Siddhartha Gautama

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One of the first representations of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama in the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, Pakistan (Kushan period, 1st–2nd century AD)

Siddhartha Gautama (Sanskrit: m., सिद्धार्थ गौतम Siddhārtha Gautama, also Siddhattha Gotama) (b. 563 BC in Lumbini in present-day Nepal; † 483 BC in Kushinagar, India), also Shakyamuni (Sanskrit: शाक्यमुनि śākyamuni "the sage of the Shakya lineage"), is the historical Buddha and, through the teaching (Dharma) he gave, the founder of Buddhism. He is also called the Gautama Buddha.

The nature and task of the Buddha from Rudolf Steiner's point of view

Wotan and Buddha

„At the same time that Jewish prophethood exists, in the centuries before Christ, we find here the reference to a great ancient Atlantean Initiate, to Wod-Wodha-Odin. This is a modernised Atlanteanism in a new form, an atavism, a throwback to Atlanteanism. And this is happening everywhere, over in Asia too. In Asia, the W is a B, Wodha = Bodha = Buddha. Over in Asia, Buddhism is the same phenomenon that appears as a recoil into the Atlantean time. Hence we find Buddhism most spread among the remnants of the Atlantians, among the Mongol peoples. And where it appears most grandly, columnar, in Tibet, there we have a modern, monumental expression of ancient Atlantean culture.“ (Lit.:GA 93a, p. 260)

„This individuality of Wotan - we are speaking within a community of disciples of spiritual science and therefore such a mystery may be touched upon here - this individuality which really taught as Wotan in the mysteries of the Germanic peoples, is the same one which later reappeared on the same mission as Buddha. No other individuality has been the one who mediated the connection between our world and the higher worlds as Buddha than the one who once wandered over the regions of Europe and whose memory has been preserved in Nordic Europe under the name of Wotan.“ (Lit.:GA 105, p. 173)

„And it is very interesting that the latest occult researches which have been carried out in Western occultism in recent years have led us to recognise that there is a very important connection between European culture and the Buddha forces. For a long time these Buddha-forces have been working in from the spiritual worlds, especially on everything that is unthinkable in Western culture without the specifically Christian influence. So all those world-view currents which we have seen develop in the last centuries up to the nineteenth century are, in so far as they are occidental spiritual currents, all permeated by the Christ impulse, but the Buddha always worked in from the spiritual world. Therefore we may say that the most important thing that European humanity can receive from the Buddha today must not come from the transmission of what the Buddha gave to humanity half a millennium before the Christian era, but from what he has become since then. For he did not stand still, but advanced; and it was precisely through this progress as a spiritual being in the spiritual worlds that he was able to participate in the most eminent sense in the further development of Western culture. This is certainly a result of our occult research, and it is precisely this result which harmonises in a wonderful way with much of what we have encountered before this important influence was precisely investigated again. For we know that the same individuality which appeared as Gotama Buddha in the East had once before worked in the West, and that certain legends and traditions which attach to the name of Bodha or Wotan have to do with the same individuality as Buddhism has to do with Gotama Buddha in the East; so that, in a certain sense, the same scene has been reoccupied which had been prepared before by the same individuality in relation to the development of mankind.“ (Lit.:GA 131, p. 176f)

From Bodhisattva to Buddha

„The last of the Buddhas is the one who was incarnated, that is, embodied, in the son of King Suddhodana - in Gotama Buddha. The Indian looks at other Buddhas and says to himself: 'Since the time when mankind stood on the height of the spiritual world, a whole number of Buddhas have existed; since the last decline of the world, five Buddhas have appeared. - The Buddhas always mean that humanity should not sink down into the Maja, but that again and again something of the ancient wisdom should be brought, from which it can draw again, but because humanity moves in a descending sense, this wisdom is lost again and again, and then a new Buddha must come who will bring again such a down payment. The last one was Gotama Buddha. Now before such a Buddha, if we may speak trivially, ascends to the Buddha-dignity through his various lives, he must come to another dignity: to the dignity of a Bodhisattva. The Indian world view also sees in the royal son of Suddhodana, in Gotama Buddha, up to his twenty-ninth year, not a Buddha but a Bodhisattva. This bodhisattva, who was born into the royal house of Suddhodana, rose through the efforts of his life to that inner enlightenment which is symbolically described as "sitting under the bodhi tree" and is then expressed in the "Sermon of Benares". In his twenty-ninth year, this Bodhisattva ascended to Buddha-dignity through these processes and could now, as Buddha, again bring to humanity a last remnant of the ancient wisdom, which the following centuries - according to the Indian view - may consume again. When humanity will have descended so low that the wisdom brought by this last Buddha will have been consumed, then another Bodhisattva will ascend to the Buddha-dignity, the Buddha of the future, the "Maitreya-Buddha", who, according to the Indian world-view, is expected for the future.“ (Lit.:GA 60, p. 385f)

