The Buddha (2010) - full transcript

2,500 years ago,

nestled in a fertile valley along
the border between India and Nepal,

a child was born

who was to become the Buddha.

The stories say that before his birth,

his mother,

the queen of a small Indian kingdom,

had a dream.

A beautiful white elephant
offered the queen a lotus flower,

and then, entered the side of her body.

When sages were asked
to interpret the dream,



they predicted the queen
would give birth to a son

destined to become either a great ruler

or a holy man.

One day, they said,

he would either conquer the world

or become an enlightened being,

the Buddha.

People like stories.

It is one of the ways we learn.

The story of the Buddha’s life

is an archetypal journey.

But, it is a means to an end.

It is not an end.

Within ten months,



as a tree lowered a branch
to support her,

a baby boy was born,

emerging from her side.

Seven days later,

the queen died.

"The world is filled with pain and sorrow,"

the Buddha would one day teach.

"But, I have found a serenity,"

he told his followers,

"that you can find too".

Everybody understands suffering.

It's something that we all share
with everybody else.

It's at once utterly intimate
and utterly shared.

So, Buddha says,

"that's a place to begin.

That's where we begin".

No matter what your circumstances,

you will end up

losing everything you love.

You will end up aging.

You will end up ill.

And the problem

is that we need to figure out
how to make that all be all right.

What he actually said was
that life is blissful.

There's joy everywhere,

only we're closed off to it.

His teachings were
actually about opening up

the joyful of the blissful
nature of reality.

But, the bliss and the joy
is in the transitoriness.

"Do you see this glass?

I love this glass.

It holds the water admirably.

When I tap it, it has a lovely ring.

When the sun shines on it,
it reflects the light beautifully.

But, when the wind blows

and the glass falls off
the shelf and breaks

or if my elbow hits it
and it falls to the ground,

I say, 'of course.'

But, when I know

that the glass is already broken,
every minute with it is precious".

Everybody, every human being
wants happiness.

And Buddha, he acts like teacher.

You are your own master.

Future,

everything depends on your own shoulder.

Buddha,

Buddha's responsibility is
just to show the path.

That's all.

The Buddha can shine out
from the eyes of anybody.

Inside the buffeting of,
of an ordinary human life,

at any moment,
what the Buddha found,

we can find.

In southern Nepal,

at the foot of the Himalayas,

is one of the world's holiest places,

Lumbini,

where, according to the sacred tales,

the Buddha was born.

Today, Buddhist pilgrims from
all over the world make their way here

to be in the presence of the sage

whose life story is inseparable
from centuries of anecdotes and legends.

There are countless stories of the Buddha.

Each tradition, each culture,
each time period has their own stories.

We have lots of visual, narratives,

and artwork from all over Buddhist Asia.

But, the first written material, actually,

the first biography,
say, of the Buddha

really, we don't see that before
about 500 years after his death.

For the first few centuries,
Buddhist narrative was oral.

Historically, it is based on something
certainly that happened there.

There must have been someone
who corresponded with Gautama, Buddha.

But we don't know.

We don't know how much of it is

pure fairy tale,

and how much of it is historic fact.

But, it doesn't matter.

It touches something
that we all basically know.

The relevance of it

is in the message of the story,

the promise of the story.

Um, like any good story,
it has a lot to teach.

So, the story of his life, then,

is a beautiful way of telling the teaching.

"He who sees me
sees the teaching,"

the Buddha said,

"and he who sees the teaching

sees me".

Born some 500 years
before the birth of Jesus,

the Buddha would grow to manhood
in a town vanished long ago.

For nearly three decades,

he would see nothing
of the world beyond.

The tales say
he was the son of a king,

raised in a palace with
every imaginable luxury.

He was called Siddhartha Gautama,

a prince among a clan of warriors.

"When I was a child," he said,

"I was delicately brought up,

most delicately.

A white sunshade was held over me
day and night to protect me from cold,

heat, dust, dirt, and dew.

My father gave me three lotus ponds:

One where red lotuses bloomed,

one where white lotuses bloomed,

one where blue lotuses bloomed".

The father wants him to be a king,

wants him to conquer the world,

you know, to be the emperor of India,

which at that time was
16 different kingdoms.

And it was predicted that

he would be able to conquer
wherever he wanted

if he remained as a king.

So, the father was creating
this artificial environment

to coddle him.

His father wanted to prevent him

from ever noticing that anything
might be wrong with the world.

Because he hoped that he would

stay in the life they knew and loved

and not go off as was predicted
at his, at his birth,

and, and possibly become a,

uh, spiritual teacher rather than a king.

Shielded from pain and suffering,

Siddhartha indulged
in a life of pure pleasure.

Every whim satisfied,
every desire fulfilled.

"I wore the most costly garments,
ate the finest foods.

I was surrounded by beautiful women".

"During the rainy season,
I stayed in my palace,

where I was entertained
by musicians and dancing girls.

I never even thought of leaving".

When he was 16, his father,

drawing him tighter into palace life,

married him to his cousin.

It wasn't long before they fell in love.

He was totally in love with her.

There is a story that on their honeymoon,
which was about ten years long,

at one time, they rolled off the roof

that they were making love on

while in,

in union,

and they floated, they fell down,

but landed in a bed of

lotuses, lotuses and lilies,

and didn't notice they had fallen.

And so, the stories say,
he indulged himself for 29 years,

until the shimmering bubble
of pleasure burst.

His father does everything he can
to never let him leave,

never let him see the suffering

that life is.

But one day, he goes outside,

and he's traveling through
the kingdom, and...

he has the first of four encounters.

He sees an old man.

And he asks his attendant,

and the attendant says:
"Oh, that's change.

One doesn't always stay
young and perfect".

Then on the next tour outside,

he sees a sick man

and doesn't quite understand what it is.

He asks his attendant,

and the attendant says:
"Oh, that happens to all of us".

Everybody gets sick,

and don't think, "you are a prince,
you will not get sick".

Your father will get sick,
your mom will get sick.

Everybody will become sick.

Then he sees that
it isn't just this sick person,

in fact, it's universal.

And something is stimulated inside of him.

So, he keeps getting
the chariot driver to take him out,

and he sees, you know,
horror after horror.

And on his third trip outside, he...

he meets a corpse.

And he recognizes impermanence

and suffering and death

as the real state of things.

The world that he had been protected from,

shielded from,
kept from seeing.

And he was shocked.

You know, he was shocked,
and he realized...

"this is my fate too.

I will also become old.

I will also become ill.

I will also die.

How do I deal with these things?"

These are universal questions

in any human being's life:

What it's like to be in a body
inside of time, and our fate,

and how do we navigate that?

It really is a tale of the transformation

from a certain naive, innocent
relationship to your own life

to wanting to know the full story,

wanting to know the full truth.

