Eugene Watson Burlingame: Buddhist Legends (Set of 3 Volumes)

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1. Legendary life of the Buddha

1 b. The Buddhist Simeon. Asita went to Suddhodana's resi dence and said, "Where is the child? I too wish to see him." The Sakiyas showed him the child. When Asita saw the child, he rejoiced and was exceeding glad. And he took him in his arms and said, Incomparable is he! preeminent among men!" But remembering his own departure, he became sorrowful and wept tears. Said the Sakiyas, "Is any adversity in store for the child?" "No," replied Asita, "this child shall attain Supreme Enlightenment; he shall be hold Nibbäna; out of love and compassion for the multitude he shall set in motion the Wheel of the Law; far and wide shall his Religion be dispersed. But as for me, I have not long to live in this world; ere these things shall come to pass, death will be upon me. I shall not hear the Law from the Peerless Champion. Therefore am I stricken with woe, overwhelmed with sorrow, afflicted with grief."

1 c. Youth and marriage. When the child was five days old, he was named Siddhattha. Seven Brahmans prophesied that he would become either a Universal Monarch or a Buddha. But the eighth, Kondañña, perceiving that the child possessed the Infallible Signs of a Future Buddha, prophesied that he would become a Buddha. On the same day each of eighty thousand kinsmen dedicated a son to his service. Seven days after his birth his mother died, and he was reared by his aunt and stepmother, Maha Pajapati Gotami. In his nineteenth year he was married to his own cousin Yasodhara, daughter of Suddhodana. He passed his youth amid luxury and splendor, in three mansions appropriate to the three seasons, surrounded by forty thousand nautch-girls, like a very god surrounded by troops of celestial nymphs. In his twenty-ninth year he beheld the Four Ominous Sights: an Old Man, a Sick Man, a Corpse, and a Monk. Thereupon he resolved to become a monk.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages 1 d. Resolve to seek after Nibbana. At this time word was brought to him that his wife had given birth to a son. "Rahula is born!" he exclaimed, "a Bond is born!" Therefore his son was named Rahula.