The 10 Sorrows of Siddhartha

Footnotes

^{[1] Jataka 525, §2 | The Little Tale of Sutasoma | Jātaka tales are part of the discourses in the Pali canon Ⓘ. There are translations into Sanskrit, Tibetan and other languages. According to tradition, the stories go back to Ananda, a disciple of the Buddha. A Jātaka („birth story“) is a story from the life of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama; later, however, more and more teaching stories were added that refer to earlier existences and other forms of existence of the Buddha. | Wikipedia |  ↑}

^{[2] Jataka Avidurenidana - The not distant introduction | J b2.06 - The escape from the world §271 |   ↑}

^{[3] ibid. |  ↑}

^{[4] ibid. §273 Then the Bodhisattva Siddhartha thought, „These fine cotton robes of mine are not fit for a mendicant monk.“ Then the archangel Ghatikara, who had been a friend of the Bodhisattva at the time when Kassapa was the Buddha and whose friendship had not waned in the whole time until the appearance of the next Buddha, realized the following: „Today my friend is performing the great world renunciation; I will take the equipment of a mendicant monk and go to him with it.“ „The three robes and the bowl, the clipping knife, needle and belt, plus the strainer: these eight are what a monk devoted to devotion needs.“ So he took these eight items of equipment of a mendicant monk and gave them to him. The bodhisattva put on the badges of the saints and received the exalted robes of the monkhood. |  ↑}

^{[5] ibid. §271 |  ↑}

^{[6] ibid. § 271 Mara is the antagonist of Siddhartha and the later Buddha Shakyamuni as the principle of the „tempter“ and the embodiment of „that which causes suffering“. Mara appears here in an attempt to persuade Siddhartha to repent: Standing in the air, he shouted, „Venerable one, do not go away! After seven days, the wheel of world domination will show itself to you; you will gain dominion over the four continents surrounded by two thousand islands. Turn back, venerable one!“ [...] Then the Bodhisattva said: „Mara, I realize well that the wheel of world dominion would show itself to me; but I do not need dominion. I will [...] become a Buddha.“ To this Mara replied: „From now on I will recognize in you every thought of lust or ill-will or injury as soon as it is conceived“; and in order to discover a fault in him, he attached himself to him like a shadow without going away. The bodhisattva, however, rejected the prospect of his dominion over the world like a lump of saliva and left the city. |  ↑}

^{[7] Jataka 525 - J 525 [Cullasutasoma-Jataka] | „He [Prince Siddhartha] left the world and gave up this realm; clothed in yellow robes, he walks alone like an elephant.“ |   ↑}

^{[8] Jataka Avidurenidana - The not distant introduction | J b2.06 - The escape from the world §271 | [Siddhartha] came to the great city gate at midnight. Now the king had thought, „There is no way [Siddhartha] will be able to open the city gate and escape,“ and had arranged it so that each of the two gate wings could only be opened by a thousand men. But [Siddhartha], endowed with strength and power, possessed the strength of ten thousand million elephants, and the strength of a hundred thousand million men. [...] But a deity dwelling at the gate opened the gate [without Siddhartha having to use these powers]. |   ↑}

^{[9] We frequently encounter the motif of refusing repentance and consideration as a sign of Siddhartha's determination in the early texts. The introduction to the Jataka states: „Then he felt like looking at the city again. But when his mind thought of it, the great earth burst as if to say, „O hero, it is not fitting for you to stop and look back,“ and turned like a potter's wheel.“  Jataka Avidurenidana - The not distant introduction | J b2.06 - The escape from the world §271}
In the Cullasutasoma Jataka, Siddhartha refuses to show any consideration to his relatives and friends:
„Is your heart completely divided, or do you have no compassion for us, that you do not take us, the weeping, into consideration, Prince, and leave the world?“
Siddhartha replies:
„O [...] do not weep, do not be sad with forest-dark eyes! Go back to the palace, for I will leave here without consideration.“
Jataka 525 - The Tale of Sutasoma (Cullasutasoma-Jataka) |   ↑

^{[10] Wikipedia: Siddhartha Gautama | Gautama or Gotama means „leader of the herd“ or „greatest bull“. However, the name was also comparable to our family names - it indicated membership of the Gautama clan (Sanskrit: Gautama gotra, Pali: Gotama gotta), whose members could all be addressed in this way. |   ↑}

