NCERT Book Class 10 English (First Flight) Chapter 8 The Sermon at Benares; For Anne Gregory

BEFORE YOU READ

Activity
Use a dictionary or ask for your teacher’s help as you discuss
the following questions in groups.
1. What is a sermon? Is it different from a lecture or a talk? Can
this word also be used in a negative way or as a joke (as in
“my mother’s sermon about getting my work done on time…”)?
2. Find out the meanings of the words and phrases given in
the box.

afflicted with be composed desolation
lamentation procure be subject to

3. Have you heard of the Sermon on the Mount? Who delivered
it? Who do you think delivered a sermon at Benares?

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 lived for ten years as befitted royalty. At about
the age of twenty-five, the Prince, heretofore shielded
from the sufferings of the world, while out hunting
chanced upon a sick man, then an aged man, then chanced upon

a funeral procession, and finally a monk begging came across by

chance
for alms. These sights so moved him that he at
once went out into the world to seek enlightenment
concerning the sorrows he had witnessed. enlightenment

a state of high
He wandered for seven years and finally sat
spiritual knowledge
down under a peepal tree, where he vowed to stay