HINDU ENCYCLOPEDIA

सनातन धर्म भूमिका

Meaning of "Buddha"

Word

Buddha

Sanskrit

बुद्ध

IAST

buddha

In General

Buddha is one of the most eminent spiritual personalities the Indian culture has ever made. He challenged many traditional approaches the religion has proposed and preached compassion, practical wisdom and meditation as a new mode of religious practice

Sidhartha (earlier name of Buddha) was born in Lumbini near Kapilavastu as hair of to the throne of Sakya kingdom. Death disease and old age remained him of the sorrowful destiny of man. Sidhartha tread the practiced austerities and found it is of no use. However he found the Truth by his own unique ideas and he preached that to the public. He attracted large crowed in his own time and people called him Buddha (The Awakened One)

Buddha departed from traditional thought in not asserting an essential or ultimate reality in things. To him life is a stream of becoming, a series of manifestations and extinctions. For one cannot step into same river twice for its flowing water change the river every moment, all the happenings in the micro and macro world are not absolute. A person is in a process of continuous change, and there is no fixed underlying entity.

Buddha formulated Four Noble Truths to understand what is life: 1. Dukkha: the truth of misery and uneasiness. 2. Trishna: there is a reason for the misery to originates. It is nothing but the craving greed for pleasure and desires 3. Nirodha: the misery can be eliminated 4. Marga: there is a path to eliminate the misery.

The eight fold path are: (1) correct view: an accurate understanding of the nature of things (2) correct intention: avoiding thoughts of attachment, hatred, and harmful intent, (3) correct speech: refraining from verbal misdeeds such as lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, and senseless speech, (4) correct action: refraining from physical misdeeds such as killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct, (5) correct livelihood: avoiding trades that directly or indirectly harm others (6) correct effort: abandoning negative states of mind and sustaining positive states that have already arisen, (7) correct mindfulness: awareness of body, feelings, thought, and phenomena and (8) correct concentration: single-mindedness.

Veda

Buddha was opposed Vedas for its external practices and he aligned to the Upanishadic wisdom

Related entries found !

Word Sanskrit IAST In General Veda Purana
Buddha Charitaबुद्धचरितbuddhacarita

A Mahakavya in Classical Sanskrit. The biography of Buddha from birth to Enlightenment is...

Read More
Buddha Charitaबुद्धचरितbuddhacarita

A Mahakavya in Classical Sanskrit. The biography of Buddha from birth to Enlightenment is...

Read More