The Journey of Siddhartha Gotama Towards Enlightenment : หน้า 7/263

he, himself, didn’t engage in the battle against delusion, there would be no-one else to do it in his place. Thus with anxiety, *not only* for his own lot in life, *not only* for the lot of his family, but for *all* the people of the world imprisoned in the Triple World of *samsāra*, subject to the fate of old age, sickness and death, he decided to renounce the world in search of a way to the end of suffering — knowledge once found, which would lead not only to his own salvation, but that of the whole of mankind for his generation and generations to come. Thirdly, long before renouncing the world, over the course of countless lifetimes Siddhartha Gotama had accrued a *sub*-stantial foundation of meditation. Some of this background is exhibited by how, during the Royal Ploughing Ceremony at the age of only seven years, Siddhartha could attain the first absorption [*paṭhama jhāna*] without instruction. In fact, if you study the previous lifetimes of Siddhartha Gotama, when he was still pursuing Perfections as the *bodhisatva*, he had already attained five of the six mental powers [*abhiññā*] since the time 4 x 10¹⁴⁰ *kappas* and 100,000 *mahākappas* before when he received the prophecy of his forthcoming Buddhahood from Dipaṅkara Buddha. It is recorded, that at that time, if the *bodhisatva* had wished to attain arahanthood, he could have done so immediately thereby benefitting personally from all the Perfections he had accrued for himself. Instead he decided to pursue Perfections further until reaching Buddhahood, so that not only could he reach an end of suffering, but could teach other worldings to attain an end of suffering too. Spiritual tradition contemporary to the Buddha was largely the realm of theory. All theories of liberation available before