Buddha was a man by the name of Siddhartha Gautama; he was born in India in the worrier calss in about 565 BCE to a prince of the Sakya tribe of Nepal. Although his date is not clearly ascertainable, he is the first man in Indian history whose date can be assigned to a limited period with any degree of certainty. Siddhartha was twenty-nine years old when he left the comforts of his home to seek the meaning of the suffering he saw around him. He attained enlightenment after searching for the truth for six years when he abandoned the way of self-mortification and instead sat in mindful meditation beneath a Bodhi tree. It was then that he founded the Buddhism religion and philosophy and became the Buddha, the enlightened one. He wandered the plains of northeastern India for 45 years more, teaching the path or Dharma he had realized in that moment
One of the great world religions, Buddhism takes as its goal the escape from suffering and the cycle of rebirth and the attainment of nirvana, and it emphasizes meditation and the observance of moral precepts. During his lifetime the Buddhist monastic order (sangha) was established, and his disciples originally transmitted his teachings orally. He adopted some ideas from the Hinduism of his time, notably the doctrine of karma, but also rejected many of its doctrines and all of its gods.
The first schools of Buddhism that were developed have distinctive practices and unique collections of accepted texts. These schools are known as the Theravada or Hinayana in Southeast Asia, and the Mahayana in China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. A third school, called the Vajrayana, has a long tradition in Tibet and Japan. Buddhism has largely disappeared from India, its country of ...