^{[11] Hans Wolfgang Schumann, Der historische Buddha. Leben und Lehre des Gotama, Diederichs gelbe Reihe 73, 7th edition, Munich 1999, p. 31 f. | The Chinese Hsüan-tsang gives us an idea of the size of the republic administered by Suddhodana. The Sakiya region, he writes, had a circumference of 4000 Li = about 1880 km and included ten cities - which our traveler found destroyed and abandoned in the 7th century AD. The city of Kapilavatthu was protected by a wall of 15 li = approx. 7 km in length, which is still preserved in the brick foundations. Apparently, these ten cities are largely identical to the nine mentioned in the Buddhist texts as Sakiya cities, namely, apart from Kapilavatthu: Devadaha, Catuma, Samagama, Khomadussa, Silavati, Medatalumpa, Ulumpa and Sakkara. These may have been district towns, each of which served as a market and trading center for a number of villages. Hsüan-tsang's information allows us to draw conclusions, albeit only very roughly, about the area and population of the Sakiya Republic. Its surface area may have been around 2000 square kilometers, of which a considerable part was jungle and unused for agriculture. If we assume an average population density of 90 inhabitants per km2 for the fertile area of central Tarai, based on today's higher figure, this results in a total population of 180000 people, of whom 8000 may have lived in Kapilavatthu and 4000 in each of the eight (or nine) district towns. Around 40,000 people of the Sakiya Republic would therefore have been townspeople, the remaining 140,000 villagers. The warrior nobility may have included 10,000 people who largely lived in the cities but, like the majority of the population, were engaged in agriculture. |   ↑}

^{[12] Jataka Avidurenidana - The Not Distant Introduction | J b2.04 - The Naming §270 | „I want to see my son exercising dominion, power and government over the four continents surrounded by two thousand islands and walking under the surface of the sky surrounded by a retinue covering thirty-six yojanas in circumference.“ |   ↑}

^{[13] Anguttara Nikaya 3.38 - Suhamala Sutta: Nobility |   ↑}

^{[14] Jataka 538 (§B) - The Tale of the Mute Cripple (Mugapakkha Jataka) |   ↑}

^{[15] ibid. |  ↑}

^{[16] Hans Wolfgang Schumann, Der historische Buddha. Leben und Lehre des Gotama, Diederichs gelbe Reihe 73, 7th edition, Munich 1999, p. 35 f.: Whether Siddhartha was a literate person is questionable. Although a late legend claims that he amazed his teacher by the ease with which he learned to master the Indian alphabets, the fact is that the Pāli canon contains no indication that the Buddha was able to read. In his time, the ability to read was regarded as a useful skill, albeit not an elementary one, especially as there were no written books due to the lack of suitable writing materials[...]. The attitude of the adult Siddhattha to the question is clear from his instruction to the order that it was not appropriate for a monk to practise skills such as writing; the monk was to be concerned solely with salvation (Udana 3,9: „He who lives without practicing an art, without burden, intent on his salvation, a sensualist redeemed in every respect), - the homeless one to whom nothing belongs, the desireless one who, having beaten Mára, walks alone, - he is a monk.“ [UDANA - The Book of Solemn Words of the Exalted One. A canonical scripture of Páli Buddhism. In the first German translation from the original text by DR. KARL SEIDENSTÜCKER]. From Siddhattha's lifelong interest in spiritual and intellectual matters, one may conclude that he had little difficulty in acquiring the important subject matter for a Khattiya scion. His education was greatly aided by his frequent attendance at council meetings and court hearings, at which his father presided. The council hall trained Siddhattha's intelligence and taught him fluency and precision of expression. His intellectual development was, of course, accompanied by the development of character traits that may have worried his realistic father and alienated him as supposed signs of weakness, namely sensitivity and a tendency towards reflection, perhaps brooding. The realization that life is not always pleasant and that transience and suffering (dukkha) lurk behind all happiness (sukha) did not come to Siddhattha only shortly before his departure into homelessness, as the legend would have us believe, but already assailed him as a teenager when he was still living in the care of his family, free from external worries. Siddhartha, who became a Buddha, reports on this time in Anguttara Nikaya 3.38 - Sukhamala Sutta: Nobility: Even though I was endowed with such happiness, such utter nobility, this thought arose in me: ‚When an uninstructed, commonplace person, himself subject to death, not having transcended death, sees others dead, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, oblivious to himself that he too is subject to death, not having transcended death. If I, who am subject to death, were not beyond death, horrified, humiliated, and disgusted, it would not suit me‘ When I realized this, the [typical] intoxication of a person in life fell away from me completely. |  ↑}

^{[17] The Buddha had five different teachers before his enlightenment, according to the Milandaphana 4.6.1 (The questions of Milinda): Those eight brahmanas, O king, who examined the bodily features of the just-born Bodhisatta - as Kāma, Dhaja, Lakkhana, Mantī, Yañña, Suyāma, Subhoja and Sudatta - and who reported on his welfare and supervised him: these were his first teachers. Furthermore, the brahmana Sabbamitta, who was of noble and distinguished lineage and was a linguist, a grammarian, versed in the six auxiliary books of the Veda, whom the Bodhisatta's father Suddhodana had fetched at that time and, while pouring holy water from a golden vessel, gave to the boy as a teacher: this was his second teacher. Furthermore, that deity who made the Bodhisatta restless and whose words the Bodhisatta heard, having become restless and agitated, went forth at that moment and renounced the worldly life: this was his third teacher. Furthermore, after his departure into homelessness, Alāra Kālāma, who showed him the way to the meditative realm of neither-perception-nor-non-perception (see jhāna): this was his fourth teacher. His fifth teacher, however, was Uddaka Rāmaputta. According to this report, we count 10 teachers before the Buddha went into homelessness. |  ↑}

