On Other Faith Traditions
05/02/06
One in a series... It is said that in the Sixth Century B.C., the young Siddharta Gautama grew up a sheltered prince surrounded by every luxury and comfort.
One day when he ventured into a park just outside of his palace, near Kapilavastu on the border between Nepal and India, he encountered extreme human poverty and misery. Shaken to the core by what he saw, he renounced his life of privilege, left his noble heritage and his wife and young child behind. Then, after years as a seeker and wandering ascetic he experienced enlightenment.
The Buddha (the 'awakened' or 'enlightened') saw suffering, rooted in desire, as the central fact of human existence. He located the source of suffering and its cure within each individual life and mind. "We cannot control the world around us," he taught, "we can only control our experience of the world; our perceptions and conclusions in the present and the way we choose to live."
Buddhists use practices such as meditation as spiritual technologies toward this discipline of present awareness and mindful action. Today, some 360 million people (98% of them in Asia) profess Buddhism in its two main sects. In Christianity, a version of the story of the Buddha's conversion from the worldly life of a prince to the life of an ascetic was popularized by St. John of Damascus and by a bit more "conversion," the Buddha found his way into the Roman Martyrology (November 27). So, for over a millennium, the Buddha found himself a full canonized saint in the Roman Catholic church.
One day when he ventured into a park just outside of his palace, near Kapilavastu on the border between Nepal and India, he encountered extreme human poverty and misery. Shaken to the core by what he saw, he renounced his life of privilege, left his noble heritage and his wife and young child behind. Then, after years as a seeker and wandering ascetic he experienced enlightenment.
The Buddha (the 'awakened' or 'enlightened') saw suffering, rooted in desire, as the central fact of human existence. He located the source of suffering and its cure within each individual life and mind. "We cannot control the world around us," he taught, "we can only control our experience of the world; our perceptions and conclusions in the present and the way we choose to live."
Buddhists use practices such as meditation as spiritual technologies toward this discipline of present awareness and mindful action. Today, some 360 million people (98% of them in Asia) profess Buddhism in its two main sects. In Christianity, a version of the story of the Buddha's conversion from the worldly life of a prince to the life of an ascetic was popularized by St. John of Damascus and by a bit more "conversion," the Buddha found his way into the Roman Martyrology (November 27). So, for over a millennium, the Buddha found himself a full canonized saint in the Roman Catholic church.