Martha Aitchison

Martha Aitchison is a Theravada Buddhist who enjoys painting,drawing and telling stories.

She lives in England with her husband and cat and all theanimals that wish to populate her small garden, which is kept asa wild life sanctuary.

The tale of how a prince came to abandon a life of luxury andcomfort and went away to discover the secret of happiness,suffering much penury before he reached his goal, seems thestuff of fairy stories. Yet it was a real man who achieved such aselfless and extraordinary deed. We know this man as theBuddha, the All Enlightened One, and this is his life told assimply as possible for young people.

Based onA Young Person’s Life of the Buddha

byBhikkhu Silacara

Illustrations and text by

Martha Aitchison

1 ~ A long time ago, in the kingdom of Kapilavatthu in thenorth of India (the ruins of which now lie in Nepal) therelived King Suddhodana of the Sakya clan with his Queen,the good and lovely Mah¤m¤y¤. The family to which theKing belonged was called Gotama so his full name wasSuddhodana Gotama.

Queen Mah¤m¤y¤ was near to giving birth to their child soshe wanted to travel to her family in a nearby town. On theway the royal party stopped at a beautiful garden for a rest.It was there in the Lumbini Grove that the Queen, holdingonto a low branch of a sal tree for comfort, as it was thenthe custom, gave birth to her baby.

Thus, among the birds and the bees and the flowers, thefuture Buddha was born. The King was delighted to have ason to rule after him. Unfortunately, a few days after thebirth, Queen Mah¤m¤y¤ died and the grieving Suddhodanahad to entrust the raising of the baby to Princess Mah¤Paj¤pati, sister to the Queen.

The wise men who came to bless the baby told the King thathis son was going to be a great man, either a great king or agreat religious leader. He was given the name Siddhattha,which means one who succeeds in everything he sets out todo. King Suddhodana wanted the little Prince to grow up totake care of the kingdom after him and did not like the ideathat he might give it all up to follow the holy life.

Prince Siddhattha was born in the beautiful Lumbini Gardensamong the flowers, the birds and the bees

2 ~ His aunt, the kind Princess Mah¤ Paj¤pati, brought upSiddhattha as if he were her own son and the Prince grewup happily in the palace. No effort was spared to make hislife cosy and easy but all these treats did not turn him into aspoiled child.

He was obedient and very intelligent, learning easily allthat was deemed necessary to become a good king. PrinceSiddhattha did not like to harm or upset anybody oranything and he was always mindful of the needs of others.

Even though he was the heir to the throne and thereforethe most important person in the palace after the King, theyoung Prince was always respectful of his teachers, kind tohis servants and compassionate towards animals.

One day, while walking with his cousin Devadatta in thegrounds of the palace, a flock of swans flew by. Devadatta,who was carrying his bow and arrows, promptly shot one ofthem down.

When he saw this, Siddhattha ran to the injured bird andcarefully took the arrow out. He was allowed to keep theswan, to the displeasure of his cousin, and in his tender careit soon recovered its strength and flew away to rejoin itscompanions.

The kind Siddhattha rescues the swan injured by his cousin

3 ~ Every spring, at the time of sowing the fields, it was thecustom in India for the King to open the ploughing of thefields with a ceremony guiding the first team of oxen. Allthe village people then followed his example and set towork with their own oxen. It was a day of celebration.

One year King Suddhodana decided to take his son to thefestival. While his father was heading the procession

Siddhattha soon found himself quite concerned for the oxen.

He saw how they strained and sweated in the relentlessheat. He also noticed that the plough uncovered manyworms and that birds were swooping down to eat them.

Although it was a day of feasting and merrymaking forsome, obviously not everybody was happy. Observing allthis, Siddhattha wondered off until he found himself undera tree where he sat, more and more immersed in histhoughts. In the shady peace, away from the crowd, with acalm and clear mind, he realized that underneath all thebeauty and pleasures of the life his father presented to himthere was quite a deal of suffering and ugliness.

After the ceremony the Prince was found quietly sittingalone, away from the feasting. This was reported to the Kingwho worried that Siddhattha would after all become a holyman instead of taking charge of the kingdom.

During the Spring Festival not everybody is having fun,some are working hard and animals are suffering.

4 ~ Siddhattha grew into a handsome and thoughtful youngman and King Suddhodana, still very worried, resolved tomake his life so pleasant and full of fun that he would notwant to consider leaving it to become a holy man.

So he ordered the construction of three palaces for PrinceSiddhattha. The first was made of wood, nice and warm forthe winter with panels of sweet smelling cedar inside. Thesecond palace was all in cool white marble for summer andthe third was in sturdy brick with a solid roof to keep himdry and cosy during the rainy season.

