The Buddha in 60 seconds!

picture of Buddha's Parinirvana

The Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama around the year 560 BCE. He was a member of a wealthy aristocratic family of the Shakyan clan in what is now Nepal.
For twenty-nine years he lived a protected and luxurious existence but found a life devoted to material pleasures empty and unfulfilling.
Disobeying his father’s orders he went out into the nearby city and saw The Four Sights - old age, sickness, death and a wandering holy man.
These sights heightened his sense of dissatisfaction and his desire to find meaning in life. He decided to leave his privileged existence and Go Forth.
He spent six years as a wandering Truth-seeker, learning from religious teachers and undertaking harsh ascetic practices as a path to the Truth.
Following The Middle Way between the extremes of denial and self- indulgence he gained Enlightenment while meditating under a tree (afterwards known as the Bodhi Tree).
Buddhists believe that at his Enlightenment the Buddha understood the nature of existence and discerned the cause of suffering.
After his Enlightenment he was known as the Buddha, which means ‘One who is awake [to the Truth about the way things are]’.

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