Sherab Chödzin Kohn - The Awakened One

Kohns masterful blend of the life and teachings of the Buddha renders this book a valuable guide for those who would follow the path of the Awakened One.

Publishers Weekly

ABOUT THE BOOK

The story of the founder of Buddhism is one of the worlds great archetypal tales of spiritual awakening. He was born Siddhartha Gautama in the sixth century BCE, the son of a prince who ruled a small kingdom in what is now Nepal. Siddhartha led a sheltered existence until the age of twenty-nine, when he left his life of ease and set out to find a solution to the problem of suffering. For years he wandered as a homeless ascetic, practicing severe austerities that brought him to the brink of death but no nearer to his goal. He then abandoned asceticism for a middle way. Sitting down under a tree, he vowed to remain there until he realized the truth. After a night of deep meditation, his Enlightenment came at dawn, and he was thereafter known as the Buddha, the Awakened One.

SHERAB CHDZIN KOHN is coeditor of the best-selling anthology The Buddha and His Teachings. He has been teaching Buddhism and meditation for more than thirty years, and he has edited a number of the books of his teacher, the Tibetan meditation master Chgyam Trungpa. He has also published numerous translations, including an acclaimed version of Hermann Hesses Siddhartha. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Sign up to learn more about our books and receive special offers from Shambhala Publications.

Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala.

THE AWAKENED ONE

A Life of the Buddha

Sherab Chdzin Kohn

SHAMBHALA

Boston

2013

For my mother,

Leona Kohn,

on her eightieth birthday

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1994by Michael H. Kohn

Cover art: Courtesy of Iwanami Shoten, Publishers. Photo 1987 by Takeji Iwamiya.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chdzin, Sherab.

The awakened one: a life of the Buddha / Sherab Chdzin Kohn.

p. cm.(Shambhala dragon editions)

eISBN 978-0-8348-2944-2

ISBN 1-57062-551-4

1. Gautama Buddha. I. Title.

BQ882.C47 1994

294.363dc2093-26122

[B]CIP

A GREAT NUMBER OF WORKS have been consulted in the preparation of this book. I confine myself here to indicating those which I drew upon significantly. Primary were three traditional sources: the Pali canon, the Lalitavishtara Sutra, and the Buddhacharita by Ashvagosha. As to the Pali canon, I owe much to the invaluable selection, arrangement, and retranslation of texts from that vast treasure store of scripture made by the distinguished English Theravada monk Bhikku Nyanamoli. These are presented in his Life of the Buddha (Kandy, Ceylon: Buddhist Publication Society, 1972). The Lalitavishtara Sutra is a Sanskrit work of Sarvastivada/Mahayana cast, dating roughly from the beginning of the first millennium CE. It is found most reliably in English as The Voice of the Buddha, 2 vols, trans. by Gwendolyn Bays (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1983). E. H. Johnstons is the best and only complete English translation of the Ashvaghosha; it is based on both Sanskrit and Tibetan source material. Johnston's rendering of this great verse life of the Buddha, which also dates from the early part of the first millennium, appears in two separate parts. The first part is Asvaghosas Buddhacarita (Lahore, India: Motilal Banarsidass, 1936). The second part appeared serially in the journal Acta Orientalia. In passages quoted from material using Pali terms, Sanskrit equivalents have been substituted for the sake of reader continuity.

Also material were W. Woodville Rockhill (trans.), Life of the Buddha (Varanasi, India: Orientalia Indica, 1884; reprint 1972), which translates excerpts from Tibetan canonical works; T. W. Rhys Davidss classic translation, Buddhist Birth Stories (London: Trbner & Co., 1880); P. Bigandet (trans.), The Life or Legend of Gaudama: The Buddha of the Burmese, 2 vols. (Varanasi, India: Bharatiya Publishing House, 1879; reprint 1979); and Narada Maha Thera, The Buddha and His Teachings (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1979). Mention should also be made of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlat Publishers, 1974), and Etienne Lamottes monumental Histoire du bouddhisme indien (Universit de Louvain, 1958; reprint 1976), where precise and comprehensive references can always be found. Also helpful was E. J. Thomas, The Life of the Buddha (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1969).

THE STORY OF A HUMAN LIFE grips us very directly because it is a case history of the condition we all share. Since beginningless time people have listened to stories of what others have done, feeling for the pattern in life these stories might reveal, exploring for their own possibilities, their own boundaries. We want to know where life can go, what can be made of it, how far its scope can extend. Are there barriers? Are there hidden treasures? Though we may appear settled, we are always testing, testing at our edges and limits or retreating from having done so. Convention, ordinary life, provides an artificial definition and an artificial safe haven. But the walls of convention are thin. If we pass through them, what is the real reach and range of existence that lies beyond?

In the context of this basic questioning, the life of the Buddha is an immense landmark. The Buddha was a prince, and he left the palace. He stepped out of the pattern that he had grown into and set out on a journey of discovery from which he never returned. He might have been discouraged and beaten and fallen back on the easy life, or he might have followed a sidetrack into insanity. But instead he completed his journey. The Buddha fully explored the true reach and range of reality. He set out to conquer death, and he actually did so. This is what makes him a hero for us, an exemplar. That is why his life story is particularly gripping.

First he discovered that there is no safety. The basic weather of existenceimpermanencebeats mercilessly upon whatever we try to erect against it. No stuff of dreams, no cocoon of convention, can withstand change, aging, and death. So the prince reluctantly renounced clinging to the illusion of security and sought the reality beyond it. Relentlessly, with unflagging courage and devotion, he followed the path pointed out by intelligence. The result? A prince completely awoke from all dreams and became a buddha, an awakened one.

A mantra enshrined in The Heart Sutra, a key Buddhist text, runs, Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, so be it. That limns the first part of the Buddhas story.

The rest of the story is the down-to-earth pageantry of wisdom and compassion. The Thus-Gone One, the Tathagata, as the Buddha is called, clearly sees the totality of existence and beyond existence. He sees the parameters of all that is and how they are constituted, how the whole thing works and does not really work. Does he come back to those he left behind who are still earnestly slumbering, passionately caught up in dreams, and find a way to open and clear their eyes? At first, knowing the difficulty, the Tathagata decides to remain silent (a tendency he constantly reverted to ever after). But waking and sleepingthe Buddha and confused beingsare inseparably bound together, part of the same magic. This truth is acted out in our story by a god who appears and entreats the Buddha to teach. He arouses the Tathagatas fathomless compassion, and from there unfold forty-five years of communicating, of teaching the Dharma. The Dharma is the wisdom of total vision, which can be boiled down to knowing in specific circumstances what should be cultivated and what should be refrained from. The Buddhas forty-five years of teaching required a mountainous labor of patience and care, not to mention an incalculable amount of walking. And it did an incalculable amount of good, as we shall see.