Jain Journal 1967 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 94

APRIL, 1967
219
in milk offered to him by a peasant damsel who had long waited for his arrival. After he had taken food, he felt his strength returning and he could perceive that the time for his illumination was now not far. He went to a nearby river for ablution ; he sought for the tree he had visioned as his shelter during enlightenment; he begged an armful of grass from a man who was mowing in an adjacent field which he spread beneath his coveted tree and took posture of a meditating sage. Enlightenment came at last in the morning hour. Siddhartha now became the Buddha (the Enlightened), the Tathagata (the One who has come).
Now started his spiritual mission,--that of rescuing the suffering humanity of the misery of earthly living and showing the way to nirvana. He made his way to Sarnath, near Varanasi, to give his first sermon. In the Canon occurs a sutta which is traditionally believed to be the first exposition of the doctrine preached by him, the dhamma-cakkapavattana-sutta, 'the sutta of turning the wheel of the doctrine'. It is addressed to "him who has gone forth from the world” in the conviction that the worldly life cannot give final happiness and it repudiates two extremes which he ought not to follow--the profitless life of indulgence in sexual pleasure and the equally profitless way of self-torture. The Middle Path which "conduces to enlightenment and nirvāņa” has been won by the Tathagata and enlightenment consists in the knowledge of the four Truths : (1) truth of pain, (2) truth of the cause of pain, (3) the cessation of pain and (4) the actual means of arriving at these truths, the noble Eight-fold Path as follows:
right view right intention right speech right action
right livelihood right effort right meditation right concentration
The Eight-fold Path is essentially a course of training and in order to carry it out fully and extinguish craving, it is essential to abandon the household life and join the sangha or the order of the monks. Five monks who were his old associates and who had given him up as fallen after he had taken milk-rice offered by the peasant damsel rejoined him to become his first disciples in the sangha.
In his second sermon delivered five days after he spoke of the ātman or soul. More monks now joined his order and some lay disciples too. When he had sixty monks in the brotherhood, he sent them forth to convey his message, the celebrated "Eight-fold Path, that leads to wisdom,