And then, the fourth trip outside,
he sees a spiritual seeker:

Someone who has decided to live a life

completely other than his life

in order to escape

from impermanence,

suffering, and death.

So, he has this sort of traumatic encounter

with uh...

the pain and suffering of life.

We try to protect our children.

We don't want to let our children see
all the pain that's in the world.

But at a very early age,

at a time before
he could remember anything,

at a time before

there was conceptual thought,

he already suffered the worst kind of,

of loss that one could suffer.

Suddenly and mysteriously,

his mother died
when he was a week old.

So, something tragic happened,

you know, right at the beginning.

That might be what it takes
to become a Buddha

is that you have to suffer...

on such a primitive level.

Twenty-nine years old,

profoundly troubled,

Siddhartha was determined
to comprehend the nature of suffering.

He resolved to leave the palace.

His wife had just
given birth to a baby boy.

Siddhartha called him Rahula,

"fetter".

He names his son "fetter".

He names his son "ball and chain".

"This is the fetter

that will keep me tethered to this life.

This is what will keep me imprisoned".

Late one summer evening,

Siddhartha went into his wife's room.

A lamp of scented oil lit up.

His wife lay sleeping on a bed
strewn with flowers,

cradling their newborn son in her arms.

He gazed from the threshold,
deep in thought.

"If I take my wife's hand
from my son's head

and pick him up
and hold him in my arms,

it will be painful for me to leave".

He turned away...

and climbed down
to the palace courtyard.

His beloved horse Kanthaka was waiting.

As he rode toward the city's northern wall,

he leapt high into the air.

Mara, the tempter god of desire,
was waiting.

"You are destined," Mara told him,

"to rule a great empire.

Go back, and worldly power will be yours".

Siddhartha refused.

He left grief and probably

absolute puzzlement and dismay

in the hearts of wife,

in the infant son, who was innocent

and yet was suddenly fatherless,

and, of course, his own father.

But, there is no knowledge won
without sacrifice.

And this is one of the hard truths
of human existence.

In order to gain anything,
you must first lose everything.

Siddhartha was alone
in the world for the first time.

On the bank of a nearby river,

he drew his sword.

"Although my father
and stepmother were grieving

tears on their faces," he said,

"I cut off my hair.

I put on the yellow robes
and went forth from home...

into homelessness.

I had been wounded

by the enjoyment of the world.

And I had come out longing
to obtain peace".

Siddhartha wandered south,
toward the holy Ganges river.

Once a great prince,

now he became a beggar,

surviving on the charity of strangers.

He slept on the cold ground

in the dark forests of banyan,

teak, and Sal

that covered the northeastern plain.

Frightening places
where wild animals roamed...

and dangerous spirits were said to live.

He is going out to see what there is.

He's a seeker.

He doesn't have a teaching yet.

He doesn't have an understanding yet.

He doesn't have an insight yet.

He doesn't have a solution yet,

but he recognizes the problem.

Siddhartha could not expect help
from the religion of the time,

the ancient Vedic religion,

steeped in ceremony and ritual.

Some of its rituals still live on
in ceremonies conducted by Hindu priests,

who chant Vedic formulas
more than 2,500 years old.

This ritual is from long ago...

when civilization was first developed here.

Through this chanting,
we worship our gods and planets

in order to provide inner peace
to all living creatures.

For centuries, the Vedic rituals
had commanded respect for the gods

and inspired conviction.

But by Siddhartha’s time,

the rituals no longer spoke
to the spiritual needs of many Indians,

leaving a spiritual vacuum...

and a sense of foreboding.

The gods become less important
than the rituals themselves.

It's a period of great unrest.

It was a period of, of...

social upheaval, social change.

Cities were growing,

generating new wealth

and spiritual hunger.

As one ancient voice cried out in despair:

"The oceans have dried up;

mountains have crumbled;

the pole star is shaken;

the earth founders;

the gods perish.

I’m like a frog in a dry well".

A lot of people aren't satisfied

with the religion that they grew up in.

And when prince Siddhartha
decides to give up his life,

he's doing something that
lots of other people were doing.

Siddhartha joined thousands
of searchers like himself,

renunciants: Men,

and even a few women

who had renounced the world,

embracing poverty and celibacy,

living on the edge,

just as spiritual seekers still do
in India today.

Now, at this time in India,
there were lots of renunciants out there.

It's a flourishing renunciant tradition.

There are many different people who...

have given everything up

and practice austerities...

and meditate...

in order to escape

from the cycle of death and rebirth.

The notion of reincarnation

is something that's part of Indian culture,

part of Indian civilization,

part of Indian religion,

um, that was there long before the Buddha.

And it was the...

uh, in a sense, the problem...

that the Buddha faced.

Suffering didn't begin at birth
and finish with death.

Suffering was endless,

unless it was possible to find a way out,

become enlightened,

become a Buddha.

In his time,

there was a sense of death not being final,

but of, uh, of death leading
inexorably to rebirth...

and of beings, suffering beings,

bound to the wheel of death and rebirth.

It is said that Siddhartha had lived
many lives before this one...

as countless animals...

innumerable human beings...

and even gods...

across four incalculable ages,
the sacred texts say,

and many aeons,

experiencing life
in all its different forms.

Siddhartha’s previous lives,

many aeons,

sometimes as a human being,

sometimes as an animal,

uh, but then gradually...

using his practice,

uh, becoming more...

higher and higher,
and deeper, deeper.

The idea is, from life to life,

to progress more and more

towards the uh, the enlightenment

and become wiser and wiser.

Some beings will stubbornly
insist on their ignorance...

and their egotism,

and they will charge ahead,

grabbing and eating what they can
in front of themselves,

and being dissatisfied,
but thinking that the next bite will do it.

And they will die and be reborn
and die and be reborn infinite times.

It could take them,
you know, a billion lifetimes

if they are very stubborn, you know.

And becoming a Buddha,

becoming enlightened,

is the only way of getting out of
the continual cycle of death and rebirth.

Now, rebirth here isn't
the popular notion that, you know,

I, in my past life, I was Cleopatra
floating down the live Nile or...

or, or Napoleon.

Um...

it's as if...

every life is...

going through junior high school...

again,

over and over and over.

With the authority of the priests worn thin

and wisdom seekers like Siddhartha

roaming the countryside,

holy men emerged,

teaching their own spiritual disciplines.

Siddhartha apprenticed himself
to one of them,

a celebrated guru who taught
that true knowledge could never come

from ritual practice alone.

It was necessary to look within.

"You may stay here with me,"
the guru told him.

"A wise person can soon dwell
in his teacher's knowledge

and experience it directly for himself".

Siddhartha set himself to learn
the rigorous practices the guru prescribed.

