The Life of Buddha

Birth

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha-to-be, was born in the sixth century BCE in Lumbini, to the north of the holy Indian city of Varanasi. His father, Suddhodana, was King of the Shakya clan, and ruler of one of several kingdoms that existed in India at the time.
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Childhood

Queen Mayadevi died soon after the birth and Siddhartha was brought up by his aunt. From earliest childhood he showed compassionate and meditative qualities. When a great sage by the name of Asita came to visit the Shakya court, he told the King that Siddhartha would not become a universal monarch but a Buddha, an Enlightened One. The sage showed that the child was endowed with the thirty-two auspicious marks of spiritual awareness, such as a broad forehead, large eyes, thick eyelashes and so on, which indicated a life of spiritual achievement.
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Discovering Sorrow

One day Siddhartha went out riding with his charioteer Chandaka. As he left the palace, he came upon an old man with bent body and legs trembling with the decrepitude of age. Slowly, painfully and leaning heavily upon his stick the old man was struggling down the road. Siddhartha had never before seen the infirmity of old age. He pulled his chariot to a halt and asked Chandaka what ailed the man. Chandaka replied that the man was old and his body was failing. In an anguished voice, Prince Siddhartha asked if all human beings were fated to grow old as such and Chandaka replied this was a fact of life. Siddhartha returned to the palace in a troubled state of mind.
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Search for truth

Siddhartha travelled through the Gangetic plain in search of truth. He paused now and again to study with renowned teachers and in time came to the city of Vaishali. He had heard of a great teacher living there named Kalapa Arada who lived with 300 disciples in strict monastic discipline. Siddhartha listened and practiced the instructions of the sage but remained unsatisfied. He realised that Kalapa Arada's path was not the one he wished to pursue and so he moved on.
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Realisation

Choosing a pipal tree close to the river, he undertook to meditate until he attained the knowledge he sought. A local grass cutter offered him some soft green kusha grass for a cushion and he walked around the tree seven times and then he prepared his seat. Sitting down facing eastwards he began to meditate, vowing that he would not get up from that spot until he had attained enlightenment.
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Teaching

After attaining enlightenment, the Buddha remained seated for seven days. In all, it was forty-nine days before he would first teach the true path that he had discovered.
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Passing Away

When the Buddha was eighty years of age, he announced that his time was at an end, and he prepared his followers for his Paranirvana, the great cessation of his earthly being. His constant attendant during this time was his disciple Ananda. The Buddha told Ananda that after his death the Sangha should not think their master's words had come to an end. The truth of the Dharma and the Sangha would continue to guide and teach those who came after he had died.
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Buddhism