^{[18] Anguttara Nikaya 3.38 - Suhamala Sutta: Nobility and Majjhima Nikaya 26, 5-12 |  ↑}

^{[19] According to the sense, e.g. Anguttara Nikaya 3.38; Majjhima Nikaya 36; Jataka 525, or Jataka 538 |  ↑}

^{[20] Majjhima Nikaya 26, 13 |  ↑}

^{[21] Anguttara Nikaya 4.45 - Rohitassa Sutta |  ↑}

^{[22] The Brahmana Sabamitta, well versed in the Vedas, was one of Siddhartha's earliest teachers (see footnote 17 and here: Milandaphana 4.6.1 (The questions of Milinda)). Sabamitta also gives Siddhartha the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (see also here), which states: There is a narrow, safe, ancient path... that I have found. On it, the wise, the Brahmin experts ascend to heaven, to the Redemption. On it, they say, is white, blue, yellow, green, red. This is the path that is found through Brahman; on it the knower of Brahman walks glowing and doing pious works. |  ↑}

^{[23] In the Jatakas, the encounter with a monk is described like this: Now on another day, as the Bodhisattva was driving to the park, he saw a monk created by the deities, properly clothed above and below, and he asked the charioteer, „Who is this, dear one?“ Now the charioteer, because there was no Buddha yet, did not know a monk and the advantages of monasticism; but on the inspiration of the gods he said, „It is a monk, O prince,“ and extolled the virtues of monasticism. The Bodhisattva took pleasure in the world's refuge... Jataka Avidurenidana - The not distant introduction | J b2.06 - The escape from the world §271 Siddhartha grew up in the 6th century BC in the area of conflict between the old traditional Vedic-Brahmanic sacrificial cult on the one hand and the various emancipatory movements such as the Aupanisadas, materialists, ascetics and wandering mendicants on the other. The Samanas, who opposed Brahmanism, the authority of the Vedas and the caste system and sought salvation from the cycle of rebirths (moksha) away from these institutions, were the most popular. Numerous ascetics went out into the forests to meditate and, in the course of their renunciation of the world, to attain liberation from samsara through their own efforts. In this way, groups were formed, some with a considerable following, who saw their teachings as an enlightened alternative to established Brahmanism. Siddhartha gained his convictions from contact with all these groups. (cf. Wikipedia). |  ↑}

^{[24] Majjhima Nikaya 36, 12 |  ↑}

^{[25] Majjhima Nikaya 26, 15 and Majjhima Nikaya 36, 14 |  ↑}

^{[26] The events are described particularly vividly in the „Little Tale of Sutasoma“ (Cullasutasoma Jataka), from which the following verses are taken. Although the Buddha tells a story from a previous life, he ends his speech with the words: At that time the parents were members of the great royal family, Canda was Rāhula's mother, the eldest son was Sariputta, the youngest son was Rāhula, the nurse was Khujjuttara, the great merchant Kulavaddhana was Kassapa, the chief commander was Mogallana, the prince Somadatta was Ananda, but the king Sutasoma was me. The paragraphs refer to this translation: The Little Tale of Sutasoma, Jataka 525 |  ↑}

^{[27] Jataka Avidurenidana - The not distant introduction | J b2.06 - The escape from the world §273 |   ↑}

^{[28] Over the centuries of the Vedic period, cosmologies became more and more complex. However, the basic structure of the cosmos remained more or less the same. Both Hinduism and Buddhism share the concept of the central axis or world mountain Mount Meru in Sanskrit, Sumeru in Pali. This is surrounded at the four cardinal points by four continents, one of which is inhabited by humans. The universe, which is connected vertically by Mount Meru, is divided into three superimposed levels. The underworld and the hells form the lowest level, the human world the middle level and the heavens the highest. All these levels are usually divided into several sub-levels. |  ↑}

^{[29] An important detail is worth mentioning at this point: the Buddha himself had left his family - against the resistance of his parents. Knowing the pain he himself had caused (and the destructive economic consequences that the departure of a breadwinner into homelessness could have), he only allowed ordination into his Sangha if the candidate could produce permission from his parents: „Have you received permission from your parents, Raṭṭhapāla, to go forth from the home life into homelessness?“ „No, venerable sir, I have not received permission from my parents.“ „Raṭṭṭhapāla, Tathāgatas do not give permission to go forth into homelessness to anyone who has not received permission from his parents.“ (Majjhima Nikaya 82, 6) and also in the Vinya: „Do you have your parents“ permission?„ Aspirant: “I have, Venerable Sir!" PATIMOKKHA- Upasampadakamman - The Act of High Ordination, paragraph 11 |  ↑}

^{[30] Anguttara Nikaya 4.45 - Rohitassa Sutta |  ↑}

^{[31] Master Dogen: Shobogenzo. The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. Heidelberg-Leimen, 2003. chapter Shinjin gakudo, volume 2. p.281 |  ↑}