PureInsight | June 7, 2004
[PureInsight.org]
Writing in top right corner:
Writing in bottom left corner:
With respect
Zhang Cuiying's signature stamp
Sakyamuni (who lived from approximately 563 – 483 B.C.) was the founder of Buddhism. His full name was Siddharta Gautama. He was known as Gautama Buddha, Sakyamuni, or Sakyasinha. Sakyamuni was born as the son of the King of a Hindu tribe called Sakya.
The king did everything in his power to tempt Sakyamuni from a religious life, but Sakyamuni was determined to seek cultivation and left his home at the age of 19. He went to a mountain and cultivated in hardship for six years, and retired into solitude at the age of 30 as Sakyamuni (which means "solitary one of the Sakyas".) Later he sat under a Bodhi tree for 49 days in meditation and eventually became enlightened. He founded Buddhism and taught the Buddha Fa for 49 years to ten disciples and 1,250 practitioners. At the age of 80, Sakyamuni entered into Nirvana (departing the human world without the physical body, the method of completing cultivation in Buddha Sakyamuni's school of cultivation). Sakyamuni's sarira (a bone section of his finger) is still treasured by Xi'an Famen Buddhist Temple in Shanxi Province, China.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/8/8/17130.html
