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The founder of Buddhism and the primary enlightenment guiding light to the Buddhist was Siddharta Gautama. Known after his enlightenment as the Sakyamuni Buddha and Gautama Buddha, he was born around 563 B.C., in Kapilavastu, India into the clan of the Shakyas. The Shakyas were a warrior tribe that inhabited an area just below the Himalayan foothills. His father was a Chieftain so young Siddhartha grew up as a prince surrounded by luxury and shielded from the harsh realities and vicissitudes of ordinary life. At sixteen, he was married to the princess Yasodhara. They had a son Rahula. Many years later, Siddhartha went on a rare visit outside the palace. When he saw an old man, a sick man, and a dead man, he encountered suffering for the first time. This awakened compassion within his heart. Shortly afterwards, he felt an intense desire to go on a spiritual pilgrimage in quest of truth and to find a path, (which later became known as Buddhism or the Way of the Buddha), for others to follow that would put an end to their pain and suffering.
His wife had passed on
several years before so Siddhartha turned the leadership of the Shakya clan over
to his son Rahula who had been recently married. The storytelling about the life
of Siddharta has been somewhat distorted over the years to justify a monastic
lifestyle in preference to that of a married householder in the quest for
enlightenment.
Siddharta was an honorable and responsible man who would not abandon his wife, his child, or his kinfolk to go on a spiritual journey. So it was a widowed Siddhartha with a newly married clan chieftain son who became a wandering ascetic. In India at the time Siddhartha began his search for truth, the path of a wandering ascetic, like the path of a brahmin or a householder, was an esteemed and well traveled path. First he studied Yogic meditation with two Brahmin hermits and Gautama Buddha succeeded in attaining high meditative states. Not fully satisfied by this path, Siddhartha continued his quest by submitting himself to the severe austerities of prolonged fasting and suspended breathing. When this led him to the brink of death, he left all teachers and sat under a Bodhi Tree facing east. He remained there in meditation until he attained enlightenment on the night of the full moon, ascending the Dhyana, the four trance stages, to become Gautama Buddha or the Enlightened One. Gautama Buddha gave his first sermon about Buddhism and Buddhist practices at the age of thirty-five was in the Deer Park at Sarnath. It was called, "Turning the Wheel of Dharma". Buddha taught a new spiritual path which he called "The Middle Way" ... Continue on
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