.

The Buddha goes on to talk

about The Three Poisons,

greed and anger and ignorance,

and how The Three Poisons are

what is making the fire,

and the way out of doing this is

not to deny The Three Poisons

but to recognize that if you

turn them around, you come to

their opposites.

Instead of greed,

you have generosity.

Instead of anger,

you have compassion.

And instead of ignorance,

you have wisdom.

"I can give

my teachings in brief,"

the Buddha said.

"I can teach in detail.

It is those who understand that

are hard to find".

There are stories of people

coming to the Buddha and saying:

"I am leaving your teaching

because you have not told me

about whether there is a life

after death or whether there is

another world".

And the Buddha says, "did I ever

say that I would give you

the answer to these things?"

"No, lord, you didn't".

"Why do you think that I never

said that I would give you the

answer to these things?

Because these are not the things

that you need to know.

The thing that you need to know

is how to deal with suffering,

because at this very moment,

what made you ask that question

was suffering".

The Buddha was,

above all, a pragmatist.

he did not expect his followers

to agree with everything

he said.

He encouraged them to debate

and argue, to challenge him.

Buddha said, "My followers

should not accept my teaching

out of devotion but rather your

own experiment".

Even Buddha himself, in order

to get final enlightenment,

need hard work.

So investigate based on reason,

through logical investigation.

If something contradict,

in Buddha's own words, then we

have the right to reject that.

As the Buddha gathered

more and more followers,

stories spread of his miracles,

which mixed the marvelous with

the mundane.

One story tells how

500 pieces of firewood split

at the Buddha's command.

In another, a mad elephant

charged wildly down a street,

forcing everyone to flee.

Only the Buddha remained,

quietly waiting.

The elephant, overcome by the

Buddha's radiant kindness,

knelt before him,

and the Buddha patted his

leathery trunk.

Because miracle is something

you cannot understand.

so now I think that within this

century, we may find some new

ideas or new facts.

so far, we spent all our energy

and time for research on

matter, not internal world.

This skull, a small space,

but lot of mysterious things

still there.

The great field of knowledge

is as tiny as the Earth is

in the universe.

I mean, it's a tiny...

it's a speck.

And the... the universe is what

we don't know, and it will

always be that way.

However much we find out,

it will still be that way,

because the unknown is vastly...

it's unspeakably greater than

anything we will ever know.

In one of the most

storied miracles, the Buddha

strode on a jeweled walkway

suspended in midair

while streams of water spouted

and flames flashed from

his body, shooting out to the

very edge of the universe.

And as the Buddha sat on a lotus

flower giving his teachings,

he replicated himself, filling

the sky with multitudes of

Buddhas for all to see and

wonder.

Do we believe that literally?

Does it matter whether we

believe it literally?

What many of those miraculous

stories are about is the sheer

wonder of it all.

The very fact that the whole of

unknown time and space has

led down to this... led to this

very moment when we're sitting

here talking... when we are

sitting here talking to each

other is utterly miraculous.

Sitting here in a room,

having had a cup of coffee,

having taken it out of

a beautiful blue-and-white

porcelain mug, what could be

more miraculous than that?

Everyday life around us is

already so implausible and

so glorious, that what need for

further miracles?

And that's the teaching

of the Buddha.

That's the miraculous teaching

of the Buddha.

Violence, the Buddha

taught, always leads to more

violence.

"To the slayer comes a slayer.

to the conqueror comes

a conqueror.

He who plunders is plundered

in turn".

War was endemic in the Buddha's

age, ravaging northeast India

again and again.

Although kings and their

ministers sought his council,

the Buddha offered no grand

political vision.

He was powerless to stop the

killing and the fighting.

Even the men, women, and

children of his former kingdom

were massacred by a marauding

king: forced into pits

and trampled by elephants.

It was said that the Buddha

received the news in silence.

The Buddha failed, but we,

as the Buddha, fail constantly,

and part of our suffering is

our... is our failure, our

recognition of our failure.

Buddhism doesn't argue with

reality.

There will always be both the

potential for awakening in any

moment and the potential for

incredible damage at any moment,

and if we fool ourselves into

thinking we're past that,

we will do incredible damage.

Change, the Buddha

said, must come from within.

The Buddha starts always

with the mind and talks about

the violence in the mind and

says that violence in the world

is a result of violence

in the mind.

A tree lives on its roots.

if you change the root,

you change the tree.

Culture lives in human beings.

if you change the human heart,

the culture will follow.

For decades, the Buddha

shared his teachings all across

northeastern India.

"Let all beings be happy,"

he taught, "weak or strong,

great or small.

Let us cherish all creatures,

as a mother her only child".

Barefoot in his robes,

he was still walking the roads

when he was 80, but old age was

upon him.

His back hurt.

His stomach was often in pain.

"I am old, worn out," he told

a trusted disciple,

"like a dilapidated cart held

together with thin straps".

The world is so sweet, he said,

that he could understand wanting

to live for at least another

century.

But he was frail and exhausted.

He became ill near Kushinagar,

a remote village near the border

of Nepal, when he was offered

a meal which would prove deadly.