The teachers of the time are already

teaching forms of yoga and meditation,

teaching that the...

self-reflective capacity of the mind
can be put to use...

to tame the mind,
to tame the passions.

That was already established in India.

And there were probably

so many schools of yoga and meditation...

in those days, just as there are now.

Yoga is not only for the body,

although it benefits the body in many ways.

The ultimate goal of yoga is
to achieve deep meditation.

It does not come easily or quickly.

It comes by practice.

Although yoga appears to focus
on controlling the body,

it is, in fact,
an ancient spiritual discipline,

a form of meditation,

harnessing the energies of the body...

to tame the mind.

Some yogis learn to sit
without moving for hours,

breathing more and more slowly

until they seem to be
barely breathing at all.

All kinds of trance states
are possible through meditation.

If you hold the mind,
if you concentrate the mind

on a single object, you know,

be it a word or a candle flame or a sound,

it's possible to...

transport the mind into
all kinds of interesting places.

The person who was
to become the Buddha...

was very good at all of those practices.

He was a super student,

doing these practices,

taking them to their limit,

and no matter what he did

in these practices,

he was still stuck in the pain
that he set out with.

He ascends to these very rarified states

of consciousness,

but it's not permanent.

And it does not bring

penetrating truth
into the nature of reality.

So, these become a temporary escape

from the problem of existence,
but they don't solve the problem.

Siddhartha apprenticed himself
to another popular guru,

but the results were the same.

"The thought occurred to me,"

he said later,

"this practice does not lead
to direct knowledge,

to deeper awareness".

Disenchanted,

he left this master too.

Siddhartha continued to drift south,

still searching for the answer
to his questions:

Why do human beings suffer?

Is there any escape?

He's trying and trying
and searching and searching,

and he already experienced
extreme luxuries,

so, now he tries extreme deprivation.

Among the renunciants,

asceticism was a common spiritual practice:

punishing the body

as a way to attain serenity and wisdom.

Siddhartha fell in
with five other ascetics,

and soon was outdoing them
in mortifying the flesh,

subjecting his body to extremes
of hardship and pain.

The body represents a fundamental problem.

Old age brings a decrepitude to the body.

Uh, sickness brings pain
and suffering to the body.

And death is ultimately

uh, the cessation
of the functioning of the body.

So, there was a sense that

if you could punish the body sufficiently,

you could escape its influence.

You could transcend

some of the limitations
that the body seemed to impose.

The ascetic pursues the truth

by taking the requirements of survival

down to the absolute minimum possible:

barely enough food to stay alive,

no protection from the elements,

no heat,

Uh, uh...

sit in the cold, sit in the rain,

um, meditate fiercely

for all the hours of awakening.

The step of, of renunciation, of, of...

of shedding everything,

of dying,

the feeling that one is dying

to, to, to, to one's life as it was,

is essential to, to being reborn

uh, as uh,

as someone who sees.

Ascetics can still be seen in India,

firm in the belief
that by subduing the flesh,

they can gain spiritual power.

What is the truth?

When you eat once every 24 hours,

every second tells you what the truth is.

I had a home and I left it
when I was sixteen.

I don't desire material things.

I am able to

follow my spiritual path
by letting go of greed.

Emaciated,

exhausted,

Siddhartha punished himself for six years,

trying to put an end
to the cravings that beset him.

He tortures himself,

trying to destroy...

anything within himself
that he sees as bad.

The spiritual traditions of that time said:

you can be liberated if you...

eliminate everything
that's human, you know,

everything that's coarse and vulgar,

every bit of anger,
every bit of desire.

If you uh, uh, you know,

if you wipe that out with force of will,

then you can go into some kind
of transcendental state.

And the Buddha tried all that.

and he became, you know,

the most anorectic of
the anorectic ascetics.

He was eating one grain of rice per day.

He was drinking his own urine.

He was standing on one foot.

He was sleeping on nails.

He did it all to the utmost.

"My body slowly became
extremely emaciated,"

Siddhartha said.

"my limbs became like
the jointed segments of vine...

or bamboo stems.

My spine stood out like a string of beads.

My ribs jutted out like the jutting rafters

of an old, abandoned building.

The gleam of my eyes appeared
to be sunk deep in my eye sockets,

like the gleam of water deep in a well.

My scalp shriveled

and withered like a green bitter gourd,

shriveled...

and withered in the heat and wind".

What he was trying to do was

pushing his body to the most
extreme that he could.

But then, he realized that from that,

he cannot gain what he wants.

Trying to torture the body,

the body becomes too much.

The whole attention is given to the body,

nothing else.

He surrendered himself completely

to the hard training that he was given.

And what he discovered,
having tried this

completely for many years,

was that he had not answered his question.

It hadn't worked.

He was on the verge of death,

dying,

unawakened,

when he remembered something.

He remembered a day when he was young

and sat by the river with his father

and the perfection of the world
as it was simply gave itself to him.

Years before,

when Siddhartha was a small boy,

his father, the king, had taken him
to a spring planting festival.

while he watched the ceremonial dancing,

he looked down at the grass.

He thought about the insects

and their eggs...

destroyed as the field was planted.

He was overwhelmed with sadness.

One great taproot of Buddhism
is compassion,

which is the deep affection

that we feel for everything
because we're all in it together.

Be it other human beings,
other animals,

the planet as a whole,

the creatures of this planet,
the trees and rivers of this planet.

Everything is connected.

It was a beautiful day.

His mind drifted.

As if by instinct,

he crossed his legs
in the yoga pose of meditation.

And the natural world paid him homage.

As the sun moved through the sky,

the shadows shifted.

but the shadow of the rose apple tree
where he sat remained still.

He felt a sense of pure joy.

The joy that he found is in

the world that is already broken.

It's in this transitory world

that we're all a part of.

And the fabric of this world,

despite...

the fact that it can seem so horrible,

the underlying fabric of this world

actually is that joy that he recovered.

That was his great insight.

"But," he said,

"I can't sustain a feeling of

joy like this if I don't take any food.

So, I better eat something".

And then at that moment,
a village maiden mysteriously appears

carrying a bowl of rice porridge.

And she said to him:

"Here, eat".

That moment of generosity and release...

when he accepted the rice...

was a decision towards life.

It was what in...

uh, the Christian tradition
might be called "grace,"

that you cannot do it
completely on your own.

And in Christianity,

the grace comes from the divine.

In the story of the Buddha,

the grace comes from the ordinary,
kind heart of a girl...

who sees somebody starving...

and says, "eat".

There's something beautiful.

Whenever I remember that story,

it makes me so happy

because I see the heart of Buddha...

as the person he was,

like the Siddhartha.

This dish was the dish
he used to be fed by his stepmother,

rice pudding.

