Titans of History

“Are you a god?”—“No,” he replied.

“Are you a reincarnation of god?”—“No,” he replied.

“Are you a wizard then?”—“No.”

“Well, are you a man?”—“No.”

“So what are you?” they asked in confusion.

“I am awake.”

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, questioned on the road after his enlightenment

The Buddha’s teachings of benevolence, toleration and compassion have a universal appeal that extends far beyond those who expressly follow him. His quest for enlightenment gave rise to a movement that is as much a code of ethics as a religion. It provides each of his followers with the ability and the desire to live a life of contentment and spiritual fulfillment.

According to legend, the Buddha was conceived when Mahamaya, the queen consort to the king of the Sakyas, dreamed that a white elephant had entered her womb. Born in a curtained enclosure in a great park in Nepal, the prince was originally called Siddhartha Gautama (the title Buddha—“enlightened one”—was conferred on him later). His forename, meaning “one whose aim is accomplished,” was an allusion to priestly predictions that he would achieve greatness either as a ruler or as a religious teacher. Some scholars have suggested his birth was later than tradition holds, around 485 BC.

Seven days after his birth, Gautama’s mother died. Eager that his son should follow the former, worldly path, his father had Gautama “exceedingly delicately nurtured,” shielding him from any sight of hardship. He seldom left his palaces (he had one for each season of the year), and on the rare occasions that he did, the king ensured that the streets were filled with young, healthy and cheerful people. Only when he was twenty-nine did chance encounters, first with an old man, then with a sick man and finally with a corpse, alert Gautama to the existence of age, infirmity and death. This realization inspired a fundamental aspect of his doctrine—that human existence is one of suffering.

Subsequently catching sight of a peaceful wanderer with shaven head and yellow robe, Gautama made the “Great Renunciation,” abandoning princely luxury in the hope that an austere religious life might bring greater spiritual fulfillment. Taking one final look at his sleeping wife and newborn son, he stole out of the palace in the dead of night to embrace the life of a wandering ascetic.

Gautama’s search for spiritual enlightenment took him first to two renowned sages, but when his abilities outstripped his tutors’, he refused their offer to become his disciples. Instead, accompanied by five ascetics, he retreated to the village of Uruvela, where he spent six years trying to attain his ultimate goal of nirvana—an end to suffering. Fasting and denial, however, proved unrewarding. With limbs “like withered creepers” and “buttocks like a buffalo’s hoof,” Gautama framed another of his fundamental tenets: the path to enlightenment lies in a life of moderation—the “Middle Way.” It was a decision that so disgusted his ascetic companions that they deserted him. Left alone, the thirty-five-year-old Gautama finally reached nirvana while meditating cross-legged under the Bodhi tree. As the watches of the night passed, he fought and triumphed over the devil, saw all his past lives and all the past and future lives of all the world, and with his soul purified emerged as the Buddha: “my mind was emancipated … darkness was dispelled, light arose.”

The Buddha promptly converted the five ascetics and spent the rest of his life teaching the path to enlightenment. He trained his followers to convert others, and his community of monks (the title by which the Buddha addressed his disciples) flourished. Pressed by eager followers, he later instituted an order of nuns. A teacher beyond compare, the Buddha instinctively understood the capacity of each student. When, before his death, he asked his disciples if they had any doubts they wanted clarified, none of them did. Those who came determined to oppose him left converted. When even a famously murderous outlaw became a monk, the Buddha’s opponents accused him of being some sort of magician who possessed an “enticing trick.”

At the age of eighty the Buddha announced his intention to die and did so shortly afterward, having eaten a pork dish prepared by a lay follower. Despite the pleas of his closest disciple, Ananda, he refused to appoint a successor. Undogmatic to the end, the Buddha held that his teachings should be treated as a set of rational principles that each person should apply for themselves. Resting on a couch—soon to be his deathbed—placed between two trees in a park, he instructed his disciples to let the truth that is dharma (natural order) “be your Master when I am gone.”

CONFUCIUS

551–479 BC