The food was spoiled.

He ate what was offered to

him, and it's said that he knew

it was bad, but he took it

anyway 'cause it was offered

and didn't want the person who

offered it to feel bad,

'cause it was his time.

Today Kushinagar is

revered by pilgrims as the place

where the Buddha finally left

the world.

It was in Kushinagar where he

grew weak and asked to be laid

on his side in a quiet grove of

sal trees.

As he neared the end,

his disciples began to weep,

stricken with grief.

But the Buddha reassured them.

"all things change," he said.

"Whatever is born is subject

to decay".

He's saying this is

a natural process.

He tells his disciples: "Use

this time, use the energy here,

even this, for your own

awakening".

So he used even his own death

and their sadness as a time to

remind them of what their real

task was.

What he's actually doing is

inviting those who are close to

him into the experience.

I don't think the Buddha's

teaching in any way argues

against grief or sadness

or loss.

The teachings, if they make

any sense, have to make sense

in ordinary circumstances,

in ordinary lives.

And in ordinary lives,

we grieve when we lose.

We... we grieve. We...

when it hurts, we say, "ouch".

Buddhism is trying to look at

things the way they are,

the way it is, just as it is.

It hurts.

This is life.

This is our life.

And our relation to life

involves losing it too.

You don't get beyond these

things.

You don't get beyond them.

It's all right to feel what

human beings feel, and we are

not supposed to turn into rocks

or trees when we practice

Buddhism.

Buddhas laugh, cry, dance, feel

ecstasy, probably even feel

despair.

It is how we know the world.

It is how we live inside of

our hearts and not dissociated

from them.

The Buddha had always

been saying good-bye.

Now he prepared to leave the

Earth forever.

He would never be reborn, never

die again.

"It may be that after I am

gone," the Buddha told his

disciples, "that some of you

will think, 'now we have no

teacher.'

But that is not how you should

see it.

Let the Dharma and the

discipline that I have taught

you be your teacher.

All individual things pass away.

Strive on, untiringly".

These were the Buddha's last

words.

The Buddha died

peacefully.

His head was pointed to the

north, his face to the west.

The stories tell how the Earth

shook, and the trees suddenly

burst into bloom...

their petals falling gently

on his still body,

falling out of reverence.

Divine coralflowers and divine

sandalwood powders fell from

above on the Buddha's body

out of reverence.

His disciples were quite

upset: "What are we going to do

without our teacher?

We will be lost without our

teacher".

But his instruction was

so simple and so clear:

"I am not your light.

I am not your authority.

You've been with me a long time

now.

Be your own light".

The Buddha saw death and

life as inseparable.

These are two sides of the same

thing.

Death is always with us.

Death is part of the whole large

unknown.

And if we are unable to smile

at the idea of the unknown,

we're in real trouble.

That's the realism that the

Buddha was talking about: trying

to come to terms with reality.

When he was 29 and

still prince Siddhartha,

the Buddha had left his wife,

child, and family to try and

understand the nature of

suffering.

He had attained enlightenment,

shared what he had learned,

and left a path for others to

follow.

Now he was gone.

But before he died, he had asked

his followers to remember him

by making pilgrimage...

to the place of his death...

to where he gave his first

teachings...

where he achieved

enlightenment...

and where he was born.

Those four places mark out

a sacred biography.

And in tracing that pilgrimage

route, you are learning the

story of that life.

At places of pilgrimage,

temples were built,

images were installed,

and relics were enshrined.

Although the Buddha had

predicted that his teachings,

like everything else,

would in time disappear,

Buddhism flourished in India

for 1,500 years,

spread into Sri Lanka,

central and southeast Asia,

Tibet, China, Korea, Japan,

and in the 20th century,

to Europe and the Americas,

adapting different forms and

shapes wherever it took root,

attracting many millions of men

and women who practice the

Buddha's teachings both within

and outside the monastic

community.

But everywhere and in every age,

the essence of the story remains

the same.

The Buddha said that we've

turned this world into a painful

place, and this world does not

have to be a painful place.

This world can be a world

inhabited by Buddhas.

But it's up to each one of us

to turn ourselves into a Buddha.

That's really... that's the work.

If the Buddha is not you,

finally, the Buddha is of

no interest to you.

The Buddha is... the Buddha is

of such interest to you because

you are the Buddha.

I know that there are

supposed to be preserved

footprints of the Buddha which

are kept in one of the sacred

places in India or Nepal, and,

you know, you can stand in them,

and if you stand in them, maybe

you realize, "Ah, ten toes.

Me too".

There is a story of

a Brahman who one day found the

Buddha under a tree, calmly

meditating.

The Buddha's mind was still.

he radiated such power and

strength that the Brahman was

reminded of a tusker elephant.

The Brahman asked him who

he was.

"Imagine a lotus that had begun

life underwater," the Buddha

replied...

"but grew and rose above the

surface until it stood free.

So I, too, have transcended the

world and attained the supreme

enlightenment".

"Who are you then?"

the Brahman wondered.

"Remember me," the Buddha said,

"as the one who woke up".