Lineage: The Masters of Zen Buddhism PDF Print Email
The Buddha Shakyamuni and historical clues about the origin of Buddhism

From a historical point of view, Buddhism originated with the teaching of Siddharta Gautama, who was named after attaining illumination "Buddha the Accomplished One."
Gautama was born c. 500 BC in the city of Kapilavastu in the north of India (present-day Nepal). He was the son of Suddohana of the noble family of the Shakya who belonged to the ruling oligarchy. He enjoyed a golden childhood, shielded from the worries of life by his protective father.
Yet one day Gautama, on leaving the royal palace in which he resided, made three encounters that left a profound mark on him for the rest of his life: he met sickness, suffering, and death.
At the age of twenty-nine he gave up all the privileges of his caste and left behind his wife Yashodhara and his son Rahula. He set off in search of answers to inner questions.
As a wandering beggar in India, Gautama became a disciple of the greatest ascetic masters of his times. But surpassing them in wisdom, he didn't find answers to his questions. He gave up asceticism once he realized that mortification and forsaking the world didn't lead to awareness. Consequently, he began to lead a normal life and became aware that the path best suited to attain Truth, which human ignorance keeps concealed, was not the mortification of the body but profound meditation.
For a long time Siddharta sat in meditation under the famous Bodhi tree and, upon becoming aware of the chain that keeps men shackled to the ignorance of being, he attained complete illumination. The veils of darkness were lifted in this manner, and Siddharta simply revealed his self to himself, as he really was, one with the Universe. At that point Siddharta Gautama "disappeared" and was replaced by Buddha, "the Accomplished One", "he who awakened ".
Ever since the day when the Buddha attained Illumination while sitting under the Bodhi Tree, the Wheel of Dharma has never stopped spinning: the Path was exported to China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, Ceylon and the entire East. In the process of being adopted by the different cultures it met on its way, the path's formal, non-essential aspects were modified accordingly.

Bodhidharma and historical clues about the origin of Zen

The roots of Zen are to be found in India, in Mahayana Buddhism and the sutras, and particularly in the content of the Heart Sutra (Prajnaparamita). But the first person to bring Zen Buddhism from India to China was Bodhidharma. This marked the beginning of a long journey that would bring Zen in to modern times, in the form we know today,.
In fact, Zen originated with the Buddhist Master Bodhidharma, a legendary wandering monk whose teachings of Buddhist practice were based on the study of the mind and on meditation, which should be interpreted as an awareness of the essence of Being. Bodhidharma's teachings were later named Ch'an School in China and Zen School in Japan.
The Chinese school was soon referred to as "the Buddhist School of Sudden Illumination" because it concentrated upon the experience of the state of illumination "here and now." Suffice it to say that this school opens up a path in which it becomes possible to live one's individual experience of illumination in the same way that Buddha Shakyamuni did in his own life.
We may state, therefore, that Zen was born from Buddha's direct experience. Zen is situated at the heart of the Buddha's teaching, that is, at the very core of his life.
First in China and afterwards in Korea, Vietnam and Japan, Zen shed all the speculative traits typical of early Hindu Buddhism to turn increasingly into a Direct Path to Illumination rooted in experience, beyond words or creed.


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