Hi Everyone!! This article will share Class 10 The Sermon at Benares Character Sketch.
In my previous posts, I have shared The Sermon at Benares Textbook Questions & Answers and The Sermon at Benares Important Questions & Answers so, make sure to check these posts as well.
Class 10 The Sermon at Benares Character Sketch
Question 1: Write the character sketch of Gautama Buddha.
Answer: Gautama Buddha (563 B.C. – 483 B.C.) began life as a prince named Siddhartha Gautama, in northern India. At twelve, he was sent away for schooling in the Hindu sacred scriptures and four years later he returned home to marry a princess. They had a son and Siddhartha lived a royal life for ten years with his family. At about the age of twenty-five, he came out of this shielded life when he went out on a hunting expedition. The sights of a sick man, an aged man, a funeral procession, and finally a monk begging for alms so moved Gautama that he at once went out into the world to seek enlightenment concerning the sorrows he had witnessed.
After wandering for seven years, Siddhartha finally sat down under a peepal tree, where he vowed to stay until he got enlightenment. He got enlightened after seven days and he renamed the tree the Bodhi Tree (Tree of Wisdom) and began to teach and to share his new understandings. At that point he became to be known as the Buddha (the Awakened or the Enlightened).
As Buddha was having a deep psychological insight, he made Kisa Gotami learn the inevitability of death from her own experience. He knew that Kisa would learn this through her experience and not through his words. Buddha’s sermon will always remain a source of comfort to humanity.
Question 2: Write the character sketch of Kisa Gotami.
Answer: A simple woman, Kisa Gotami was so devastated when her only son died. She was so overcome by grief that she was not able to reconcile to this terrible loss and she went from one person to other in her neighbourhood asking for some medicine that could bring her dead son back to life. Everyone thought that she had lost her sense of reasoning as a dead person could not be revived. In this process, she came across a man who though was not able to help her but was confident that Sakyamuni, the Buddha would be able to find some solution. So, he sent her to Sakyamuni. Buddha knew that Kisa would able to understand the inevitability of death through her own experience. So, he asked her to bring a handful of mustard seeds from a house where no near and dear one had ever died.
Kisa Gotami was such a determined lady and was was so driven by her love for her son that she went out to bring a handful of mustard seeds. After wandering from house to house, she found that each family had more of their members among dead than among the living. There was no family who has not suffered pangs of death. She realised that she had been selfish in her grief and so, she accepted that death is universal and common to all.
So, these were the character sketches.