He was missing that so much.

And then he remembered,
maybe, further and further,

and he remembered about his wife,

about his son.

And the deepest emotions
that he had suppressed.

They overpowered.
They came up.

They were still there.

And he had a feeling of missing.

He had, he had a feeling of seeing his son,

and a feeling of being near his loved ones.

They were so powerful.

Oh, this must have soaked
his whole entire being.

He was actually an utter failure.

He had been clinging
to the path of asceticism.

And when he took the food,

what followed was a return
of his original question.

Life is painful.

Life involves change.

This is still a problem.

The problem didn't disappear.

It wasn't long before the ascetics

who had been Siddhartha’s companions

found him eating
and turned away in disgust.

"Siddhartha loves luxury," they said.

"He has forsaken his spiritual practice.

He has become extravagant".

But, the man who will become the Buddha

realizes...

that extreme deprivation...

isn't the way to go.

We can live as normal human beings.

We can eat and drink.

And, in fact,

we kind of need to eat and drink
and be normal human beings...

uh, in order to...

uh, break through, in order to attain

the kind of realization
that he was looking for.

Siddhartha had put his faith in two gurus.

They hadn't helped him.

He had punished his mind and body.

That had almost killed him.

Now, he knew what he must do.

To find the answer to his questions,

he would look within...

and trust himself.

Bodh Gaya is a small town
in northeastern India.

Throngs of pilgrims have come here

from all over the world
for more than 16 centuries.

For Buddhists,

there are hundreds of holy places...

but none more sacred than this one.

Bodh Gaya is the sacred point...

from which the Buddhist faith radiates.

Some pilgrims travel great distances,

reciting prayers and prostrating themselves

every step of the way.

It is their Mecca...

and Jerusalem.

Their holy of holies is not
the imposing temple beside them,

but a simple fig tree:

ficus religiosa,

the Bodhi tree.

The tree, it is said, is descended
from the Buddha’s time.

Every pilgrim knows the story
of how Siddhartha,

after accepting the rice milk
from the young girl,

put aside the rags he was wearing,

bathed himself in a nearby river,

and strengthened,

sat down in the shade of the Bodhi tree,

and began to meditate.

It was springtime.

the moon was full.

Before the sun would rise,

Siddhartha’s long search would be over.

He sat down under a Bodhi tree,

in the shelter of...

the natural world...

in all of its beauty and fullness.

And he said:

"I will not move from this place

until I have solved my problem".

"Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up,

together with all the flesh
and blood of my body,"

he said.

"I welcome it.

but I will not move from this spot...

until I have attained
the supreme and final wisdom".

All at once,

Mara, Lord of Desire,

rose to challenge him.

With an army of demons,
he attacked.

Siddhartha did not move.

And their weapons turned into flowers.

Mara is the ruler of this realm of desire,

this world that we all live in.

And what he's afraid

Siddhartha is going to do

when he attains enlightenment
and becomes the Buddha

is conquer that world.

That is, he's going to do away...

with desire.

He's gonna...

he's gonna wreck the whole game.

Mara did not give up.

He sent his three daughters to seduce him.

Siddhartha remained still.

When he faces Mara,

he faces himself and
his own destructive capacity.

But he's not the warrior trying
to do battle with those qualities.

He's discovered...

his own capacity for equanimity.

He has become like, uh...

you know, the top of the great
Himalayan mountains, you know?

The weather is passing over him,

storms are raging around him,

and he sits like the top of the mountain,

im-- impassive...

not in a trance state, you know,

totally aware of everything.

So he frustrates Mara.

Siddhartha resisted every temptation
Mara could devise.

The Lord of Desire had one final test.

He demanded to know...

who would testify that Siddhartha was
worthy of attaining ultimate wisdom.

And his demon army rose up to support him.

Siddhartha said nothing.

He reached down and touched the ground,

and the earth shuddered.

Mara's demons fled.

The Buddha...

reaches down and...

with his finger touches the Earth.

He says, "the Earth is my witness".

He said, "Mara, you are not the Earth.

The Earth is right here,

beneath my finger".

And the Earth is what we're talking about.

Accepting the Earth,

not owning the Earth,
not possessing the Earth,

But the Earth...

just as it is...

abused and exploited...

and despised and rejected...

and uh...

plowed and mined

and shat on and everything else, you know?

Yeah, it's still the Earth.

And it's...

it is um...

it's...

we owe everything to it.

Siddhartha meditated throughout the night.

And all his former lives passed before him.

He remembers all his previous lives,

infinite numbers of previous lives,

female and male and every other race

and every other being
in the vast ocean of life-forms.

And he remembered that all viscerally.

So that means, his awareness is expanded...

to remit, to be all,

so that all the moments of the past
were completely present to him.

He gains the power to see

the process of birth, death,

and rebirth

that all creatures go through.

He's given this sort of...

cosmic vision...

of...

the workings of the entire universe.

As the morning star appeared,

he roared like a lion.

"My mind," he said,

"is at peace".

The heavens shook,

and the Bodhi tree rained down flowers.

He had become the "Awakened One,"...

the Buddha.

Something new opens up for him,

which he calls "Nirvana"...

or which he calls "awakening".

He said, "at this moment,

all beings and I awaken together".

So, it was not just him.

It was all the universe.

He touched the Earth.

"As Earth is my witness,

seeing this morning star,

all things and I awaken together".

It's not like entering a new state.

It is uncovering or surrendering

to the reality that has always been there.

He realized he'd always been in Nirvana,

that Nirvana was always the case.

Your reality itself is Nirvana.

It's the unreality,

it's your ignorance that makes you think
you're the sel--, cent--, self-centered...

separate being...

trying to fight off
an overwhelming universe and failing.

You are that universe.

You're already enlightened.

He's saying the, the capacity
for enlightenment...

that your, your awake-ness...

already exists within you.

Nirvana is this moment seen directly.

There is nowhere else than here.

The only gate is now.

The only doorway is your own body and mind.

There's nowhere to go.

There's nothing else to be.

There's no destination.

It's not something
to aim for in the afterlife.

It's simply the quality of this moment.

Just this.

Just this, this room where we are.

Pay attention to that.

Pay attention to who's there.

Pay attention to what...

what isn't known there.

Pay attention to what is known there.

Pay attention to what...

everyone is thinking and feeling.

What you're doing there.

Pay attention.

Pay attention.

For weeks,

the Buddha remained near the Bodhi tree,

peaceful and serene.

He was tempted to retire
into a profound solitude,

instead of trying to teach others...

what it had taken him six long years

to discover for himself.

He wants to stay there.

He's very happy.

He doesn't want to go out.

He, he says to himself,

"No one is going to understand this.",
you know.

"People are going to think I'm crazy.

