The Life of the Buddha

     There is little historical detail surrounding the life if Siddharta Gautama, believed to be the latest and most holy of a long line of Buddhas, bat it is the legend of his life which is the core of the Buddhist religion. The Buddha was born around586 BCe to a princely the  family of thrhe warrior caste, a family which sheltered him from a hardships of ordinary life. However, while out of the palace one day he saw three things: an invalid, an old man,and a corpse. (Some texts state that the Buddha also saw a fourth sight: a holy man hwo had renounced all the pleasurs of life.) The shock of these sights forced him to rethink his values and his lifestyle and, although Gautama now has wife and a baby son, he left his family to searc for truth and knowedge, and for a way to free mankind from the pain of fear and suffering.

          This was the biginning of Gautama´s nomadic life of reflection, study and austerity. He finally achieved the revelation he sought: at a place called Bodh-Gaya, during meditation under a sacred peepul tree (or a bodhi tree, often called ´bo tree´), he received a full insight into the nature of the world.

          As Gautama has now attauned enlightenment, he was henceforth know by the honorific title ´the Buddha´. Buddha means ´ Enlightened One´, and denotes a state of being, the state of the direct awareness of dharma. Thereafter, he travelled round India, teaching and winning disciples. He died when about 80 yeas old his deth having been foretold by heavenly portents.

 

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