v062qjjq@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (David T Wei) (02/20/91)
Accounts of the Buddha's life were not committed to writing until centuries after his death. These narratives were the work, not of dispassionate scholars but of faithful believers whose aim was to extol the great founder.Yet,despite the accretions of the mythical and the miraculous in these accounts, the Buddha they reveal is essentially a humane man, not a god. Only later was he deified. Tradition has it that Gautama Siddhartha was born a prince and brought up in luxury. He was shocked into search for religious understanding,however, When on three successive outing from the palace he encountered an old man, a sick man,and a dead man----and learned that such is the fate of humankind. He abandoned worldly pleasure to seek religious truth. Initially he become an ascetic and praticed austerities so severe that they almost cost him his life;ultimately he found a middle way between self-deprivation and gratification. His subsequent enlightment under the Bodhi(wisdom) tree (at which time) he became the Buddha. What is wisdom ? Intellectuall brilliance,knowledge of human nature, experience of the world ? another answer is the Buddhist idea of prajna. Prajna is a Sanskrit term meaning "wondrous wisdom." Simply put, it is the realization of "conditional causation and the immateriality of the nature of all things." Buddhism holds that everything derives from brief conjunction of primary causes; once the primary cause disappears, everything returns to an immaterial state. To become aware that vacuity is the enternal and unchanging nature of things is to attain wisdom. Prajna is a supreme treasure of Buddhism. Those who hope to attain enlightment must become aware of causation and immateriality, and so prajna is sometimes called the "Mother of all the Buddhas." Foremost among the Buddhas as an exponent of prajna is Manjusri, the "son of the Dharma-king," wjose leonine steed is a symbol of wisdom's indomitablity.