All these splendid buildings had large gardens all roundfull of flowering trees, ponds brimming with lotuses andwinding paths for the Prince and his retinue to stroll along.King Suddhodana then made sure that there were always

plenty of servants to cater for every whim of Siddhattha.The food and drink was of the best quality and he engagedmusicians and dancers to entertain him day and night.

The King appointed only beautiful, young, fit and healthypeople to work in all three palaces because he did not wantany more thoughts of suffering and ugliness to occur to thePrince.

Despite all these efforts Siddhattha did not seem to beenjoying himself as much as his father would have wished.

As a young man Siddhattha lived a pampered lifein his father’s palaces but he was never really happy

5 ~ Fearing that all his efforts would be useless to change hisson’s inclination towards a retiring and meditative life, KingSuddhodana found himself despairing of ever awakening inthe Prince an interest in the affairs of the kingdom.

It was then that his advisers suggested marriage as a goodremedy. That seemed an excellent idea; a beautiful wifewould enchant Siddhattha out of his melancholy, thoughtthe King. So the plan was put into practice.

Princess Yashodhar¤ from a neighbouring kingdom wasintroduced to Siddhattha so the two young people got toknow each other and love grew between them. The weddingwas a fantastic affair and for a while the Prince seem to bequite happy, delighting in his new life with his beautifulwife.

The King kept making sure that only smiles and laughterand happy faces surrounded the couple and it was forbiddenany reference to illness, old age or death in the presence ofthem. Still the Prince kept brooding and when his son wasborn he named him R¤hula, which means an obstacle. Bygiving the baby this name Siddhattha only meant that thelove for his son would make him fulfil King Suddhodana’swish to be his successor.

Clearly Siddhattha was already considering that family tieswere getting in the way of his spiritual fulfilment, althoughhe dearly loved Yashodhar¤ and little R¤hula.

The Prince married a beautiful Princessand they had a baby boy

6 ~ When the Prince went out to visit the surroundedcountryside and villages the King ordered than anything sador unpleasant should be hidden from Siddhattha’s eyes andeverybody had to great him with smiles and cheers.

Despite of these precautions on three occasions Siddhatthamanaged to see more than his father had planned. The firsttime he met an old man, the next a sick person and finally adead body being carried to the funeral pyre to be burnt. Heasked his servant Channa many questions.

Channa truthfully replied that all three conditions werepart of life and that nobody can escape getting ill or old andeventually everybody dies. This was quite a shock to thePrince because he had never seen such suffering in hiswhole life and it seemed that even his royal rank was notsufficient to protect him from the same fate.

Safely back in the comfort of his palace all that he hadseen in the last few days kept going over in his mind. Theinsight he had as a child during the ploughing festival wasnow confirmed; life is full of unhappiness. He wanted toseek a cure, a way out of so much misery.

He seriously began to think that to achieve this goal hewould have to leave the palace with all its luxuries as wellas his beloved family.

The unhappiness of others distressed him

7 ~ On a fourth outing he saw quite a different sight; infront of a cave in the mountains a dignified man was sittingin meditation, dressed in the robes of a recluse, his facewearing a calm and noble expression.

Channa explained that this was a man that had left thepleasures and comforts of the world to find another kind ofhappiness. He sat in meditation most of the day and atewhat kind people would give him, sometimes very little. Inthis way he concentrated in developing a peaceful mind.

This encounter impressed Siddhattha who decided thereand then to dedicate himself also to pursue a similar pathand so perhaps he could find the cure for all the sufferingand misery that everybody experiences sooner or later inlife.

He returned to the palace but he was even more wrappedup in his thoughts than usual. He wanted to know the secretof true happiness and contentment because he definitely didnot find it in his present life, despite his father’s efforts.

The King, knowing of his escapades, tried harder to keepSiddhattha amused but it was all in vain, the young manhad made up his mind.

One day the Prince met a man who lived a simple life with noluxuries but was very contented

8 ~ So one night when the palace was still and silent,Siddhattha quietly left his sleeping wife and child, notwithout sadness, to start his new life as a homelesswanderer. This decision was not taken for selfish motivesbut his intention was to return to his family bringing backwith him the secret of happiness.

He had asked the faithful Channa to saddle his favouritehorse, Kanthaka, and now they all were ready. The Princequietly rode out of the palace gardens and then out of thecity walls with the servant hanging onto the horse’s tail.After a while Siddhattha dismounted and took off all hisjewellery, which he gave to Channa to take back to the

palace.

The latter was distraught and begged to be allowed tocontinue on the journey but his master told him that it wasnot the right time for him to do so. So Channa went backto the palace leading Kanthaka by the reins, feeling verysad to leave his master.

And that is how Prince Siddhattha Gotama, havingabandoned his family, a life of luxury and all his wealth,with only the clothes he had on and on foot, became

Gotama the Wanderer.

