The Buddha came from a royal family in India some twenty-five hundred years ago. He was a prince, named Siddhartha Gautama. He had a very good situation. In the palace he had everything he wanted: good food, good clothes, many beautiful women, a high seat, and a very good position. He was the son of the king, and someday he would inherit a powerful kingdom. That’s very wonderful! But inside, Siddhartha was very unhappy, because he could not understand who he was. He could not understand life or death. He was deeply saddened that all beings must eventually get sick, grow old, and die. This gave him a big question about his own nature and the nature of all beings. “What am I? I don’t know. . . .” At that time in India, the Brahman religion of Hinduism was followed by nearly everyone. But Brahmanism could not give the young prince the correct answer to his burning question. So he was even more unhappy. “Why do human beings come into this world? Why do we eat every day? What am I?” He ate food, but there was no taste. Heard music, but it gave him no pleasure. The beautiful palace became like a prison.
One night, Siddhartha left the palace. He left his family, his beautiful wife, and his infant child, cut off all his hair, and became a monk. Then he went to the mountains. For six years he practiced very, very hard. “What am I? Don’t know . . .” He courageously kept this question with one-pointed determination.
Then one morning, while sitting in meditation under the Bodhi tree, he saw the morning star in the eastern sky. At that moment—BOOM!—Siddhartha and this star completely became one. He realized his true substance. He realized that his mind was the universe—infinite in time and space—and the whole universe was nothing other than his own mind. He realized there is no life and no death. Nothing ever comes or goes. We say that he woke up and attained his true nature. He completely attained human consciousness: he saw that when ignorance appears, mind appears. When mind appears, desire appears.
When any kind of desire appears, life and death, coming and going, happiness and sadness all appear. By completely keeping a don’t-know mind one hundred percent—only go straight, don’t know—the Buddha saw how to completely stop this endless cycle. He attained complete liberation from the eternal round of birth and death in which all beings trap themselves. He completely attained his correct way, he attained truth, and he attained the correct kind of life he should lead. The name for that is enlightenment.
~Siddhartha
