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We are gathered here today on the 2600 years anniversary to celebrate one of the greatest sages that mankind has known. To us he is known as the Buddha, the awakened one or the enlightened.
He was born in Lumbini in the state of Kapilvastu, modern day Nepal in the year approximately 563 BC and lived for 80 years. He taught personally in two kingdoms of Magadha and Kosala earning the first nomenclature of Saya muni, the sage of the Sakas.
Originally his sayings were memorized by his followers but 400 years later they were written. His 3 original biographies were Mahapadana Sutta and the Acchariyaabhuta Sutta and the Jataka. His first complete biography the Buddhacarita was written by the famous poet Asvaghasa. The Buddha is fully transcendent, known as Lokkotara. He is a perfect being who is unencumbered by the mundane world. He was born of an immaculate conception and he had no need from sleep, food nor medicine, he had achieved the awesome ability to suppress karma.
His mother Mahamaya was a Koliyan princess who dreamt that a white elephant with six tusks entered her body and 10 months after that she gave birth without pain and died. His father assembled the greatest sages of India, amongst them Asita, who immediately placed the baby’s feet on his long matted hair and proclaimed that he was to be the great chakravartan or the great holy man and together the sages named him Siddhartha, he who achieves his aim. But amongst the great sages was Kaundinya who was later to become his first disciple, an Arahant who predicted that he would be great, he would be the Buddha. That fateful day of his birth in the 5th lunar month of that year became in time the Theravada countries the day of Vesak, the day we celebrate today.
The Buddha’s community did not concur with a caste system and these communities all around India at that period of time were called the Gana-sanghas. These were the Oligarhic republics and strongly influenced the shramana type of Jain and Buddhist sanghas influenced the shramana type of Jain and Buddhist sanghas while the hierarchal kingdoms tended to be ruled by vedic Brahmanic Kyshaitrayas who would ultimately rise in unisom to destroy one of the greatest principles known to mankind that of Ahmisa, non-violence which threatened the basic tenets of the right of kings over life and death.
Under the great sage Udaka Ramaputta he learned high levels of meditative consciousness but with Kaundinya he progressed towards greater austerity to find enlightenment through derivation and asceticism for all worldly possessions and through self mortification and starvation where upon he lived on either a beetle nut or leaf daily. While crossing a river he drowned yet survived miraculously and as he rose from the river he was more focused and he achieved a more blissful state called Jhana, the middle path and this transmutation was fed by a young girl named Sujata who ended his starvation by offering him a bowl of milk and rice pudding.
He now parted from all his ascetic companions and sat in starvation for 49 days under the Bodhi tree and it was at this young age of 35 he attained enlightenment in the state of Bodhgaya. He now understood all suffering but he also understood how to alleviate and eliminate it. His enlightenment became the four noble truths that raised him to a State of supreme liberation, Nirvana. This was the pefect state of mind that was free from any ignorance, greed, hatred and any afflictive defilements, Nirvana is also known as the end of the World where no boundaries or personal identity of the mind remains.
This belief is Dharma
Thanks to Brahma Sahampati the Buddha then went to holy Varanasi and for the benefit of mankind set the stupendous wheel of Dharma in motion. That is now completing its first cycle. There was to be no caste, no race and no structure of religion. Over 5,000 monasteries soon arose in South Asia alone and 2 great universities which taught his beliefs emerged in Lalinda and Taxila and under the Mauriyan dispensation the pillars of his belief were posted in Central Asia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh and Mynamar and his finest temple was raised in the city of Takht-i-Bai what is now Pakistan.
After Christianity, Islam, Buddhism is the third largest religion of the world from the Volga to the Indian Ocean, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific.
Today it is recognized by its crossing the great oceans into the continental America and into the United Nations. May we understand and undertake his enlightenment.
Thank the government of Pakistan for sending the Speaker of the Federal Parliament to participate in this auspicious occasion.
Thank you.