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The diffuse spiritual legacy of Buddha, having survived the march and countermarch of conquerors in Asia, today commands perhaps 300 million faithful—it is typically Buddhist that estimates range from 100 million to 500 million. Precisely what they are faithful to is as diverse as the cultures of Asia, for everywhere Buddhism has benignly bent and become a part of all that it has met. The ties that bind Buddhist monks and laymen are vague, for Buddhism has neither dogma nor pope, offers no hope of individual immortality, neither premises divine authority nor promises forgiveness of sin. Its diversity of practice embraces everything from the cool conundrums of Zen in Japan to Cambodian water rites and the exorcism of devils in Ceylon through a dance-to-exhaustion. Yet at the heart of it all is the escape from the burdens of existence as exemplified in the life of that princely ascetic and saintly agnostic Siddhartha Gautama.
The Heaven of Delight. The son of a Himalayan chieftain, the future Buddha, "The Enlightened," was raised as a Hindu and enjoyed such palace amusements, so legend has it, as the performance of 40,000 dancing girls. When Gautama came of age, 500 virgins were presented to him: he chose the most beautiful as his bride, and soon she presented him with a son. With every luxury and favor, the young Crown Prince Gautama had only to inherit his kingdom to live happily ever after. But Gautama, like the carpenter of Nazareth who was to appear 500 years later and whose life offers many parallels to the Buddha legend, was not what he seemed.
According to the rich Buddhist mythology, Buddha rested in the Heaven of Delight from his innumerable previous reincarnations, both as men and as animals such as rabbits and pigeons, in which he had perfected his character; presently he was approached by the deities of the 10,000 world-systems of the universe. "Now has the moment come, O Blessed One, for Thy Buddhahood," they advised him. Buddha assented, picked out his mother, and approaching her bed in the guise of a white elephant, smote her with his trunk and entered her womb.
She carried the fetus clearly outlined in her womb "like oil in a bowl." The infant emerged into life from her side as Queen Maya stood holding to a sala tree, and at his birth a great light appeared in the sky, the deaf heard and the dumb spoke, and kings came from afar to welcome him. At the age of 29, "having seen the wretchedness" of the human condition, Gautama cut his ties and set out to seek "the unborn and supreme peace of nirvana."
The Tempter. For six years of severe asceticism, Gautama fed on seeds, grass, even dung. He wore a hair shirt, lay on thorns, slept among rotting corpses. Finally it dawned on him that, far from escaping from his body by torturing it in yogi fashion, he was in fact giving it more than its due. Taking a seat beneath the Bodhi Tree (which still grows, protected as a shrine, in Buddh Gaya), he resolved not to move until he had attained Supreme Enlightenment and had found the key to liberate man from himself.
The demon of evil, Mara, came to tempt him with visions of all the riches and prestige of the world. But Gautama only sank deeper and deeper into meditation. Finally, in a great mystic rapture that lasted 49 days, Enlightenment was captured, Gautama became the Buddha, and Buddhism was born.