„Gautama Buddha was previously a being who could live in such a way that he could always embody himself in earthly bodies of the corresponding cultural periods without claiming to use everything in this human organisation. This being had no need to go through real human incarnations. But now an important turning point occurred for the Bodhisattva, namely the necessity to become acquainted with all the destinies of the human organisation in an earthly body into which he had to enter completely. There was something for him to experience that could only be experienced in an earthly body. And because he was a higher individuality, this one embodiment was enough for him to really see what could develop out of this human body. For other human beings, the situation was such that they now had to gradually develop the inner faculties through the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh periods of post-Atlantean cultural development. The Buddha, on the other hand, was able to experience in this unique incarnation all that was possible for him to develop. What people will bring forth as "conscience", and what will become greater and greater, he foresaw, as it were, in his first germ when he lived through his incarnation as Gautama Buddha. Therefore, immediately after this incarnation, he could ascend again into the divine-spiritual worlds and did not need to go through a second incarnation later. In this one incarnation he was able to indicate like a great guiding force what the human beings will develop out of themselves in a certain field in the future cycles. This happened through the event that is indicated to us in the "Sitting under the Bodhi Tree". At that time, after his special mission, the teaching of compassion and love, which is contained in the " eightfold path", dawned on him...

This is, to paraphrase a little, that great event which in Oriental culture is called "the becoming Buddha of the Bodhisattva". When this Bodhisattva, who had never really incarnated in the past, was twenty-nine years old, the son of Suddhodana was struck by the individuality of the Bodhisattva, which had not yet fully taken possession of him, and he experienced the great human doctrine of compassion and love.

Why did this Bodhisattva, who then became the Buddha, incarnate in this very people? Why not, for example, within the Greco-Latin people?

If this Bodhisattva was really to become the Buddha of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, then he had to bring something future. Now man, through his consciousness soul, when it will develop, will become ripe to recognise gradually out of himself what the Buddha gave as a great suggestion. The Buddha had to have already developed the consciousness soul at the time when people had only developed the intellectual or mind soul. So he had to use the physical instrument of the brain in such a way that he overcame it, overcame it in a completely different way than a man who had advanced to the Greek-Latin cultural period. The Greek-Latin brain would have been too hard for him. He could only have trained the intellectual soul in it; but he had to train the consciousness soul. Therefore he needed a brain that had remained softer. He used the soul, which was to develop later, in an instrument which had previously been the custom of mankind and which had survived among the Indian people. There you also have a repetition: the Buddha repeats a human organisation from before with a soul ability from after. To this degree, the things that go on in the development of humanity are necessary. And the Buddha had the task, in the 5th to 6th century before our era, of immersing the consciousness soul in the human organisation.“ (Lit.:GA 116, p. 21ff)

„The Buddha has the task of preserving the culture of the sentient soul from the preceding epoch, from the third, into the fourth. What the Buddha proclaims, what the disciples of the Buddha take into their hearts, is that which is to shine over from the third post-Atlantean cultural period, which is the cultural period of the sentient soul, into the fourth, into the time of the intellectual or mind soul. So that the time of the intellectual or mind soul, the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, is warmed through, glowed through, illuminated by the Buddha teachings, by what the time of the sentient soul, still permeated by clairvoyance, has brought forth. The great conservator of the culture of the sentient soul into the culture of the intellectual or mind soul is the Buddha.“ (Lit.:GA 139, p. 88)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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