Kassapa Buddha

According to the Pali Canon's Theravāda Buddhist chronicle, Kassapa is the twenty-seventh of the twenty-nine named Buddhas, the sixth of the Seven Buddhas of Antiquity, and the third of the 1002 Buddhas of the present kalpa.

The present kalpa is called a mahabhadrakalpa, the "great auspicious aeon". The first five Buddhas of the present kalpa are:

1. Kakusandha Buddha, the first Buddha of the bhadrakalpa
2. Koṇāgamana Buddha, the second Buddha of the bhadrakalpa
3. Kassapa Buddha, the third Buddha of the bhadrakalpa
4. Gautama Buddha, the fourth and present Buddha of the bhadrakalpa
5. Maitreya, the fifth and future Buddha of the bhadrakalpa

Life

Kassapa was born in Isipatana Deer Park, which is present day Deer Park at Sarnath, located near Varanasi. His parents were the Brahmins Brahmadatta and Dhanavatī.

According to the Chronicle, his body was twenty cubits high, and he lived for two thousand years in three different palaces. They are Hamsa, Yasa, and Sirinanda. (The BuA.217 calls the first two palaces Hamsavā and Yasavā). His wife was Sunanda, who bore him a son named Vijitasena.

Kassapa decided to give up his worldly life, and instantly his mansion flew up into the air with the people, as on a potter's wheel of lights, whose journey in the sky "captivated their hearts," The mansion landed on the ground, with a Bodhi Tree in its center. Here Kassapa took offered robes. His wife and her attendants, along with the men that accompanied Kassapa, exited the mansion and renounced their worldly lives. Thus, the mansion is the vehicle in which Kassapa Buddha renounced the world.

He practiced austerities for only seven days. Just before attaining enlightenment, he accepted a meal of milk-rice from Sunanda and grass for his seat from a yavapālaka named Soma. His Bodhi Tree, the tree under which he attained enlightenment, was a banyan, and he preached his first sermon at Isipatana Deer Park (in Sarnath) to an assembly of nuns and monks who had renounced the world in his company.

Kassapa performed The Twin Miracle at the foot of an asana tree outside Sundar Nagar. He travelled to the celestial realm of Tavatisma where he taught his mother in the Sudhamma assembly hall. He held only one assembly of his arhat disciples, and taught the dharma on five occasions. Among his most famous conversions was that of demon Nāradeva, a Yaksha.

His chief disciples among monks were Tissa and Bhāradvāja, and among nuns were Anulā Theri and Uruvelā Theri. His attendant was Sabbamitta. Among his chief patrons, the males were Sumangala and Ghattīkāra, and the females were Vijitasenā Upāsikā and Bhaddā Upāsikā.

Kassapa lived for sixteen thousand years, and passed in the city of Kashi, in the Kashi Kingdom, now known as Varanasi, in the modern-day Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Over his relics was raised a stupa one league in height, each brick of which was worth one crore (ten million) rupees.