Shacarita Analysis

Siddhartha Gautama attempted to help people break out of the cycle of suffering in this world and as a result established the religion of Buddhism. Throughout his life, or at least the life described in Asvaghosa’s Buddhacarita, he was constantly struggling with the world in order to obtain enlightenment. After achieving enlightenment, he was able to spread his teachings which eventually became the religion we have today. However, Buddhist principles are not shown simply through the words of Gautama, or the Buddha, but they are defining characteristics of the Buddhacarita. The entire story the Buddha must combat the recurring suffering of human life due to desire and the eventual separation of desire that allows for one to break free of

The first noble truth of Buddhism is about the truth of suffering and explains that suffering is a part of life. The truth of suffering covers a variety of areas in human life from the inevitability of death to unavoidable sickness; life, by definition, forces people to suffer. The Buddhacarita helps explain the first of the four noble truths in a couple different ways. The first, and most blatantly obvious way, in which these are shown is at the beginning of the story where the bodhisattva first sees suffering in the form of an old man, a sick man and a dead man. While through an enormous amount of luck it is possible to avoid sickness, both old age and death are unavoidable facts of life and the bodhisattva learns this fact from his charioteer who tells him “death is certain for all in this world” disregarding one’s dharma (B 3.59). Not even the bodhisattva, who is destined to become the Buddha and enlighten the world about how to end suffering, is able to break free from the grasp of death and this is of vital importance to the Buddhist doctrine as it stresses that no one, not even the main religious figure, is above the laws of the earth that is the law that all things must eventually succumb to death. Although the Buddha knew that “[he] must die” it was still even hard for the gods themself to understand this fact and not even they were able control

Desire is seen as one of the main sources of suffering in Buddhism because it can create an attachment to certain things in life, whether they be people or inanimate objects, and this sets one up for more suffering. The bodhisattva’s father epitomizes desire in the Buddhacarita. He wishes for his son to eventually be the ruler of the earth rather than simply a religious leader. This base desire sets him up for suffering since upon his son’s rejection of the regal way of life he is disappointed in a way that would not be possible if he did not have desire in the first place. The king’s desires, and selfish ones at that, end up not going as planned since the bodhisattva eventually sees suffering and is determined to fix suffering in the world leading to his father trying to sorrowfully persuade the bodhisattva to stay while “shedding copious amounts of tears” (B. 5.40). This event clearly depicts how desire is able to directly lead to suffering; however, the king was not learned in the ways of Buddhism so he would have easily been manipulated by desires of the world, but desire is even able to corrupt those that are more learned in the teachings of Buddhism, even though it was an early form. Even the gods were upset when the Buddha neared the end of his life because they did not want to see him die.