Buddha was waiting for God to Show Up (but God never did)

Buddha was sitting in meditation and waiting for God to speak to him. But God never did communicate with Buddha. Buddha was certain that God would speak to a Mongolian/Chinese origin human being and speak to him to make him a Prophet for the Mongolian race.

But God never did spoke to him. He meditated under a holy fig tree for seven week’s, still no word from God. Did God not want to speak to Buddha?

There’s nothing special about the period of time that Buddha meditated under the tree. He simply vowed not to arise from his meditation until he attained enlightenment. That indicates the seriousness of his commitment to listen to God’s word.

Buddhism is a philosophy, a moral code, and, for some a religious faith which originated 2,500 years ago in India. It offers a diagnosis of the suffering of mankind and provides a formula for individuals to resolve that suffering. It offers a moral code based on compassion and non-violence, and through meditation a way to achieve spiritual insight. Buddhism provides a path to reach a deeper understanding of the nature of reality. Although it directs us inwards, Buddhism offers a practical way to connect with everyday life and with others. Today, an estimated 500 million people follow one of the many varieties of Buddhism.

So in Buddhism it is not necessary that God speaks to a human being making him the prophet. Then the prophet tells his followers to do what God has told him. Buddhism is about the capabilities of mankind’s own brain power and his or her will power to decide what is right or wrong without God’s word spoken via a prophet.

Of course Buddha could have had easily hallucinated (imagined that God was speaking to him) and could have easily gone on to say “God did speak to me” and the entire Mongolian race would have listened and believed him!

There would have been a Buddhist God had not Buddha spoken the truth. Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) sure knew what he was sitting for and meditating about. That is why the title of Buddha meaning “the awakened one”, or “the one who knows” was used for him at his age of 35.

The Search

So now we come to the second part of his life. Gautama took on the life of a wandering monk, accepting food as it was offered to him. He pursued his spiritual quest and studied under the well-known teachers of his day. He learned of deep meditation and followed the yogic practices, but in the end discovered that he reached a point where the teachers could offer him no more. So he left with five followers and he was now called Sakyamuni, sage of the Sakyas, the clan of his father.

It was widely accepted by the holy men of the era, that the body and its desires were an obstacle to spiritual development and that these should be subdued. For six years, Sakyamuni starved and punished his body and lived the most austere life imaginable. In the end, he vowed to try even harder to limit his physical body.

However, at the point of near death, he saw a three stringed lute, a musician’s instrument. He was shown that if the string is too loose, no sound is produced, too tight and it breaks, and tuned just right it will produce pleasant sound. He saw that the austere way would not take him to enlightenment.

Gautama gave up his extreme life and began to eat normally again. His five followers now left him, disgusted that he had, in their opinion, been defeated. All alone now, he decided to tackle the quest once again, and he sat himself under a Bodhi tree at a place called Bodh Gaya. Determined not to move until he had found the answers he sought. His meditation was deep, and, on the night of the full moon in May, complete Enlightenment came to him. His mind became calm and clear and he understood the cycle of birth, death and the wheel of life. He understood his true nature and that of all living beings. This was the end of his spiritual journey, and at that moment he became “the Buddha”.

The Buddha continued to sit under the Bodhi tree for some time, enjoying the supreme experience and contemplating the future. At first, he doubted whether others could grasp what he now knew, but then he decided that there were those who could be shown the way, and he would dedicate the rest of his life to teaching what he had discovered. He chose the path of greatest compassion for all his fellow men and women.