They're going to think I'm nuts".

Buddha saw the nature of the people:

Envy and jealousy

and the strong negative mental states.

Uh, all the people in the world,

they are like uh...

the fishes uh, um...

wriggling in the very shallow water.

So Buddha, uh, he himself

afraid to teach uh, the people.

The myth is that
a god comes to the Buddha.

Brahma comes on his knees and says:
"Please, we need you.

Why don't you try talking about

what you just understood? Cos...

the world needs it, the gods need it,
and the men need it", you know?

"People need it".

And then Buddha decided uh...

to, to, to give his teachings.

Because of a great compassion.

It's not an ordinary compassion.

When you feel the feelings of others,

you automatically don't
want them to feel bad.

You feel the feeling of your hand,
you don't put it in the oven.

I mean, you're not, you're not being
compassionate to your hand.

You just feel the pain,
so you're not gonna put it there.

So if you feel other's pain,

you're going to do your best
to help them alleviate it.

When somebody becomes enlightened,
something blooms in his heart.

It's like a flower blooms,

and it cannot hold the fragrance.

It has to naturally release.

So it's like he naturally had
to release his radiance.

He has to share this joy
that was in his heart.

Thirty-five years old,

the Buddha would devote
the rest of his life

to bringing his teachings,

the Dharma,

the fundamental laws of all things

into the world.

But as he had feared,

it would not be easy.

As he set off to share what he had learned,

he met a wandering ascetic.

"Who is your guru?",

the ascetic asked him.

The Buddha said he had no guru,

that he had attained
enlightenment on his own.

"It may be so," the ascetic said...

and walked away.

On his first attempt to teach,

the Buddha had failed.

Buddha meets someone who...

doesn't see anything special about him,

because the awakened Buddha doesn't
look any different from anybody else.

He is ordinary.

Buddhism is not about being special.

Buddhism is about being ordinary.

And it is not about...

the continual exudation of bliss.

It is about...

walking a normal human life...

with normal human beings,

doing normal human things,

and this reminds you that...

you yourself might be a Buddha.

At this moment,

the person you're looking at
might be one.

It's an interesting practice.

Just each person you see
as you walk down the street:

"Buddha?

Buddha?

Buddha.

Buddha.

Buddha".

From Bodh Gaya,

the Buddha walked west
nearly 200 miles

and crossed the Ganges river.

He was still searching for a way
to explain to others

what he feared was unexplainable,

the path to the enlightenment
he himself had experienced.

In a deer park in Sarnath,

not far from the Ganges,

he would try again.

His five former companions were
still practicing the austerities

he himself had abandoned.

"From far off, they saw me coming,

and, on seeing me,

made a pact with one another,"

the Buddha recalled.

"Friends, here comes Siddhartha,

living luxuriously,

straying from his ascetic practice.

He doesn't deserve to be bowed down to".

These are his buddies who were just

disappointed and disgusted
with him for giving in...

after they'd all been trying to uh,
starve themselves into enlightenment.

Um, so they uh...

they're a little distrustful
at the beginning.

They refer to him as an equal.

And he then tells them,

"No, that's not the term you should use

when you refer to a tathagata,
to, to a being who's gone beyond".

Um, and so he sets them straight.

Uh, and they then...

become the first people to hear...

the content of what he realized
under the Bodhi tree.

His first teaching would later be called:

'Setting in motion the wheel of the Dharma'

because it brought the Buddha's message
into the world for the first time.

He did not propound a dogma.

Instead, he spoke from his own experience,

out of his own heart.

He had known the abandon of the sensualist

and the rigors of the ascetic.

Now,

he would disavow both of them.

The Buddha said,
"I've discovered a new way,

and it's not the path of asceticism,

and it's not the path
of sensory indulgence.

It's the middle way".

What the Buddha was always doing was...

saying, "Everything, everything
needs to be balanced".

So, you know, the middle way
was always balancing between,

you know, excesses on this side,
excesses on the other side.

"Fair goes the dancing
when the sitar is tuned.

Tune us the sitar neither high nor low,

and we will dance away the hearts of men.

But the string too tight breaks...

and the music dies.

The string too slack has no sound...

and the music dies.

There is a middle way.

Tune us the sitar neither low nor high,

and we will dance away the hearts of men".

The path to enlightenment
lay along the middle way,

the Buddha taught,

and the ascetics listened.

Now, he would answer the question
that six years before...

had provoked his spiritual journey:

the question of suffering.

Buddhists don't have a creation story.

There is no creator deity.

Um...

It's not really of interest.

It's, it's not an issue.

Um, what's of interest is...

uh, the problem of human suffering...

and the solution to human suffering.

Pretty much everything else,

all right, is...

beside the point.

The Buddha's analysis of suffering

came in the form of what
have come to be called:

"The Four Noble Truths".

There is no commandments or anything.

The first Noble Truth is

that there is suffering in this world.

Generally, this "suffering"
has been mistranslated.

"Suffering"...

is not entirely accurate...

to the word that...

the Buddha probably used.

It means something closer to...

"dissatisfaction"...

that, you know,
we're never quite happy.

And if we are, that's gone
in an instant, anyhow.

And he says that this suffering,
this unsatisfactoriness,

doesn't arise by itself.

It has causes.

Our own mind causes it.

While the Second Noble Truth
asserts that suffering has a cause,

the Third Noble Truth
makes an astonishing claim.

You really can be free of suffering...

by understanding the cause of suffering.

Nobody tells you that.

And so, that was a huge announcement.

The problem, Buddha taught,

is "desire".

How to live with the confused and
entangling desires of our own minds.

People often misunderstand Buddhism...

as saying:

"In order to wipe out suffering,
you have to wipe out desire".

If that was what the Buddha was saying,

then where does the desire
for enlightenment fit in?

You know?

Uh, the Buddha's saying:
"Be smart about your desires".

Desire must be there.

Without desire,

how can we lead our life?

Without desire,

how can we achieve Buddhahood?

Strong desire to become Buddha.

But desire to harmful,

no, that's bad.

With the Fourth and final Noble Truth,

the Buddha laid out

a series of instructions
for his disciples to follow.

A way of leading the mind
to enlightenment called:

"The Noble Eightfold Path",

the cultivation of moral discipline,

mindfulness,

and wisdom.

They are, as I like to think of them,

a set of possible recipes...

um, that you can uh...

try on your own life

and see which one makes the best soup.

The Buddha didn't speak for long,

but when he was finished,

the five skeptical ascetics
had been won over.

They became his first disciples.

Word quickly spread of the sage
teaching in the deer park at Sarnath.

Hundreds came to hear him...

and became disciples too.

Many were wealthy merchants or their sons,

living just five miles away

in a thriving trading center on the Ganges,

the holy city of Benares.

