Period 4
3/1/13
BUDDHISM SUMMARY Buddhism started c. 2,500 years ago by a prince name Siddhartha also
Known as the Buddha. When Siddhartha was born many miracles where happening such as when he was only 7 days old he started walking and every step he took flowers appeared under his feet as if they were protecting him from the ground. A saint came to see Siddhartha and he predicted he was going to be a great saint or a great ruler which in the end was correct. Siddhartha’s father wanted him to be a great ruler and not a saint. Prince Siddhartha wasn’t allowed to go outside the palace because his father didn’t want him to see the oldness in people and also the sickness and deaths. When Siddhartha grew up he asked he’s father if he could go outside the castle to the capital and his father let him but he had to be under supervision. When he left the palace Siddhartha experienced people suffering from sickness, oldness and death. This really shocked Siddhartha because he had never seen such things while being in the palace for all the thirty years that he was there. When Siddhartha got home he asked his father if he could have three things, never growing old, never being sick and never dying. Siddhartha’s father was shocked because he couldn’t give his son those tree things he had asked for. This made Siddhartha go into meditating mode to see if he could find a way to end suffering, he meditated for forty days and he basically starved himself all those days. Another thing Prince Siddhartha did when he left the palace he had lived in since the day he was born to find a way to end suffering was abandoning his wife and kids. Since the day he left the palace it is believed that Prince Siddhartha never saw his wife and kids ever again because he was on the quest for finding a way to end suffering. After those forty days had passed Siddhartha realized that starving himself was not the solution to end suffering. While meditating the answer that he needed came to him and he became better known as the Buddha. After that the Buddha traveled around the country teaching people about suffering. In his teachings he included the Four Nobles of Truth which explained how Suffering is a part of life, man’s suffering is mainly their desire to have or want something they can’t have, meaning man must overcome their desires in order to get rid of their suffering, and man should overcome their desire by following the Noble Eight.
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