The Life of Buddha - Reading Diary A

This week I chose to read The Life of Buddha (1922) by Andre Ferdinand Herold. I don't know much about Buddhism or the life of Buddha, but I know that it is a very common religion in some parts of the world. From this reading, I learned that Buddha (born Siddhartha) was meant to be "he who seeks great knowledge" before his mother was even pregnant with him. The gods told his mother and father, Queen Maya and King Suddhodana of Sakya, that they would bring the one that holds the true knowledge into the world because of their fortune, virtue, and nobility. I thought it was very interesting that everyone knew how important Siddhartha was as soon as he was born, as all of the problems in the city seemed to disappear immediately. When he first visited the temple of the gods, they bowed to him and told him that he would bow to nobody. 

The fact that his father tried to hide all of the bad things from him also came as a surprise to me. When Siddhartha wanted to leave the castle, his father made his servants clear the roads of all beggars and elderly people. Siddhartha saw nothing but happiness until the gods placed an elderly man in the street. Siddhartha saw this and learned that all people will eventually suffer from old age, which makes him unhappy and very distraught. The same happens two more times on Siddhartha's next two trips, but he discovers illness and death. He learns that all lives will end with death, which deeply saddens him- he does not understand how people can be happy when all lives will end with that fate. 

(Painting of Buddha by Otgonbayar Ershuu. Source: Wikipedia)