There now ensued a second crisis in Gautama’s career which culminated in his withstanding the renewed attacks of the tempter after violent struggles.

Soon after, if not on the very day when his disciples had left him, he wandered out toward the banks of the Nairaujara, receiving his morning meal from the hands of Sujuta, the daughter of a neighboring villager, and sat down to eat it under the shade of a large tree (ficus religiosa), called from that day the sacred “Bo tree,” or tree of wisdom.  He remained there all day long, pondering what next to do.  All the attractions of the luxurious home he had abandoned rose up before him most alluringly.  But as the day ended his lofty spirit had won the victory.  All doubts had lifted as mists before the morning sun.  He had become Buddha, that is, enlightened.  He had grasped the solution of the great mystery of sorrow.  He thought, having solved its causes and its cure, he had gained the haven of peace, and believed that in the power over the human heart of inward culture and of love to others he had discovered a foundation which could never be shaken.

From this time Gautama claimed no merit for penances.  A feeling of great loneliness possessed him as he arrived at his psychological and ethical conclusions.  He almost despaired of winning his fellow-men to his system of salvation, salvation merely by self-control and love, without any of the rites, ceremonies, charms, or incantations of the Hindu religion.

The thought of mankind, otherwise, as he imagined, utterly doomed and lost, made Gautama resolve, at whatever hazard, to proclaim his doctrine to the world.  It is certain that he had a most intense belief in himself and his mission.

He had intended first to proclaim his new doctrine to his old teachers, Alara and Udraka, but finding that they were dead, he proceeded to the deer forest near Benares where his former disciples were then living.  In the cool of the evening he enters the deer-park near the city, but his former disciples resolve not to recognize him as a master.  He tells them that they are still in the way of death, whereas he has found the way of salvation and can lead them to it, having become a Buddha.  And as they reply with objections to his claims, he explains the fundamental truths of his system and principles of his new gospel, which the aged Kondanya was the first to accept from his master’s lips.  This exposition is preserved in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Sutra of the Foundations of the Kingdom of Righteousness.

Gautama Buddha taught that everything corporeal is material and therefore impermanent.  Man in his bodily existence is liable to sorrow, decay, and death.  The reign of unholy desires in his heart produces unsatisfactory longings, useless weariness, and care.  Attempted purification by oppressing the body is only wasted effort.  It is the moral evil of the heart which keeps a man chained down in the degraded state of bodily life, which binds him in a union with the material world.  Virtue and goodness will only insure him for a time, and, in another birth, a higher form of material life.  From the chains of existence only the complete eradication of all evil will set him free.