The Sermon at Benares

Siddhartha Gautama

The prince of northern India (563-483 B.C.) who became the Buddha. Sent away at twelve to study the Hindu sacred scriptures, he returned four years later to marry a princess, had a son, and lived ten years as befitted royalty before leaving it all.

What did the young prince see while out hunting, and why did it change his life?

Four things in succession: a man in sickness, a man worn down by age, a funeral being carried past, and last of all a monk living on alms. Having been shielded from suffering until about the age of twenty-five, he was so moved that he left at once to seek enlightenment about the sorrows he had witnessed.

How did Siddhartha attain enlightenment?

He wandered for seven years, then sat down beneath a peepal tree and vowed to stay there until enlightenment came. It came after seven days, and from then on he was called the Buddha, a title meaning one who has awakened or been enlightened.

The Bodhi Tree

The peepal tree under which Siddhartha sat until enlightenment came. He renamed it the Tree of Wisdom afterwards, and it is from this renaming that the tree takes the name it still carries.

The sermon at Benares

The Buddha's first sermon, preached at Benares — the most holy of the dipping places on the Ganges. It has been preserved, and deals with one kind of suffering that cannot be reasoned away: the loss of those we love.

What did Kisa Gotami ask her neighbours for after her son died, and why did she get nothing?

She carried the dead child from house to house begging for medicine to cure him. Nobody could help because the boy was already dead, and the neighbours concluded she had lost her senses.

What did the Buddha ask Kisa Gotami to bring him, and on what condition?

A handful of mustard-seed — an ordinary thing found in any kitchen. But he added a condition after she had joyfully agreed: it had to come from a house where no one had lost a child, husband, parent or friend.

Why could Kisa Gotami not obtain the mustard-seed?

Everyone pitied her and readily offered it, but at her question every household named a death of its own. As they told her, the living are few and the dead are many — and there was no house in which some beloved person had not died.

What did the Buddha want Kisa Gotami to understand by sending her for the mustard-seed?

That death is universal, and that her loss was not the singular injustice she took it for. He refused to argue the point; the errand let her discover it for herself, house by house, which is why it convinced her when words would not have.

Why did Kisa Gotami understand the second time round what she had missed the first?

The first time she went out asking for a cure, with her mind fixed on her own child. The second time the same doors opened on other people's griefs, so she was made to listen instead of plead — and heard what she had been unable to hear.

The flickering lights of the city

What Kisa Gotami watched, weary and hopeless, from the wayside — lamps lighting up and being put out one by one until darkness reigned everywhere. The image gives her the thought that human lives flicker up and are extinguished in the same way.

Why does Kisa Gotami call herself selfish in her grief?

Because she had treated a universal fate as a wrong done to her alone, while every house she visited carried a loss of its own. She sees that the way out of that valley of desolation lies through surrendering selfishness, not through a cure.

What lesson on death does the Buddha teach in the sermon?

That the life of mortals is troubled, brief and bound up with pain, and that no one born can avoid dying. Young and adult, foolish and wise alike fall into the power of death, and no father can save his son nor kinsmen their relations.

The ripe fruit and the potter's vessel

Two comparisons the Buddha uses for human life. Ripe fruits are in danger of falling from the moment they ripen, and every earthen vessel a potter makes ends in being broken — so mortals, once born, are always in danger of death.

Why does the Buddha say the wise do not grieve?

Because they know the terms of the world. Mortals are carried off one by one like an ox led to slaughter while their relatives look on lamenting, and grief cannot alter an arrangement that was never going to spare anyone.

Why does the Buddha say that weeping and grieving bring no peace of mind?

They make matters worse rather than better: the pain grows greater, the body suffers, and the mourner makes himself sick and pale. For all that, the dead are not saved by anyone's lamentation.

'The arrow of lamentation'

The Buddha's image for grief, complaint and sorrow lodged in a mourner. Peace comes to the one who draws the arrow out and becomes composed; having overcome all sorrow, he is freed from it and blessed.

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