RELI 216 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Buddhist Meditation, Noble Eightfold Path, Jataka Tales
7 Apr 2017
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The earliest biography of buddha was written by asvaghosa around 100. There"s little (cid:498)hard(cid:499) data about buddha, but they"re life was only reconstructed from references in the buddhist scriptures. Also found in the scriptures are a type of literature called jatakas. The jatakas describe the lives of buddha before his last incarnation and important sources for understanding buddhist ethical and metaphysical doctrines. We should also recognize that the life story that we now have of buddha is also a stylized account. When you look at the biography of the other great religious leader of the period, mahavira, you can see a very similar story. These stories draw on a common pattern of indian religious biography. The aim is not so much a factual recounting of the factual life of the individual, but the presentation of that person as an embodiment of cosmic truth.