So one night Siddhattha left the palace to seek that happinessfor his family, for himself and for everybody else

9 ~ Siddhattha had heard of a saintly man that lived in theforest and decided to ask him to be accepted as a disciple.This holy man was ¡l¤ra K¤l¤ma. Under his guidance theformer prince learned to achieve a very high degree ofmental concentration but he soon found that this did notlead to the cessation of suffering.

After a time Siddhattha had reached such level ofunderstanding that ¡l¤ra K¤l¤ma asked him to stay to guideothers. However Siddhattha’s enquiring mind had not beensatisfied so he did not accept because he wanted to find thesecret of happiness and therefore he decided to leave.

So he went to practice with another highly respected holyman, Uddaka R¤maputta. Again he was a diligent discipleand practiced very hard until he knew as much as hismaster who also wanted to keep him alongside him. But ashe only learned to achieve an even higher degree ofconcentration than before, once more he had to leave toresume his search. Uddaka had taught him all he knewand still there was no answer to Siddhattha’s question.

After these disappointments Gotama the Wanderer wentalone further into the forest because he realized that all hecould do now was to seek the truth within his own mind.

He joined the holy men in the forest to learn from them thesecret of happiness

10 ~ Some people believed then, as still some do now, that avery effective method to strengthen the mind and reachprofound spiritual knowledge is to starve the body andpunish it by any possible means. So Gotama applied himselfwith great dedication to all sorts of extreme practices. Hewent without food and without sleep and meditated for longperiods in uncomfortable and even dangerous places,striving hard to find the truth by his own efforts.

So hard he tried that he acquired a reputation for being agreat ascetic and soon a small group of five disciplesgathered around him, all trying to be as diligent as him.

After some six or seven years of wandering and livingthrough all these torments and privations he was very weakand still he had not found the answers he sought.

Clearly this method was not working as the goal wasnowhere in sight yet. His common sense told Gotama thatthere must be another way, neither too soft nor too hard, aMiddle Way.

In his wanderings he came to a secluded bamboo grovewith a smooth river flowing through it where he couldbathe and as there was also a village nearby where he couldbeg for food, he settled there with his followers.

He studied hard and fasted to clear his mindbut he only got ill and weak

11 ~ Once, when he returned from bathing in the river, hefainted with weakness. A poor shepherd boy that waspassing by revived him with a few drops of milk from oneof his goats.

Gotama was very grateful and asked to drink from theboy s dish. The young shepherd was shocked and said thathis dish was not a fit drinking vessel for a holy man, a nobleperson. The former prince replied that there was nodifference between them, one a holy man and the other apoor shepherd boy, as the same red blood flowed in theirveins.

Then he added that what makes people noble is doingnoble deeds not their birth or how much wealth they have.So he drank the warm milk from the boy’s dish and feltmuch better for it. Now Gotama realized that with a weakbody he had no hope of having a clear mind so he decidedto eat, not too much, because overeating also would cloudhis understanding.

From now on he accepted food from Suj¤t¤, a kind ladyfrom the neighbouring village of Uruvela, who every daybrought him rice boiled in milk.

When the disciples saw him eating, they thought that hehad given up the struggle and had gone back to a life ofease and comfort and soon they all abandoned him.

He saw this was not the right way and found that with a littlefood and milk he could think better

12 ~ One night, alone in the forest, Gotama sat under abanyan tree to meditate, vowing that he would not rise untilhe had found how to conquer suffering. As he reflected onhis past and on recent events he began to wonder if perhapshe should return to his previous life as a prince.

The wish to give up was strong, but not as strong as hisdetermination to find what he had set out to find.

All night he persevered and eventually he suddenly sawthe solution. He had long been aware that even under themost delightful pleasure there is always some suffering.Now, fully awake, more so than any man has ever been, herealized that all around us and within us everything isalways changing. Refusing to accept change is what makesus unhappy.

Finally, he saw that the way to achieve contentment andfreedom from suffering is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path,and so train the mind in wisdom, morality and mindfulness.

With this realization Siddhattha touched the earth as hiswitness to his Enlightenment.

Thus, under the full moon of May, the former Princebecame the Buddha, the Enlightened One, and from thatmoment on he dedicated his life to impart his Teaching to

those who were ready to listen.

Under the banyan tree the recluse Gotama became the Buddha,when he saw how everything that is here today will sooner orlater change. Clinging to anything brings unhappiness, only

being mindful of the changeable nature of life brings freedomand lasting happiness.

Gotama the Buddha lived for a very long time during whichhe travelled over a vast area in the north of India. He gavemany sermons and taught everybody, from beggars to kings,the Middle Way he discovered.

Many stories could be told and many pictures could bedrawn and perhaps one day so will they be.

A colouring book for children based on this eBookcan be obtained from

The Buddhist Publication Society www.bps.lkWisdom Books www.wisdom-books.com

Amazon

Vesak greeting cards and colouring pagesand teaching material for children

by the same author inissuu.com/nottwobooks