After some reflection, he decided to accept nourishment, cared for his body and changed the way he was seeking enlightenment. Towards the end of this period, he almost died from emaciation and exhaustion.ĭespite his strenuous determination, Siddhartha realised his efforts were futile and that these extremes of self-mortification were not the way to freedom. ![]() He practiced the extremes of austerity and self-mortification in the forests of northern India for six years. Siddhartha followed the teachings of ascetics and mistakenly believed that the way to freedom was to completely deny bodily needs and any pleasure. He studied with the prominent meditation teachers of the time and mastered all the techniques on offer, yet he felt that these techniques did not satisfy. That night, Siddhartha left his life of comfort and his family to seek an end to suffering and became an ascetic. Seeing a homeless wanderer seeking the truth inspired him to leave his comfortable existence in search of a resolution for the human suffering that he had become aware of. The fourth sight was that of a wandering monk or seeker of spiritual freedom. He was deeply disturbed by what he saw and confronted by the realisation that all beings are subject to these realities. The first was seeing someone very old, the second was seeing someone stricken with illness and the third was seeing a corpse. Around that time, he was exposed to four circumstances, which were later understood as messages. Siddhartha enjoyed all the pleasures that life had to offer until he was 29 years old. Siddhartha excelled in the arts and sciences and led a life of luxury, protected and sheltered from life’s difficulties. His name was Siddhartha Gautama and he was the son of a leader of one of the many small kingdoms in northern India at that time. The Life Of Siddhartha GautamaĪround 2,600 years ago the man who was to become the Buddha, was born in the town of Lumbini near the current Nepalese-Indian border. Read more: Explore the Four Seals of Buddhism as foundational principles of the Buddhist path. A traditional Buddhist approach to meditation is experiential and offers broad and flexible applications of skills in order to ease suffering and wake up to freedom. The teachings of the Buddha invite us to see and realise awakening for ourselves, as no one else can do it for us. It can be gross such as our struggles with mental torment, severe illness and death, or it can be subtle, such as not getting what we want exactly how and when we want it.Įssentially, Buddhism is about reducing and uprooting the root causes of dukkha : greed, ignorance and hatred. Dukkha is often translated as suffering, but it is better to consider it as un-satisfactoriness. ![]() Dukkha is the Pali term used to describe the Buddha’s first truth. The aim of Buddhism is to wake up to the realities of life and death in order to find freedom from dukkha. The term “Buddha” refers to an awakened one. Highly sought after, his mission is showing you how to heal and free yourself.Psychologist and Dharma teacher Mal Huxter writes about Buddha’s awakening and how his teachings spread around the world and still help people today to find freedom from suffering. He has been applauded for his mastery in balancing weighty topics with a sense of lightness, and has been featured by various national and international news outlets. Prior engagements include talks, retreats, and workshops for organizations, businesses and universities including Calm, NYU, Yale, Harvard, Google, Columbia University, University of Vermont, and Boston College. Lama Rod is a leading voice in a new generation of Buddhist teachers with over 11 years of experience who activates the intersections of his identity to create a platform that’s natural, engaging, and inclusive. He also cofounded Dharma Queens, a series of conversations on Instagram Live with Sister Sadada Jackson, to help people get freer faster. In 2018, Lama Rod cofounded Bhumisparshaa-a spiritual community with a mission of making tantra accessible and inclusive for North American practitioners while serving as a catalyst for transformative social change. ![]() Lama Rod Owens is a Black Buddhist Southern Queen, international influencer, author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors and Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger, and coauthor of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation. Lama Rod earrned a master's degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School-and his teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care.
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