The Buddha

The Buddha, “the awakened one”, was born Siddhārtha Gautama into the Śākya clan in the foothills of the Himalaya, at Lumbinī near the town of Kapilavastu, in what is now the border region of Nepal and India. The traditional dates place his life from about 563 to 483 BCE; many scholars now place his death around 400 BCE. The earliest accounts of his life are scattered through the discourses of the canon; the connected biographies, with their many marvels, are later.

According to tradition, he grew up in comfort, left home at about twenty-nine after encountering old age, sickness and death, and studied with meditation teachers before turning to severe austerities. Finding that neither indulgence nor self-mortification led to freedom, he adopted a middle way, and attained awakening while meditating under a tree at Bodh Gayā. He gave his first teaching, on the Four Noble Truths, to five former companions in the Deer Park near Vārāṇasī.

For some forty-five years he taught across the Ganges plain, founding communities of monks and nuns and gathering lay followers. He died at Kuśinagara at about eighty. His teachings were transmitted orally by his disciples, recited at councils after his death, and eventually written down in several canons, of which the Pali canon of the Theravāda is the most complete in an Indian language.