Today Benares is the most
sacred city in all of India,

as it has been for millennia.

Even before the time of the Buddha,

pilgrims came here to worship their gods...

and bathe in the holy river of Heaven.

You see people...

purifying themselves bathing...

in the Ganges.

You see priests performing rituals.

You see corpses,

because that's the best place...

to end one's life.

So you see going on there
a great range of religious activity,

and much of it of the type that
does go back to the Buddha's time.

Many of today's sacred
ceremonies on the Ganges...

echo the ancient practices
of the Vedic priests,

the Brahmans.

In the Buddha's day,

only the Brahmans could mediate
between the gods and men.

Only they could conduct the holy rituals

that were said to preserve
the universe itself.

The Brahman priests stood at the pinnacle
of a rigid social hierarchy:

A sacred system of caste.

Beneath them were the warriors,

the caste to which the Buddha belonged.

Below them were farmers.

At the bottom were the servants.

And still lower,

outcastes.

Those social groups are not

merely social conventions,

but rather, they're hardwired

into the nature of the universe.

Um, you're supposed to stay in that group.

And the survival of society depends upon

your continuing to perform the function

associated with that social status.

Caste was irrelevant to the Buddha.

So were priestly rituals
to preserve the universe.

His teachings...

focused on the universe within.

The Buddha said
you could be from any caste.

What, what makes you noble

is if you understand reality,

you know, if you're a good person.

If you're a wise person,

uh, then you're noble.

In time, a devoted gathering of monks
formed around the Buddha

at Sarnath, near the Ganges.

Broken stones and fallen pillars

mark what remains of
what grew to be a vibrant

monastic community,

the Sangha.

It took the Buddha

many, many years to find his way.

But, he didn't want it
to be so hard for people.

And so, he established

a community who could live together

and help one another.

In a ceremony evoking the beginning
of the Buddha's own spiritual journey,

fledgling monks of all ages...

say good-bye to their families and homes...

and join the Sangha.

I go to the refuge of the Buddha,

I go to the refuge of the Dharma,

and I go to the refuge of the Sangha.

The Sangha is an embodiment of
Buddha's experience and wisdom.

What happens if people practice this thing?

Are they truly happy or not?

Are they joyful or not?

So, I think Buddha wanted us to lead uh...

a perfect example of his teaching:

An alive teaching,

a teaching that walks,

a teaching that can talk,

a teaching that can laugh.

So, I would say,

Sangha is just like a living...

example of Buddha's teaching.

The first Sangha was a radical institution,

open to people of every caste,

and remarkable for the times
in which the Buddha lived,

to both men and women.

The Buddha was part of a culture
deeply suspicious of women.

The attitude towards women
at the time was very critical.

And many things were impossible for them.

So, that was a very
revolutionary thing to do that...

in that times of India.

By ordaining women as nuns,

the Buddha gave women the chance
to escape the drudgery of daily life.

Life was so hard for most women

that entering the Sangha was a liberation,

as we know from their ecstatic,
heart-rending poems.

"So freed! So freed!

So thoroughly freed am I...

from my pestle,

my shameless husband,

and his sunshade making,

my moldy old pot
with its water-snake smell.

Aversion and passion I cut with a chop.

Having come to the foot of a tree,

I meditate,

absorbed in the bliss.

'What bliss!'"

Bliss, Nirvana,

the Buddha taught,

could be found in the fleeting moment

through the practice of meditation.

The Buddha showed his followers

how to come to terms with their own
roiling thoughts and desires...

by paying attention to them,

by becoming aware,

becoming mindful.

As an ancient poem counsels:

"Like an archer,

an arrow,

the wise man steadies his trembling mind,

a fickle and restless weapon".

Many times, our mind is not
peaceful enough.

So, we realize that

perhaps, we need to understand
more about mind itself,

and how to...

balance the emotions,
how to balance our mind,

and try to cultivate more happiness.

The difficulties come from within.

One experiences uh...

unexpected things from one's mind:

the most uh...

dangerous skeptical doubts,

doubts about one's self,

doubts about the Buddha.

Physical is, we can get from...

from uh, from the food and...

from the supplement of vitamins and...

yeah, and...

for the mind, this is the only,
only way we have to...

only medicine.

Meditation is not about getting rid of...

anger, getting rid of...

lust, or getting rid of jealousy.

Even while becoming a monk,

often we experience angers.

It happens.

And it often happens when
people start teasing you, like,

"shaven bald-head person".

But, it gives a good chance for us

to realize that, "Okay, let's see,

this anger arises. What is it?"

What most often happens

in our ordinary life is that

whenever we experience these emotions,

we get stuck into it.

It starts twisting us.

But Buddhism is going through inside it

and getting out of it peacefully.

And I think that gives us more joy.

And that makes human life more full,

more, more...

more round. It's not like...

we are not living a partial truth,

but it's like the whole of things together.

It takes time to comprehend this.

And then, by practicing again and again,

the practitioner becomes very balanced,

and one reaches the state
of very strong equanimity,

equanimity towards...

uh, the physical and mental objects.

And this is the...

base camp...

for the summit:

Enlightenment.

"After washing my feet," a disciple said,

"I watch the water going down the drain".

"I am calm.

I control my mind,

like a noble thoroughbred horse.

Taking a lamp, I enter my cell.

Thinking of sleep,

I sit on my bed.

I touch the wick,

the lamp goes out:

Nirvana.

My mind is freed".

"The mind is as restless as a monkey,"

the Buddha taught.

Who you are,

what you think of as your "self",

is constantly changing...

like a river, endlessly flowing,

one thing today,

another tomorrow.

There's water in a river,

then there's water in a glass,

and then the water is back in the air,

and then it's back in the river.

The water's there.

But, what is it?

That's a way to think about the self...

in Buddhism.

One moment you're angry.

The next moment you're laughing.

Who are you?

"A seed...

becomes a plant.

Wisps of grass...

are spun into a rope.

A trickling stream...

turns into a river".

The self comes, and the self goes.

Simply notice how
from one moment to another,

your self is actually not...

as much the same as...

we think it is.

What the Buddha realizes

is that, if we can get rid of this

fundamental misunderstanding of...

the nature of the self based on egotism,

we won't cling to things.

We won't screw up
everything we do because...

we're thinking about it in the wrong way.

Once you stop...

centering your, your feelings

about your feelings on your self,

what naturally arises is,
is simple compassion:

Compassion for your own suffering,

compassion for the suffering of others.

Even the most abstract

of the Buddha's teachings had a practical,

ethical dimension.

Compassion, the Buddha taught,

comes from understanding impermanence,

transience, flow:

How one thing passes into another,

how everything and everyone...

is connected.

"When this is,

that is.

