Gautama Buddha

Gautama Buddha: The founder of Buddhism, aka Siddhartha, born around -563-486 B.C.E.

The name is considered a title, not a person, appropriate to the Bhuddist belief that there an infinite number of past and present Buddhas.

What has been discerned is that Siddhartha was born a prince of the Shakiyas, on the India/Nepal boorder. Living a “princely life with three palaces but, at the age of 30, he happened upon an old man, a sick man and a corpse. Thus, he learned of age, illness and death. This triggered the great Departure, when his yearning for Truth led him away from his regal life to many teachers for seven years. Unsatisfied, he meditated practicing Anappana-sati ( awareness of breathing) under the famed Bodhi tree, where he realized the Four Noble Truths: that suffering was an inherent part of existance; that the origin of suffering is ignorance; that attachment and craving are the symptoms of ignorance and atcan be extinguished; that following the Noble Eightfold Path releases one from attachment. He became self realized.

He taught in Sarmath his eightfold path, offering a “middle way” between self indulgence and self mortification which led to liberation. He died from eating poisen mushrooms, reaking the cycle of rebirth and death. His teachings were memorialized in an oral traditon called the Tripitaka.

See entry here.

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