A sketch of the Buddha's Life

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A Sketch of the Buddha's Life

Readings from the Pali Canon

© 2005

"Indeed, the Blessed One is worthy and rightly self-awakened, consummate in knowledge & conduct, well-gone, an expert with regard to the world, unexcelled as a trainer for those people fit to be tamed, the Teacher of divine & human beings, awakened, blessed."

— AN 11.12

This selection of excerpts from the Pali canon provides a rough outline of the life of the Buddha. I hope you will find enough in this anthology to gain at least an inkling both of the range of the Buddha's teachings and of the sweeping trajectory of his extraordinary life.
For more thorough accounts of the Buddha's life, please see these two excellent anthologies: The Splendour of Enlightenment: A Life of the Buddha (two volumes), compiled by Phra Khantipalo (Bangkok: Mahamakut Rajavidyalaya Press, 1976), and The Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Ñanamoli (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1992).

Contents

• The Bodhisatta (Buddha-to-be)
• The Awakening
• After the Awakening
• Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion
• Forty-five years of teaching
• The Buddha's last days
• Postscript: Many names for the Buddha

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/buddha.html