• Buddhism—A Search for Enlightenment Without God
    Mankind’s Search for God

    • The Buddha’s Conception and Birth

      7. According to Buddhist texts, how did the Buddha’s mother come to conceive him?

      7 Consider the following excerpts from Jataka, part of the Pali canon, and Buddha-charita, a second-century C.E. Sanskrit text on the life of the Buddha. First, the account of how the Buddha’s mother, Queen Maha-Maya, came to conceive him in a dream.

      “The four guardian angels came and lifted her up, together with her couch, and took her away to the Himalaya Mountains. . . . Then came the wives of these guardian angels, and conducted her to Anotatta Lake, and bathed her, to remove every human stain. . . . Not far off was Silver Hill, and in it a golden mansion. There they spread a divine couch with its head towards the east, and laid her down upon it. Now the future Buddha had become a superb white elephant . . . He ascended Silver Hill, and . . . three times he walked round his mother’s couch, with his right side towards it, and striking her on her right side, he seemed to enter her womb. Thus the conception took place in the midsummer festival.”

      8. What was predicted regarding the Buddha’s future?

      8 When the queen told the dream to her husband, the king, he summoned 64 eminent Hindu priests, fed and clothed them, and asked for an interpretation. This was their answer:

      “Be not anxious, great king! . . . You will have a son. And he, if he continue to live the household life, will become a universal monarch; but if he leave the household life and retire from the world, he will become a Buddha, and roll back the clouds of sin and folly of this world.”

      9. What extraordinary events were said to have followed the pronouncement regarding the Buddha’s future?

      9 Thereafter, 32 miracles were said to have occurred:

      “All the ten thousand worlds suddenly quaked, quivered, and shook. . . . The fires went out in all the hells; . . . diseases ceased among men; . . . all musical instruments gave forth their notes without being played upon; . . . in the mighty ocean the water became sweet; . . . the whole ten thousand worlds became one mass of garlands of the utmost possible magnificence.”

      10. How do Buddhist sacred texts describe the Buddha’s birth?

      10 Then came the unusual birth of the Buddha in a garden of sal trees called Lumbini Grove. When the queen wanted to take hold of a branch of the tallest sal tree in the grove, the tree obliged by bending down to within her reach. Holding on to the branch and standing, she gave birth.

      “He issued from his mother’s womb like a preacher descending from his preaching-seat, or a man coming down a stair, stretching out both hands and both feet, unsmeared by any impurity from his mother’s womb. . . . ”

      “As soon as he is born, the [future Buddha] firmly plants both feet flat on the ground, takes seven strides to the north, with a white canopy carried above his head, and surveys each quarter of the world, exclaiming in peerless tones: In all the world I am chief, best and foremost; this is my last birth; I shall never be born again.”

      11. What conclusion have some scholars drawn regarding the accounts about the Buddha’s life as found in the sacred texts?

      11 There are also equally elaborate stories regarding his childhood, his encounters with young female admirers, his wanderings, and just about every event in his life. Not surprisingly, perhaps, most scholars dismiss all these accounts as legends and myths. A British Museum official even suggests that because of the “great body of legend and miracle, . . . a historical life of the Buddha is beyond recovery.”