BUDDHA'S LIFE

Buddha's Life
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was born in Lumbini in 563 BC as the son of the ruler of a petty kingdom. According to legend, at his birth, sages recognized in him the marks of a great man with the potential to become either a sage or the ruler of an empire. The young prince was raised in sheltered luxury, until at the age of 29. He realized how empty his life to this point had been. Renouncing all earthly attachments, he embarked on a quest for peace and enlightenment, seeking for release from the cycle of rebirths, seeking path to get rid of all the sufferings. For the next few years he practiced Yoga and adopted a life of radical asceticism.
Eventually he gave up this approach as fruitless and instead adopted a middle path between the life of indulgence and that of self-denial. Sitting under the Bodhi tree, he meditated, rising through a series of higher states of consciousness until he attained the enlightenment for which he had been searching. Once having known this ultimate truth, the Buddha began to preach, wandering from place to place, gathering a body of disciples, and organizing them into a monastic community known as the sangha. In this way he spent 45 years just sharing the Dhamma.