The World

Siddartha Gautama, the son of a minor ruler, a kshatriya, elder of the Shakya clan, and his wife, a princess of neighbouring Koliya (Nepal), enjoyed the noble lifestyle, at sixteen marrying his first cousin Yasodhara, with whom he had a son Rahula. ‘I lived a spoilt, a very spoilt life.’ But already he contemplated life and death, and was uneasy with his own pleasure-loving existence, deciding to seek enlightenment by embracing asceticism. Following Rahula’s birth, he left his marital home to travel with two friends as a sramana – a seeker.

After studying meditation, he rejected extreme asceticism when he accepted food from a village girl named Sujata. Instead he embraced a Middle Way. Sitting to meditate beneath a pipal tree in a deer park at Sarnath, he awoke with knowledge that human life is frustrating and desperate, cursed with ambition and appetites, but this could be mitigated by the Four Noble Truths and understanding of the dharma, a path of duty that to him meant the cosmic truth that led, after a lifetime of contemplation and suffering following his programme of the Noble Eightfold Path, to nirvana, freedom from endless rebirth. ‘We are what we think,’ preached Gautama. ‘All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.’

Now he formed the first sangha, a coterie of monks who believed they were witnessing the wheel-turning revelations of an exceptional human: the imagery of a chariot wheel turning to change consciousness and power was already part of Indian culture, used in the early Indus cities. They called Gautama’s version the wheel of dharma – the dharmachakra – and hailed him as Buddha, Enlightened One, though he never called himself that, preferring the modest Tathagata, the One Who’s Here. His teachings channelled Vedic ethics and meditations, yet he also threatened the dominance of the Brahmins.

Settling in Kosala, now surrounded by many followers, Buddha was joined by his son Rahula, who became a monk. But Buddha experienced betrayal from within his own family: his cousin Devadatta tried to seize control and kill him. When that failed, Devadatta spun off his own sect.

As he aged, Buddha advised the sangha to ‘meet in harmony, don’t fall prey to worldly desires’ and to ‘preserve their personal mindfulness’, but he refused to appoint an heir: ‘I’ve taught the dharma, making no distinction of inner and outer … If there is anyone who thinks: “I’ll take charge of the Order” … the Tathagata [himself] does not think in such terms. Why should the Tathagata make arrangements for the Order? I’m now old, worn out.’

In Kushinagar, he achieved in bodily death the elevated state of parinirvana, after which his adepts cremated him and distributed his bones and relics among his followers, who started to build domed stupas in which to store and revere them. Buddha left no writings, but his son Rahula and the sangha preserved his teachings until a council started to organize his order. Buddha did not claim to be a god, merely a sage, and did not wish to create a structured religion, leaving a metaphysical worldview instead. His popularity revealed the human need for a higher mission, to mitigate the terrifying unpredictability of life and the inevitability of death but also to share values and rituals across oceans and peoples: its power was that it offered salvation to all.^*

After his death his followers formalized his ideas and rituals, and Buddha himself was soon regarded as divine, his very fingernails revered. Yet it needed a wheel-turning political leader to transform the movement into a world religion. It took time – but the wheel was turning.

Darius never made it to Buddha’s north-eastern India but he conquered Gandhara and Kamboya in the west, recruiting Indian troops who later served in the Persian armies that attacked Greece. He was curious enough to appoint a Greek sea captain, Scylas of Caryanda, to sail from the Red Sea to explore the Indian coast. Then, after a Scythian raid, he ordered his Greek allies, expert seamen, to build a pontoon bridge of boats, lashed together, across the Bosphoros – and invaded Russia and Ukraine.