From the arising of this...

comes the arising of that.

When this isn't,

that isn't.

From the cessation of this...

comes the cessation of that".

This is always connected to that.

Everything is connected to everything else.

You never live by yourself.

You live always within...

a family, a society, or culture.

You constantly uh, interact
with other people all the time.

So, our happiness depends on
their happiness as well.

How can we be happy...

if we are...

the only one happy in uh, on, uh,

you know, just an island of happiness...

within an ocean of misery?

Of course, that's, that's not possible.

Compassion stirred the Buddha

to send his monks
out into the community.

Sworn to chastity and poverty,

they wandered the roads,

bringing the Buddha's teachings...

into the world.

"Go forth, monks,

for the happiness of the many,

out of compassion for the world.

There are beings whose eyes
have little dust on them,

who will perish if they do not
hear the teaching.

But if they hear the teaching,

they will gain liberation".

The monks exist by begging.

We think of begging as kind of a bad thing.

Begging in this tradition is a good thing.

It's a sign of spiritual purity.

You're not allowed to beg...

tomorrow's lunch today...

only today's lunch.

Then you can't eat from noon
until dawn the next day.

And then you have to go out
and get another lunch.

And then in exchange for lunch,

you give a lecture.

Unless they say,
"we don't want to hear about it",

then you don't.

But that's the only thing you,

but that forces you to interact

with the lay community.

And if you're not serving them,

if you're not doing
something useful for them,

they won't put anything in your bowl,

and that will be the end of your community.

The Buddha himself wandered
across northeast India,

teaching and gathering new disciples
everywhere he went.

You didn't have to become a monk
or a nun to become a Buddhist.

The Buddha's teachings were for everyone.

"Everything is burning.

What is burning?

The eyes are burning.

Everything seen by the eyes is burning.

The ears are burning.

What is burning?

Everything heard by the ears is burning.

The nose is burning.

Smells are ablaze.

The tongue is burning.

Tastes are ablaze.

The body is burning.

The mind is burning".

We're on fire.

We may not know it,
but we're on fire,

and we have to put that fire out.

We're burning with desire, all right?

We're burning with craving.

Um, everything...

everything um...

about us is...

is out of control.

The Buddha goes on to talk about...

The Three Poisons:

Greed,

and anger,

and ignorance.

And how The Three Poisons are:

What is making the fire.

And the way out...

of doing this...

is not to deny The Three Poisons,

but to recognize that
if you turn them around,

you come to their opposites.

Instead of greed,
you have generosity.

Instead of anger,

you have compassion.

And instead of ignorance,
you have wisdom.

"I can give my teachings in brief",
the Buddha said.

"I can teach in detail.

It is those who understand
that are hard to find".

There are stories of people
coming to the Buddha...

and saying:

"I am leaving your teaching

because you have not told me about

whether there is a life after death

or whether there is another world".

And the Buddha says:

"Did I ever say that I would

give you the answer to these things?"

"No, lord, you didn't".

"Why do you think that I...

never said that I would give you
the answer to these things?

Because these are not the things
that you need to know.

The thing that you need to know

is how to deal with suffering,

because at this very moment,

what made you ask that question

was suffering".

The Buddha was, above all,

a pragmatist.

He did not expect his followers
to agree with everything he said.

He encouraged them to debate and argue,

to challenge him.

Buddha said: "My followers...

should not accept my teaching...

out of devotion,

but rather, your own experiment".

Even Buddha himself,

in order to get final enlightenment,

need hard work.

So, investigate based on reason,

uh, through logical investigation.

If something contradict,

uh...

in the Buddha's own words,

then we have the right to reject that.

As the Buddha gathered
more and more followers,

stories spread of his miracles,

which mixed the marvelous
with the mundane.

One story tells how
500 pieces of firewood...

split at the Buddha's command.

In another,

a mad elephant...

charged wildly down a street,

forcing everyone to flee.

Only the Buddha remained,

quietly waiting.

The elephant,

overcome by the Buddha's radiant kindness,

knelt before him.

And the Buddha patted his leathery trunk.

What is the meaning of "miracle"?

"Miracle" is something...

unexpected.

I think, a hundred year ago,

jumbo jets,

or some of these...

magic computers, or these--

I think uh, uh...

in, in their eyes,

this is something miracle.

Because a miracle is something

you cannot understand.

So now, I think that within this century,

we may find some new...

ideas...

or new facts.

So far,

we spent...

all our energy and time

for research on matter,

not internal world.

This, this skull,

small space,

but lot of mysterious things still there.

The great field of knowledge...

is as tiny as the Earth is
in the universe.

I mean, it's a tiny, it's a speck.

And, and, the, the, the universe
is what we don't know.

And it will always be that way.

This, however, however much we find out,

it will still be that way.

Because the unknown...

is vastly...

it is beyond, it's,
it's unspeakably greater...

than anything we will ever know.

In one of the most storied miracles,

the Buddha strode on a jeweled walkway,

suspended in midair...

while streams of water spouted...

and flames flashed from his body,

shooting out to the very edge
of the universe.

And as the Buddha sat on a lotus flower...

giving his teachings,

he replicated himself,

filling the sky with multitudes of Buddhas

for all to see and wonder.

Do we believe that literally?

Does it matter...

whether we believe it literally?

What many of those...

miraculous stories are about
is, is the sheer wonder of it all.

The very fact that the whole of...

unknown time and space...

has led down to this...

led to this very moment when we're...

sitting here talking,

when we are sitting here
talking to each other...

is utterly miraculous.

Sitting here...

in a room,
having had a cup of coffee,

having...

taken it out of a beautiful...

blue-and-white porcelain mug,

what could be more miraculous...

than that?

Um, everyday life around us is already...

so implausible...

and so glorious,

that what need for further miracles?

And that's the teaching of the Buddha.

That's the miraculous teaching...

of the Buddha.

Violence, the Buddha taught,

always leads to more violence.

"To the slayer comes a slayer.

To the conqueror comes a conqueror.

He who plunders...

is plundered in turn".

War was endemic in the Buddha's age,

ravaging northeast India again and again.

Although kings and their ministers
sought his council,

the Buddha offered
no grand political vision.

He was powerless...

to stop the killing and the fighting.

Even the men, women,
and children of his former kingdom

were massacred by a marauding king:

Forced into pits...

and trampled by elephants.

It was said that the Buddha
received the news in silence.

Hundreds of them killed.

So, that day,

Buddha was sad.

Buddha is a human being.

So, he acted like a human being.

So sometimes, he also, you see...

uh, uh, failed.

He failed to perform miracle.

The Buddha failed,

but we, as the Buddha, fail constantly.

Uh, and...

part of our suffering is our...

is our failure,
our recognition of our failure.

Buddhism doesn't argue with reality.

