The man who became the Buddha was not a god. He never claimed to be. He was a human being who set out to solve the problem of human suffering — and according to the tradition he founded, he succeeded.
The Birth of a Prince
Siddhartha Gautama was born around 563 BCE (scholars debate the exact date) in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal. His father was Suddhodana, a king of the Shakya clan. When astrologers examined the newborn prince, they made a prediction: he would become either a great king or a great renunciant.
His father, wanting a great king, surrounded young Siddhartha with every luxury. He grew up in palaces, married a beautiful woman named Yasodhara, had a son named Rahula, and was shielded — by royal decree — from seeing sickness, old age, or death.
The Four Sights
The protection could not last forever. According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha took four chariot rides outside the palace that changed everything:
He saw an old man — bent, frail, barely able to walk. He had never seen old age before. His charioteer explained: this happens to everyone.
He saw a sick man — feverish, in pain, lying in the road. He had never seen illness before.
He saw a corpse — being carried to cremation. He had never seen death before.
He saw a wandering ascetic — a homeless monk, wearing a simple robe, carrying a begging bowl, radiating calm. The monk had renounced everything, yet seemed at peace.
That night, Siddhartha left the palace, leaving behind his wife, his son, his inheritance, and his kingdom. He was twenty-nine years old.
The Search
For six years, Siddhartha searched for the answer to suffering. He studied under the greatest meditation teachers of his day, mastering their techniques and then finding them insufficient. He practiced extreme asceticism — starving himself, sleeping on thorns — until he was so thin that, as the texts say, he could feel his spine through his stomach.
He nearly died. And he still had not found what he was looking for.
Finally, he took a meal offered by a village girl, recovered his strength, sat down under a fig tree (the Bodhi tree, in what is now Bodh Gaya, India), and made a resolution: he would not rise until he understood.
The Night of Enlightenment
That night — the full moon night of Vesak, in the Indian month of Vaisaka — Siddhartha sat in meditation. According to tradition, the demon Mara launched temptations and attacks to break his concentration: sensual pleasures, fear, doubt. Siddhartha touched the earth with his right hand — calling the earth itself to witness his resolve — and continued.
By dawn, he had attained *nibbana* (nirvana) — the extinguishing of craving and ignorance that is the cause of suffering. He saw the nature of reality clearly: the arising and passing of all phenomena, governed by cause and effect. He saw the chain of dependent origination that keeps beings locked in suffering. And he saw how that chain could be broken.
He was thirty-five years old. He would spend the next forty-five years teaching what he had found.
The Teaching
For four decades, the Buddha walked the roads of northern India teaching anyone who would listen — kings and merchants, outcasts and Brahmins, men and women. His core teaching was the Four Noble Truths: that suffering exists, that it has a cause (craving), that it can end, and that there is a path to its ending (the Eightfold Path).
He died at eighty, in Kushinagar, lying on his side between two trees. His last words, according to the Pali Canon: *"All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your salvation with diligence."*
Traditions Covered