Buddha in Sri Lanka, from Zeming & Shi Xiong's trip.The Buddha is seen by some people as a philosopher. And in some ways he is. But in many ways he is not.
He is not just a philosopher for he lives out his teaching, achieves the goal pointed out by the teaching and further teaches the path to others.
The Buddha was asked by someone who he was, whether he is God, a God, a messenger of God or some other divine being, or going to become one. He replied that he is "Buddha" ... ie Awakened.
The Buddha is known as the Buddha, because he is awakened to how things truly are. Knowing thus, he has put an end to Suffering. He was once like us, but has fulfilled the highest potential of sentient beings, and reached Perfection, a Buddha.
The Buddha is known as the Teacher of Gods and man, for Gods came to him for advice and learnt from him. He is known as the peerless Teacher for in this time period, there is no one who teaches the unique path leading to a complete cessation of suffering as taught by him so comprehensively for 45 years.
The Buddha is also known as the Compassionate One for he knows truly the pain and agony we go through and has taught us a way to go beyond worldly happiness and sorrow to achieve the supreme form of happiness, that is Nirvana.
The Buddha is known as the Perfectly Enlightened One, SammasamBuddha, for he is completely free of craving and attachment, free of greed, anger and delusion. Like the Buddha, we wish to love and care for our family and loved ones. But often, we are bogged down by our emotions, our fears, frustrations and stress etc. The Buddha is perfectly free of these -ve emotions and is thus able to truly love and care for us completely without strings attached.
In Buddhism, we try to 學佛 learn to be like the Buddha, to one day become Buddha. Wouldn't it be good to grow and develop ourselves towards such Perfection, and become like Buddha? ^_^
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