There will always be both...

the potential...

for awakening in any moment...

and the potential...

for incredible damage at any moment.

And if we fool ourselves into
thinking we're past that,

we will do incredible damage.

Change, the Buddha said,

must come from within.

The Buddha starts always with the mind...

and talks about the violence in the mind

and says that violence in the world
is a result of violence in the mind.

A tree lives on its roots.

If you change the root,
you change the tree.

Culture lives in human beings.

If you change the human heart,

the culture will follow.

For decades,

the Buddha shared his teachings
all across northeastern India.

"Let all beings be happy", he taught,

"weak or strong,

great or small."

"Let us cherish all creatures,

as a mother her only child".

Barefoot in his robes,

he was still walking the roads
when he was 80,

but old age was upon him.

His back hurt.

His stomach was often in pain.

"I am old, worn out",

he told a trusted disciple,

"like a dilapidated cart

held together with thin straps".

"The world is so sweet", he said,

that he could understand wanting to live

for at least another century.

But he was frail and exhausted.

He became ill near Kushinagar,

a remote village near the border of Nepal,

when he was offered a meal
which would prove deadly.

The food was spoiled.

He ate what was offered to him.

And it's said that he knew it was bad,

but he took it anyway
because it was offered...

and didn't want the person
who offered it to feel bad.

Because it was his time.

Today Kushinagar is revered by pilgrims

as the place where the Buddha
finally left the world.

It was in Kushinagar where he grew weak...

and asked to be laid on his side...

in a quiet grove of Sal trees.

As he neared the end,

his disciples began to weep,

stricken with grief.

But the Buddha reassured them.

"All things change", he said.

"Whatever is born...

is subject to decay".

He's saying this is a natural process.

He tells his disciples:

"Use this time,
use the energy here, even this,

for your own awakening".

So, he used even his own death

and their sadness as a, a time to

remind them of what their real task was.

What he's actually doing is...

inviting those who are close to him...

into the experience.

I don't think the Buddha's teaching...

uh, in any way argues against grief...

uh, or, or uh, sadness or loss.

The teachings, if they make any sense,

have to make sense
in ordinary circumstances,

in ordinary lives.

And in ordinary lives,

we grieve when we lose.

We, we grieve. We...

When, when it, when it hurts,
we say, "ouch".

Buddhism is trying to look at things
the way they are.

The way it is.

Just as it is.

It hurts.

This is life. This is our life.

And our relation to life
involves losing it too.

You don't get beyond these things.

You don't get beyond them.

It's all right...

to feel what human beings feel.

And...

we are not supposed to turn into rocks...

or trees...

when we practice Buddhism.

Buddhas laugh,

cry, dance,

feel ecstasy,

probably, even feel despair.

It is...

how we know the world.

It is how we live inside of our hearts...

and not dissociated from them.

The Buddha had always been saying good-bye.

Now, he prepared to leave
the Earth forever.

He would never be reborn,

never die again.

"It may be that after I am gone",

the Buddha told his disciples,

"that some of you will think,

now we have no teacher.

But, that is not how you should see it.

Let the Dharma...

and the discipline that I have
taught you be your teacher.

All individual things pass away.

Strive on,

untiringly".

These were the Buddha's last words.

The Buddha died peacefully.

His head was pointed to the north,

his face to the west.

The stories tell how the Earth shook,

and the trees suddenly burst into bloom...

their petals falling
gently on his still body,

falling out of reverence.

Divine coral flowers...

and divine sandalwood powders...

fell from above on the Buddha's body...

out of reverence.

His disciples were quite upset:

"What are we going to do
without our teacher?

We will be lost without our teacher".

But, his instruction was so simple...

and so clear:

"I am not your light.

I am not your authority.

You've been with me a long time now.

Be your own light".

The Buddha saw death and life
as inseparable.

These are two sides of the same thing.

Death is always with us.

Death is part of the whole large unknown.

And if we are unable...

to...

smile at the idea of the unknown,

we're in real trouble.

That's the realism...

that the Buddha was talking about,

trying to come to terms with reality.

When he was 29...

and still prince Siddhartha,

the Buddha had left his wife,

child, and family...

to try and understand
the nature of suffering.

He had attained enlightenment,

shared what he had learned,

and left a path for others to follow.

Now he was gone.

But before he died,

he had asked his followers
to remember him...

by making pilgrimage...

to the place of his death...

to where he gave his first teachings...

where he achieved enlightenment...

and where he was born.

Those four places...

mark out a sacred biography.

And in tracing that pilgrimage route,

you are learning...

the story of that life.

At places of pilgrimage,
temples were built,

images were installed,

and relics were enshrined.

Millions of people get immense inspiration.

Buddha's spirit is always there.

But, real Buddha's holy place is...

is within one's self.

That's important.

So, real Buddha's sacred place,

we must build within ourself.

We must build within our heart.

Although, the Buddha had predicted
that his teachings,

like everything else,

would in time disappear.

Buddhism flourished in India
for 1,500 years,

spread into Sri Lanka,

central and southeast Asia,

Tibet, China, Korea, Japan,

and in the 20th century,

to Europe and the Americas,

adapting different forms and shapes...

wherever it took root,

attracting many millions
of men and women...

who practice the Buddha's teachings...

both within...

and outside the monastic community.

But everywhere...

and in every age,

the essence of the story remains the same.

The Buddha said that we've turned
this world into a painful place.

And this world does not
have to be a painful place.

This world can be a world
inhabited by Buddhas.

But, it's up to each one of us...

to turn ourselves into a Buddha.

That's really, that's the work.

If the Buddha is not you,

finally, the Buddha is
of no interest to you.

The Buddha is...

the Buddha is of

such interest to you because
you are the Buddha.

Every sentient being,

even insects,

have Buddha nature.

The seed of Buddha.

That's the seed of enlightenment.

So therefore,

uh, there's no reason...

to believe...

some sentient beings

cannot become Buddha.

So, like that.

I know that there are

supposed to be preserved

footprints of the Buddha

which are, which are kept...

uh, in, in one of the sacred places

in, in India or Nepal, and...

you know, you can stand in them.

And if you stand in them,
maybe, you realize: "Ah,

ten toes.

Me too".

There is a story of a Brahman...

who one day found the Buddha under a tree,

calmly meditating.

The Buddha's mind was still.

He radiated such power and strength...

that the Brahman was reminded
of a tusker elephant.

The Brahman asked him who he was.

"Imagine a lotus that
had begun life underwater",

the Buddha replied...

"but grew and rose above the surface...

until it stood free.

So I, too, have transcended the world...

and attained the supreme enlightenment".

"Who are you then?",

the Brahman wondered.

"Remember me", the Buddha said,

"as the one who woke up".