As a Buddha, seeing the universe with his divine eye, he saw beings were so overwhelmed by ignorance that he thought he would give up his desire to help beings escape from suffering.
Only upon being insisted by a brahma did he resolve to guide beings onto the path to enlightenment.
Once the venerable Mahæmoggallana reported to the Buddha that he had seen a hungry being peta. The Buddha replied that he saw at the beginning of his Buddhahood all forms of hungry being petas, and hell-beings in all forms of woe. But he knew nobody would believe him and therefore kept silent about those beings.
‘I do not argue with the world, Moggallæna, but only the world comes and argue with me,’ the lord Buddha had said.
The teachings taught by the Buddha during his forty five years as a Buddha is the dhamma.
His disciples, the monks, are the samgha. A Buddha does not always appear in the world to guide beings to get liberated from suffering. After a Buddha has appeared and has entered parinibbana, innumerable world cycles take place where there is no Buddha. These world cycles where no Buddha appears are known as suñña kappæ.
We have traveled in the samsara in various forms in various planes. All beings have been brahmas, deties; all beings have screamed in boiling lava of hell, all beings have, in the long samsara, been kings, beggars, the rich, the poor;all beings have, in the long samsara, been animals of all kinds.
When a Buddha appears in the world and if we are not among beings that attain enlightenment, then we go on and on, in the endless cycle of death and rebirth which is samsara.
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