The Search for the Truth

 

Leaving Rajagaha, Gotama went in search of teachers to instruct him in the way of truth. The Buddha himself mentioned this in several discourses. He first went to Ālāra Kālāma, a renowned sage, and expressed his wish to follow Ālāra’s system; Ālāra gladly accepted Gotama as his pupil. Gotama studied and rapidly mastered Ālāra’s whole system and then asked his teacher how far the master himself the master himself had realized that teaching. Ālāra told him that he had attained the “sphere of no-thing”. Gotama soon attained the same mystical state himself. Ālāra admitted that that state was the highest he could teach and declared that Gotama and himself were now equals in every respect- in knowledge, practice, and attainment- and invited the Sākyan ascetic to guide, along with him, the community of his disciples. The Buddha later spoke of this occasion in a sūtra “In this way Ālāra Kālāma, my teacher, set me, his pupil, on the same level as himself and honored me with the highest honour”. Gotama, however, was not satisfied with attaining the sphere of no-thing, though it was a very high mystical state. He was in the quest of absolute truth, nirvana, and thus he left Ālāra Kālāma. He then went to Uddaka Rāmaputta, another great teacher, who taught him to attain the “sphere of neither perception, nor non-perception”, a higher mystical state that the sphere of no-thing. Gotama, however, was not satisfied with this either, and he continued his search for the truth.

Traveling through the Magadha country, Gotama arrived at a village called Senānigama, near Uruvelā, and, according to his own words, found “a beautiful stretch of land, a lovely woodland grove, and a clear flowing river with a pleasant ford, and a village for support close by”. He was joined there by a group of five ascetics, among whom was Kondanna, the Brahman who had predicted at the name-giving ceremony that the child Siddhattha would definitely become a Buddha one day.

Gotama’s real struggle in his search for the truth began in the area around Uruvelā, near modern Gaya. Here, for nearly six years, he practiced various server austerities and practice of extreme self-mortification. These austerities were vividly asceticism described in several discourses attributed to the Buddha himself (e.g.in the Majjhima Nikāya). What he looked like and what happened to him is described in the following words from the ancient text:

“Because of so little nourishment, all my limbs became like some withered creepers with knotted joints; my buttocks like a buffalo’s hoof; my back bone protruding like a string of balls; my ribs like rafters of a dilapidated shed; the pupils of my eyes appeared sunk deep in their sockets as water appears shining at the bottom of a deep well; my scalp became shriveled and shrunk as a bitter gourd cut unripe becomes shriveled and shrunk by sun and wind;….the skin of my belly came to be cleaving to my back-bone; when I wanted to obey the calls of nature, I fell down on my face then and there; when stroked my limbs with my hands, hairs rotted at the roots fell away from my body”.

Many later representations of the Buddha portray him in this emaciated state.

As a consequence of these severe bodily austerities, Gotama became so weak that he once fainted and was believed by some to be dead. From these experiences, he realized that such mortifications could not lead him to what he sought; he therefore changed his way of life and again began to eat proper accounts of food. His five companions, who had much faith in him, were disappointed at his rejection of extreme asceticism and left him in disgust. Gotama thus remained alone in Uruvelā, regained his health and strength, and then followed his own path to enlightenment.

Link for the Class: https://youtu.be/xIilg08J9Pk

Link for PPT: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ueJs8EpjjnxTIZ0oYAVfL8Clukx0QvB8/view?usp=sharing