The Buddha’s Career

Abstract

Abstract The Buddha’s teaching career spans more than forty years, but when seen through the lens of the Buddha-life blueprint, three main events come into focus: the Buddha’s first sermon in Sārnāth, his performance of the “great miracle” at Śrāvastī, and the descent from the Heaven of the Thirty-Three at Saṃkāśya. The literary approach to the stories of these events provides readers with a model for appreciating other narratives that feature the Buddha’s teachings and miracles. It can also help one explore the tensions between the realistic and cosmic dimensions of the stories, and between the human and superhuman dimensions of the Buddha as a character. At the same time, it may suggest ways that storytellers and audiences have breathed life into these stories, and how they have used them to endow their lives with meaning.