Who was the Buddha?

Imagine having endless toys, giant feasts, and a room made of marshmallows! What if you had everything you ever wanted, but you decided to walk away from it all? That’s exactly what happened over two thousand five hundred years ago! Join Mira and Finn as they uncover the incredible story of Siddhartha Gautama, a young prince who lived in a massive palace completely shielded from the outside world. His father, the king, hid all sadness, sickness, and aging from him! But when Siddhartha finally stepped outside the palace walls, he made a shocking discovery about real life. Discover how this sheltered prince gave up his royal crown to wander into the forest and search for life's biggest answers. You'll learn about his famous Four Noble Truths, why holding on too tightly to things can make us sad, and how he discovered a secret to happiness called the Middle Path. Find out why sitting under a giant fig tree changed the world forever and how Siddhartha became known as the Buddha, the Awakened One! Get ready for a mind-bending philosophical adventure!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Philosophy is not boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. Hey Finn, imagine you could have literally anything you wanted. Unlimited toys, a private chef, your own personal theme park.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Oh man, I'd have a room made entirely of marshmallows and the roller coaster that goes through my bedroom. I would be the happiest kid ever.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Most people think that having everything would make them perfectly happy. But today, we're talking about someone who actually had all of that and walked away from it. Walked away from the marshmallow room? Why? Because he discovered a secret about the world that he had been hidden from his entire life. Today, we're asking, what made a prince who had literally everything leave his palace to sit under a tree? Over 2,500 years ago, in a place near modern-day Nepal in India, there was a young prince named Siddhartha Gautama.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Siddhartha Gautama. So he lived in a castle. A huge, beautiful palace.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

And his father, the king, wanted Siddhartha to become a great, powerful ruler. But a prediction was made that the prince might become a great holy man instead.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Well, what's wrong with that?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

The king didn't want that. So he made a plan. He decided that if Siddhartha never saw anything sad, upsetting, or painful, he would never want to leave the palace to search for answers. Wait, so he banned sadness? How do you even do that? He literally built giant walls around the palace. The prince was surrounded by beautiful gardens, endless feasts and musicians. If a flower started to wilt, a servant removed it before he could see it.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Whoa, so he never scraped his knee, or got a cold, or saw a grumpy person. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

He had no idea that sickness or getting old even existed. He was kept in a perfect, sparkly bubble for 29 years.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

I mean, that sounds kind of nice, but also kind of weird. Like living in a video game where you can't ever lose health points. You just wander around eating cake.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Right. He had a beautiful family and every luxury you could imagine. But you can't keep reality out forever. One day, the prince asked his chariot driver to take him outside to see the real world.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Uh-oh. I have a feeling the real world is not just marshmallow rooms and infinite cake. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

The king panicked. He sent guards ahead of the chariot to clear the streets of anything unpleasant. He wanted the city to look like a giant party.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

That's like when Mum makes us clean our room really fast before guests come over. Shoving everything under the bed. Exactly like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

But you can't shove real life under a bed. Siddhartha was about to see the truth. As Siddhartha rode through the city, he saw something he had never seen before. A man with grey hair, wrinkled skin, leaning on a cane, barely able to walk.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Wait, he didn't know people got old. Like, didn't he see older people in the palace?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

The king only surrounded him with young, healthy servants. So Siddhartha was shocked. He asked his driver, What is wrong with that man? And the driver said, He is just old, my prince. Everyone grows old.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

It will happen to you, and it will happen to me. Imagine being 29 and just finding out about getting older. That would be so confusing. You'd realise you can't stay a kid forever.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

It completely shook him. But then, as the chariot kept going, it happened again. He saw someone lying by the side of the road, coughing and looking terrible. It was a sick person.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Ew, I hate being sick. My nose gets all stuffy and gross. But again, he didn't know about germs.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

He had never been sick, and he had never seen anyone sick. The driver told him, this is sickness.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

It can happen to anyone. Okay, so first old age, then sickness. What was the third thing? The third sight was the hardest.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

He saw a funeral. He saw that at the end of life, people pass away.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Oh, yeah, that's that's really sad. I don't really like thinking about that part.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

I know, Finn. It's a hard thing for any of us to think about, even for grown-ups. And imagine Siddhartha! He was terrified. He suddenly realized, all my palaces, all my feasts, none of it can protect me, all the people I love, from getting old, getting sick, or passing away. What is the point of all this luxury if life still hurts?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

So what did he do? Did he run back and hide under his covers? I think I would have just stayed in the palace forever after that.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

He might have, except for the forthsight. He saw a wandering holy man who had no money and wore simple clothes, but he looked completely calm and peaceful. Calm? But he just saw all the scary stuff too, right? Yes, and that gave Siddhartha hope. He realised he had to leave his palace. He had to figure out why there is suffering in the world, and if there was a way to find peace, even when things are hard. So, he left all his riches behind and walked into the forest to find the answer.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Wow. He literally gave up being a king to live in the woods. That takes some serious guts. But what did he actually do out there?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

