The Concept of Buddhas Enlightenment with Siddhartha Gautama

The Buddha’s Enlightenment is the first “enlightenment” event in Buddhism and history, experienced by Siddhartha Gautama. Upon experiencing “enlightenment”, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha and began to found the Buddhist religion, hence the “Buddha’s Enlightenment”.

In Buddhism, “enlightenment” is a state of perfect wisdom and symbolizes the moment when an individual has beaten ignorance and is “awaken”. In other words, “enlightenment” is the understanding of the life and the human existence the way they truly are. It is about understanding the notion of “impermanence” (that nothing exists forever) and the “anatman” (no-self, nothing exists on its own).

Finally, once enlightened, one realizes that all life is suffering and begins one’s quest to end all sufferings (“dukkha”) in order to liberate oneself from the cycle of “samsara” and reach Nirvana. All in all, being enlightened is being aware of the true nature of existence, and Siddhartha Gautama was the first one to be “enlightened”.

The Buddha’s Enlightenment started with Siddhartha Gautama’s quest to escape the comfortable life and to find more meanings in life.

He began his renunciation at the age of 29, after being “confronted by the sight of an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a religious mendicant” (Buddhism, an Online Introduction). As he began his quest, Siddhartha became a mendicant himself and wandered around North India, seeking for religious gurus to teach him meditation. He was introduced to yogic concentration and entered multiple mystical states of trance under the guide of various teachers.

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However, Siddhartha felt that those experiences were merely a temporary escape from the real world and its problems. He then turned toward another form of spiritual practice very popular in India that eventually forced him to suffer a lot of physical pain and distress. Finally, he realized that he has taken a too austere path to attain enlightenment and decided to go with the “Middle Way”, a more structured meditation technique that involves passing through 4 different levels of trance, “Dhyanas”. The “Middle Way” represents a path that is very distant from over-indulgence, but also very distant from extreme practices.

One night, under the Bodhi tree, Siddhartha entered the fourth state of trance, “when his mind was most concentrated and purified” (Buddhism, an Online Introduction), and attained the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. Later that night, he encountered Mara, an evil entity, whose name literally means death. Mara represented all of the ideas and teachings that contradict that of the Buddha. During that night, this entity tried to prevent Siddhartha from reaching “enlightenment” by making the latter face greed, hatred, desire, delusion, and other negative forces in life in order to break his mentality. However, with one holy gesture (“mudra”), Siddartha touched the earth and called out the earthly-goddess to witness his enlightenment – ultimately beating Mara.

Siddhartha Gautama, who became Buddha after attaining “enlightenment”, has a great advantage being a human. As humans, people will have to face and be constantly reminded of sufferings and impermanence, which push them to focus on seeking “enlightenment”. Upon attaining “enlightenment”, filled with compassion, the Buddha began to pass on his teachings across India to help other sentient beings attain it as well.