Glimpses Of World Religions

Author(s): Gunvant Barvalia
Publisher: Navbharat Sahitya Mandir

Page 76

Bauddha Dharma
59
Buddha' means one who has been properly guided or one who is an 'Enlightened one or the Awakened one, the learned man. Those ingnorant persons of this world are as good as “lying in slumber"; only the wise or the realised are awakened. Gautama Buddha is one of those spiritually great persons that have been known in the spiritual history of mankind. He has been regarded as the rare personality on this earth. The life of Gautam Buddha
Buddha was born on the full moon day of the month of Vaishakh in 563 B.C. in a village named Lumbinee situated on Nepal-Bharat border. On the sad demise of the child's mother Mayadevi just on the seventh day after that, Prajapati Gautami brought him up. The Ascetic (Rishi) had predicted that the son would be a great man – the saviour of mankind.
From the very adolescence, Gautam had a feeling of friendship or kinship to all the living beings; he used to sit in meditation in the cool shades under a tree. He did not allow any indescent thought in the mind.
His period of youth passed in enjoyments and pleasure. He was a very very delicate young man. His (king-father) father got three quite separate bungalows to be useful in three different seasons. In the monsoon, he was not to tread a bit outside the royal residence. He was married to a lady named Yashodhara and they had a son also whose name was Rahul.
But the miseries of worldly life (in general) were used to fill his tender heart with acute pity and compassion. The thoughts, especially of the three main miseries or mishaps that might fall on humanity viz old age, disease and death, always and constantly worried him. When he saw people quarrelling with one another because of greed and dissatisfaction, he found it difficult to see a safe place in this worldly life. So there arose in his mind a