Mahatma Gautama Buddha
Buddha was born approximately 560 B.C. in the land of Northern India. Through his life, Buddha gave the concept of Nirvana an unprecedented exposure to a large portion of the Eastern world with his achievement of and subsequent teachings about the state of enlightenment. As a religion, Buddhism contains the attainment of Buddhahood or Nirvana as a central tenet of its teachings. Within the realm of Christianity, the historical Christ echoed the same teaching, though in a veiled form, by saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us.
In Buddhist thought the world has but a relative reality in that it is a Maya or illusion in which we go round and round the whirlpool of Samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death, gain and loss, pain and pleasure until we begin to search for a way out of the maelstrom of matter. In this objective world nothing is lasting, everything contained within it is in a state of flux or constant change. But the real source of all pleasure, truth, goodness and permanence is not dependent on the objective world at all but is instead contained within us. The inner essence or core of awareness of each of us is the Atma, the real source of all bliss. We experience a small fraction of this bliss as the senses go out after objects in the world. The world is illusory and the pleasures to be had in it are but momentary and fleeting. Buddha sought the means to attain the inner bliss of Nirvana which is permanent.
The story of the life of the Buddha was popularized in the West through the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, though the author takes great liberties with the actual facts of the life of young Prince Siddhartha who later became Gautama Buddha. Within the last few decades, many movies have been made of the story. The movie the Razor’s Edge, touches upon the difficulties involved in treading the path of spiritual unfoldment leading to Nirvana. The movie takes it’s title from the Katha Upanishad which contains the statement:
Approach the feet of the Master and know THAT (the Eternal Absolute).
Narrow is the path and difficult to tread like the Razor’s Edge”.