The Birth of the Buddha

 

The Birth of the Buddha:an adoration

Raj Arumugam (Director, TTS – www.ttsworld.com.au)

The Great Being, master of the Ten Perfections who was to be born as Siddhartha Gautama and then to become the Buddha, was in Tushita, the heavenly abode of the gods, the Pure Land, The Heaven of the Contented.
The time had come now for the Great Being, for the Bodhisattva, to take a physical form on earth, for him to gain nirvana, and to show the world, to show all sentient beings, the Middle Way.

 

Queen Mayadevi’s dream

Lying in her royal chamber, Mahamaya, also known as Mayadevi, feels sleep come to her ever so gently. All memory of her blessed life, her kingdom and her husband, King Suddhodhana of Kapilavastu, all memory slips and fades. It is a quiet sleep. She dreams.
Mahamaya has the most amazing dream she has ever had.
And this, Mayadevi thinks, this is no dream.

She lies on a couch in a golden mansion. There are angels and there are divine beings who tend to her. She sees a brilliant light all round her. There is a majestic white elephant, graceful, bright and noble.

The elephant plucks a white lotus, circles the queen three times respectfully – it is such a majestic elephant, it need not even show such respect, and yet that being circles Mayadevi thrice, respectfully, and then the next moment, even in her dream, the queen knows that the being now resides in her womb.

All the ten thousand worlds quake.
And there is a glorious light, a light immeasurable, and the light is in every corner of the universe, in every part of the universe, known and unknown. This light is equally in places where there was light before, and this light is in places where light has never ever been before.
There is peace; there is a great calm.
It is marvellous, it is wonderful.

 

The Prediction

The king listens attentively to the queen. He summons sixty-four wise ones and relates to them the queen’s dream.

And the wise ones deliberate and declare:

The queen is with child. She carries a noble child.

A wonderful child will be born. And this child, if he lives in the palace will grow to be a Universal Monarch; and this child, if he renounces all power and luxury, and goes in search of truth, this child will become a Buddha, the Enlightened One who will show all beings the Middle Way.

 

Birth of the Buddha

It is the custom, it is the tradition since ancient times.
Close to her time, the time when she will deliver the child, Mahamaya starts on her journey to the home of her parents at Devadaha.
On the way the queen, with her entourage, stops at Lumbini Grove, a magnificent grove of Sal-trees.
The trees here are in full bloom; there is the scent of the heavens and the grove is vibrant with the bees and the birds, and with all its gentle creatures.
Mayadevi, carrying the future Buddha in her womb, steps forth to a Sal-tree and reaches out to a branch.
The mother is pure and so is the child she carries – one as pure as the finest cloth from Benares, and the other as pure as the rarest precious stone.
And thus standing upright, holding on to a branch of the Sal-tree, and having carried the child for exactly ten months, Mayadevi yields her child to the world.

The child is born pure and clean, not smeared by any impure matter as one might be from a mother’s womb – but not so this child, for one is as pure as a precious stone, and the other as pure as Benares cloth.

And there is a light, a glorious light, a light immeasurable, and it is in every corner of the universe, in every part of the universe that is known and unknown. There is light in places where there was light before, and there is light in places where light has never ever been before.

And two jets of water, one cool and one warm, two jets of water from the sky wash the child and the mother.
And then all perceptive beings in all the worlds, and the angels and the gods in all the worlds, in the infinity of worlds, all these beings make their offerings to the child; and they declare:
There is none your equal.

And the child views all the worlds in all directions, in all dimensions.

And with the divine beings, and with all perceptive beings

honouring him, and with the pure beings attending to him, and with one holding a white sunshade over him, though all these are unseen by all humans at Lumbini grove, even then the child takes seven steps forth to the North and he declares:

This is my last birth; there shall be no renewal of being.

For he shall indeed be the Buddha; and he shall show the world the Middle Way, the way to end all dhukka, the way to the end of all bondage. To spotless and perfect freedom.

The child is born and the journey to Devadaha becomes unnecessary.
The mother carries her child in her arms. This is wonderful; this is marvellous. This is bliss.
Mayadevi and her entourage treasure the child, and they return to Kapilavastu.
Suddhodhana receives them with great joy.
With the birth of his son, all his wishes have been granted, and so he names the child: Siddhartha. All wishes fulfilled.

 

 

Raj Arumugam (Director (TTS) www.ttsworld.com.au )

 

Picture from www.dhammakaya.or.th