For years, Siddhartha tried to find the answer by doing the exact opposite of his palace life. He wore rags, slept on the freezing ground, and barely ate anything at all.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Sometimes just a grain of rice a day. Ew, no pizza, no comfy bed, just a grain of rice. That sounds miserable. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

It was miserable. He got incredibly thin and weak. He thought that to understand life, he had to push away every single comfort. But eventually, he realised that starving wasn't making him wise, it was just making him tired.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Yeah, it's hard to think about big, deep philosophical ideas when all you can think about is a giant sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Exactly! So he finally ate some real food, regained his strength, and decided to sit under a large fig tree, known as the Body Tree. He promised himself he would not move from that spot until he understood the truth about suffering. And did it work? It did. After deep meditation, he finally understood. He became known as the Buddha, which means the awakened one. It's like he woke up from a long dream.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Okay, what was the big secret? Tell me.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

He discovered something called the Four Noble Truths. The first truth is just being honest. Life involves suffering or hardship. Everyone feels pain, sadness, or frustration sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Well, yeah. I dropped my ice cream yesterday and my knee hurt when I fell off my bike. Life definitely has bumps in it.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Right. But the second truth is the real mind bender. The Buddha realised that a lot of our extra suffering comes from what he called craving or clinging.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Clinging. Like holding on to the monkey bars really tight so you don't fall.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

More like holding on to things in your mind. Imagine you build a beautiful giant sandcastle at the beach. You love it. But the tide is coming in. If you cling to the idea that the sandcastle must stay there forever, you're going to be devastated when the water washes it away.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

But it's a great sandcastle. It's normal to want it to stay. It is normal, but the ocean doesn't care.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Everything in life changes. We suffer because we desperately try to hold on to things that are meant to change.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Whoa. So the problem isn't just that bad things happen. It's that we fight against reality because we want things to be different than they are. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

You just understood the heart of what the Buddha taught. The Buddha also said there's a way out of this suffering, a way to let go of all that tight clinging.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

He called it the middle path. The middle path? Like walking exactly in the middle of the sidewalk so you don't step on the grass.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Not quite. He used a really cool example from music. Think about a stringed instrument, like a guitar or an ancient lute. If you turn the tuning pegs and pull the string way too tight, what happens when you try to play it? Snap! It breaks and hits you in the face. Right, it snaps.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

And what if you make the string super loose and floppy? It just goes booing and sounds like a wet noodle. It doesn't make any music at all.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Exactly! To make beautiful music, the string can't be too tight, and it can't be too loose. It has to be right in the middle. The Buddha realised life is exactly the same.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Oh, so in the palace, his life was too loose, just avoiding hard things. But in the forest, starving himself, it was too tight.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yes, the middle path means not trying to escape reality, but also not punishing yourself.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

It's a gentle balance. That makes a lot of sense. Like when I'm playing a video game. If I don't care at all, it's boring, that's too loose. But if I grip the controller super hard and scream when I lose, that's way too tight.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

That is a perfect example, Finn. You can still care about the game, but let go of the anger when things don't go your way. Next time you're super upset about a change of plans, ask yourself, am I holding the string too tight?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

I really like that. It's a serious idea, but it feels really calm.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

It really is. And here is a wild fun fact. Today, there are over 500 million Buddhists around the world who follow this path.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

500 million? That's a huge amount of people tuning their strings. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

And you can actually go to Sri Lanka today and visit a massive tree that grew directly from a cutting of that exact same ancient Bodhi tree.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

People have been travelling there to sit under it for over 2,000 years. That is so cool. I want to sit under that tree and see if it helps me win my video games. Gracefully, of course. Alright, Finn, time for the quiz! Are you ready? Okay, I've got my thinking cap on. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

First question. What was the prince's name before he became the Buddha? Next one, this is tricky. What was the Buddha's central discovery called? The one that explains suffering and clinging? Question three. Which of the four sites showed the prince that people don't stay young forever? Alright, here's number four. What does the word Buddha actually mean? Last question. What object did the Buddha use to explain the middle way, showing it can't be too tight or too loose? Great job! Let's go through the answers. The answer to question one is his name was Siddhartha Gautama. For question two, his discovery is called the Four Noble Truths. Number three, the answer is the first sight, the old man. Question four. The word Buddha means the awakened one. And the final answer is a stringed musical instrument, like a lute or a guitar.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Phew, I got most of those. You know, I really like the idea of the middle path. It's kind of nice to know you don't have to hold on to things so tightly.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

I totally agree. It gives you permission to just let things change without fighting it so much. Even grown-ups need to remember that sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah! Hey, if you're listening and you like thinking about the middle path with us, please leave us a five-star review.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yes! Just scroll down on your podcast app and tap the five stars. It really helps other curious kids find the show.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Oh, and don't forget to check out our site, kidopoly.com. We've got tons of fun learning games and activities there.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Absolutely! And if you want a shout out on the show, or just want to tell us your favourite part of the episode, send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com. We love reading your emails. Thanks for exploring with us today. See you next time on Philosophy is not boring. Bye everyone.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Keep wondering!