By the 6th Century BC,Northern India was occupied by some 16 republics and city-states, and tribal society on the plains was breaking down under the advance of these new powers. Each of the major powers had been in repeated conflict for 200 years. In keeping with the times, orthodox Pravrtti-Marga and Pitrayana promoted the sanguinary rites of Vaidika Yajna. Mahayogi Gautama Siddhartha was born (c.563 BC) at Kapilavastu (near Lumbini, on the southern border of modern Nepal), a Kshatriya of the Sakya clan. He attained Avyakta (Nirvana, Samadhi) and its consequent illumination (Bodhi) and liberation (Moksha) while meditating under a Pippal tree (Ficus religiosa L. 1753) on the banks of the Niranjana River, near Gaya (in modern Bihar) at a place now remembered as Bodh-Gaya. Gautama set about teaching his path to enlightenment at Sarnath, near Kashi (Varanasi, in modern Uttar-pradesh). The Emperor Ashoka Maurya sent a branch from this Bodhi tree to King Tissa of Lanka, where the clone still grows ~ a zealous anti-Buddhist later cut down the original. The Buddha-Dharma consists of meditation and morality, the latter expressed in the Panchashila (the Five Percepts of: abstinence from harming, from falsehood, from theft, from sexual misconduct, and from intoxicants). It avoids the extremes of sensual pleasures and asceticism, and was known as the Middle Way. Experience of Nirvana is the ultimate fulfilment of life; and the Buddha declared that none is deserving of veneration, other than the man who has perfected himself in thought, word, and deed, and has attained the transcendental wisdom (Prajna) of Nirvana ~ the ideal man, the Nirbhuta (Beyond Being).Nirvana does not mean death or annihilation, and the Nirbhuta continues to live and move about in the world, proclaiming the Truth, as Gautama did himself. Nirvana is a transcendent state of consciousness that fits the Nirbhuta for final dissolution (Paranirvana).
By self alone is evil done, by self is one disgraced;By self is evil left undone, by self alone is he purified;Purity and impurity belong to self: no one can purify another.[from Dharmapada (70 BC) ~ Transl. A.J. Edmunds]I call him alone a Brahman, who knows his former abode,Who sees both heaven and hell, and has reached the extinction of births.One is neither a Brahman nor a non-Brahman by birth:By his conduct alone is he a Brahman, and by his conduct alone is he a non-Brahman.[from Sutta Nipata (c.50 BC) ~ Transl. M. Coomara Swami]
By self alone is evil done, by self is one disgraced;By self is evil left undone, by self alone is he purified;Purity and impurity belong to self: no one can purify another.[from Dharmapada (70 BC) ~ Transl. A.J. Edmunds]I call him alone a Brahman, who knows his former abode,Who sees both heaven and hell, and has reached the extinction of births.One is neither a Brahman nor a non-Brahman by birth:By his conduct alone is he a Brahman, and by his conduct alone is he a non-Brahman.[from Sutta Nipata (c.50 BC) ~ Transl. M. Coomara Swami]
