Buddha

The Axial Age marks the beginning of humanity as we now know i

even a god would exhaust the good kamma which had divinized him; he would then die and be reborn in a less advantageous position on earth.

In his view, the spiritual life cannot begin until people allow themselves to be invaded by the reality of suffering, realize how fully it permeates our whole experience, and feel the pain of all other beings, even those whom we do not find congenial.

there have been twenty-five such enlightened human beings

In the West, we prize individualism and self-expression, but this can easily degenerate into mere self-promotion.

enlightenment, we get no sense of his likes and dislikes, his hopes and fears, moments of desperation, elation or intense striving. What remains is an impression of a transhuman serenity, self-control, a nobility that has gone beyond the superficiality of personal preference, and a profound equanimity.

After his enlighten

Why should anybody bother with the biography of Gotama, if the Buddhists themselves were so unconcerned about his life?

people of North India were not interested in history in our sense: they were more concerned about the meaning of historical events.

the Pali Canon is bound to reflect the viewpoint of the Theravadin school, and may have slanted the originals for polemical purposes. Third, despite the excellence of the monks’ yoga-trained memories, this mode of transmission was inevitably flawed. Much material was probably lost, some was misunderstood, and the monks’ later views were doubtless projected onto the Buddha.