The mother chosen for this Buddha was Queen Maya, who lived in the city of Kapilavastu in India. Maya had a wonderful dream about her future son. She dreamed that angels carried her off to a house on a silver hill. There they bathed her, laid her on a couch and covered her with heavenly flowers. Then the Buddha himself appeared as a mighty white elephant on a golden hill that lay not far away. Trumpeting loudly, he snatched up a white lotus blossom in his trunk and strode off to find his mother. When he came to Queen Maya's couch, he struck her on the right side with the blossom and entered her body.

When the queen awoke, she told her dream to the king, who summoned sixty-four wise Brahman priests to the palace to ask them what it meant.

"Don't be anxious, Your Majesty!" they said. "If your son leaves the palace and retires from the world, he will become a great spiritual teacher. The message of his teachings will clear away all the clouds of doubt and delusion in the world!"

Four guardian angels watched over the future Buddha while he grew in his mother's womb, to make sure that no harm came to him.

Then, just before her son was born, Maya decided that she would like to visit her relatives in another city, so she set off with her servants, who carried her in a golden chair. On the way, Queen Maya noticed a beautiful grove of trees, filled with birds and flowers, and decided to stop for a while. Alighting there, she knew at once that it was time for her son to be born, and, clasping the strong trunk of one of the trees, she gave birth to her child. The four guardian angels caught him in a golden net as he was born.

All the priests and the wise men examined the baby when he was brought home to the palace. As before, some of them told the king that his son, Prince Siddhartha, might leave the palace and retire from the world. The king had been too excited before to absorb what they were saying; this time he was not at all happy.

"What will make him retire from the world?" he asked the priests.

"The four signs," they answered him.

"What are these?"

"An old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a monk," was their reply.

The king was alarmed; he did not want to lose his son. So he decided to keep all old and ill people out of the child's sight. He made sure that the young prince didn't see any dead people or any holy monks. As a result, Siddhartha began to grow up without any idea that we can get sick and old and that we all must die one day.

At sixteen, Prince Siddhartha was a handsome, merry young man. His life seemed to be perfect. He had three palaces to live in, filled with dancing girls and musicians to entertain him. He was a skilled warrior, and without any formal training at all, he was able to beat all the best archers in Kapilavastu.

Whenever Siddhartha ventured out into the city, the king ordered that all the sick and old people be kept indoors so that his son would not see them. Then one day, when the prince was driving out to the park in his chariot, he noticed an old, gray-haired man crossing the road — the first of the four signs.

"Who's that strange-looking man?" he asked the chariot driver. "I've never seen anything like him before!"

The charioteer explained that everybody grows old and their hair turns gray.

Siddhartha returned to the palace, very upset by what he had seen. So the king put more guards around him and tried to distract him with some lighthearted entertainment.

But all the king's efforts were in vain. Siddhartha, when he was next out driving in his chariot, encountered a man who was very ill, and so he learned about sickness. Then, on another occasion, he met a funeral procession and saw the body of a young man being carried away.

"What is the meaning of this?" he cried. "Why is this young man so still?"

"It is death, my lord," said the charioteer. "Death takes us all away from this life. Sometimes it takes us while we are still young."

Siddhartha was horrified by this. "Why does this happen? What can we do about it?" he asked himself.

Finally he encountered a monk—the last of the four signs. As the wise men had predicted, it was this that made Siddhartha decide that he wanted to leave his palace home and seek the meaning of life.

He told his servants to bathe him and dress him for the last time. He asked for his horse to be saddled and, in the middle of the night, he left the palace. But how was he to get out of the city? The king had ordered gates to be made that were so strong and heavy it took a thousand men to open them.

"My horse will jump over them," said Siddhartha.

But it was not necessary. At his approach, the gates opened all by themselves, and Siddhartha rode out of the royal city of Kapilavastu.

To mark the beginning of his new life, Siddhartha cut off his long hair and gave away his splendid clothes. He put on the simply robes of a monk and began to beg for his food, as monks do. The first meal was almost impossible to eat—he was used to the delicious food of the palace, and here were everybody's leftovers, all mixed together in the same bowl!

"This is what I wanted," he told himself sternly. "When I was in the palace, I longed to be free like the monk that I saw. Now I have this chance, and I must take it."

For many years, Siddhartha tried to live like some of the other holy men, eating hardly any food at all. He lived without proper warmth or shelter until his beautiful body grew thin and dark, and he nearly died.

One day, as Siddhartha was sitting under a bodhi tree on the bank of a river, he saw on the opposite bank a fisherman teaching a young boy how to play the lute.

"If you tighten the strings too much," the fisherman explained, "they will snap, and if you leave them too loose they won't play, but if they are tuned to the right point, then you will make music."

Hearing these words, Siddhartha knew at once that to achieve wisdom the strings of one's life should be neither too tight nor too loose; in other words, it is better to be neither too rich nor too poor, neither too hungry nor too well fed.

Sensing that enlightenment was near, Siddhartha began to prepare himself for the struggle that lay ahead. As he sat beneath the bodhi tree, a young woman called Sujata brought him a rich meal of rice and milk, served on a golden dish. She often made offerings at this particular tree, and thought that Siddhartha must be the god of the tree itself. He ate the meal gratefully; it was the last food he would touch for seven weeks. Then, taking the empty golden dish in his hands, he threw it into the water.

"If I am to become the Buddha today, let the dish float away upstream," he said.

The dish sailed away upstream, where it fell into the pile of golden dishes that had been thrown there by the other Buddhas of the past.

"Another Buddha is on the way!" said the black snake king from the bottom of the river as he watched the golden dish float by.

Then Siddhartha swore to himself that he would never move from this tree until he had become enlightened.

But the god Mara, who rules all the dreams and delusions of this world, did not want this to happen. So he sent his three beautiful daughters to tempt Siddhartha; but Siddhartha saw that their souls were ugly and could not be moved. Mara tried another tack, inviting Siddhartha to be the king of heaven, but Siddhartha was not interested. Then Mara tried terrifying Siddhartha with monsters and attacking him with his armies, but Siddhartha saw that all these were mere illusions—and they melted away from him. Showers of hot coals fell as fragrant sandalwood powder at his feet, and swords floated down as flower petals.

Siddhartha sat firm through it all—and at last Mara was defeated. In the heavens, all the gods and angels shouted for joy! The place under the bodhi tree became the Buddha's true throne, the throne of wisdom. For Siddhartha had become enlightened; he now understood the purpose of life—why we are born and why we die.

The Buddha could have returned at once to Nirvana, the special heaven for those who have achieved enlightenment. But he wanted to help others to find the way to enlightenment. So for many years he lived as a teacher, showing people how to practice meditation, how to live a kind and useful life, and how to search for the truth that reveals the meaning of life and death and sets us free.




From A Calendar of Festivals by Cherry Gilchrist (Bristol, UK: Barefoot Books, Ltd., 1998). Used by arrangement with Barefoot Books, Ltd.
Copyright © 1998 by Cherry Gilchrist

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