Buddha: The Story of Creating 5 Main Morals

The most common known Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, was born around 563 bc in a place now known as Nepal. He was a part of a royal family, meaning that they were extremely wealthy, he was brought up in a life of luxury as a prince. Gautama was known to be extremely intelligent and had a heart of gold, he felt sympathy towards those who lived a life of poverty and distress. However, his parents tried ever so hard to hide the ‘real world’ from their son, as they were told he would become a great king, or become a spiritual leader by an astrologer, they did not want this to happen so they used all of their power to hide sickness, death, poverty and aging from their son, often showering him with hundreds of women, throwing parties and hosting sporting events for their son to take part in.

Siddhārtha then grew up to have a wife and a child, without knowing what went on outside of the palace, however, one day the prince was inside of his horse and cart outside of the grounds of the palace, he then began to notice what life is really like, he experienced the poverty and aging that he had been blinded from all of his life. The prince was not happy about this, so he left the palace in order to raise his spirits once again, he tried many things but they simply did not work. Siddhārtha then decided to meditate under a big bodhi tree, he vowed not to move until he had found a solution, after 49 days he finally realised what the problem was, humans are never fully satisfied and they always want more and more, this cycle never ends, the suffering also never ends either, Siddhārtha became enlightened by this, enlighted means ‘buddha’, from this day on he would be referred to as Buddha or Gautama Buddha.

Buddha then began to inform his friends on this discovery, some of them listened and began to follow him, they would now be his disciples, Buddha then began to tell more and more people his findings and they soon began to also follow him and his beliefs. During this time period everyone in India is Hindu, those who are Hindus believe that when you die you will be re-born, this cycle of reincarnation is called samsara. Buddha would preach about how to break free from this cycle that many have fallen into (samsara), as they would never suffer when they are not in this cycle unlike those who are in it, and also about wisdom, kindness, patience, generosity and compassion. Because of Buddha preaching about the previous topics, those who are buddhist have 5 morals:

• to refrain from taking life - killing any living creature;
• to refrain from taking what is not freely given - theft;
• to refrain from misuse of the senses or sexual misconduct - overindulgence in sex or committing sexual offences;
• to refrain from wrong speech - lying or gossiping;
• to refrain from intoxicants that cloud the mind - drugs or alcohol;

Buddha also told his disciples that there would be no rebirth, and they would not have a second life as they would get to a point where they do not desire this because they have accomplished their goals and simply do not have anything else to prove. When you feel like this, you have accomplished Nirvana, which is the ultimate spiritual goal for those who practice buddhism.

In conclusion, Buddha then lived on until the age of 80 years old, where he preached to many people during his life span, and had many followers. Buddha passed away due to food poisoning, where he became violently ill because of either a pork or mushroom dish that he was gifted from a blacksmith, when he felt his time was almost over he told his followers that they should follow no leader, but to “be your own light”. To this day Buddhism is still practiced by over 535 million people around the world, this is roughly between 8% and 10% of the world's population, the country with the most buddhists is China with a whopping 244 million people practicing this religion.