Life of the Buddha
Ascetic
Gautama with his five companions, who later comprised the first
Sangha. Wall painting in a
Laotian temple
Main article:
Gautama Buddha
Conventional narratives on the Buddha's life, such as the following, draw heavily on Theravada
Tipitaka scriptures. Later texts—such as the Mahayana
Lalitavistara Sutra—give different accounts.
According to the conventional narrative, the Buddha was born in
Lumbini, around the year 563 BCE, and raised in
Kapilavastu; both in modern-day
Nepal.
[8][9]
Shortly after Siddhartha's birth, an
astrologer visited the young prince's father—King
Śuddhodana—and prophesied that Siddhartha would either become a great king or renounce the material world to become a holy man, depending on whether he saw what life was like outside the palace walls.
Śuddhodana was determined to see his son become a king so he prevented him from leaving the palace grounds. But at age 29, despite his father's efforts, Siddhartha ventured beyond the palace several times. In a series of encounters—known in Buddhist literature as the
four sights[10]—he learned of the suffering of ordinary people, encountering an old man, a sick man, a corpse and, finally, an
ascetic holy man, apparently content and at peace with the world. These experiences prompted Gautama eventually to abandon royal life and take up a spiritual quest.
Gautama first attempted an extreme ascetic life and almost starved himself to death in the process. But, after accepting milk and rice from a village girl in a pivotal moment, he changed his approach. He concluded that extreme ascetic practices, such as prolonged fasting, breath-holding, and exposure to pain, brought little spiritual benefit. He saw them as forms of self-hatred that were therefore counterproductive.
[11] He abandoned asceticism, concentrating instead on
anapanasati meditation, through which he discovered what Buddhists call the
Middle Way: a path of moderation between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification.
Gautama was now determined to complete his spiritual quest. At the age of 35, he famously sat in meditation under a
sacred fig tree—also known as the
Bodhi tree—in the town of
Bodh Gaya,
India, and vowed not to rise before achieving
enlightenment. After many days, he finally awakened to the ultimate nature of reality, thereby
liberating himself from the
cycle of suffering and rebirth, and arose as a
fully enlightened being. Soon thereafter, he attracted a band of followers and instituted a
monastic order. Now as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his life teaching the
path of awakening he discovered, traveling throughout the northeastern part of the Indian subcontinent,
[12][13] and died at the age of 80 (483 BCE) in
Kushinagar, India.
Scholars are hesitant to make unqualified claims about the historical facts of the Buddha's life. Most accept that he lived, taught and founded a monastic order but do not consistently accept the details in his biographies.
[14][15] According to author Michael Carrithers, while there are good reasons to doubt the traditional account, "the outline of the life must be true: birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation, teaching, death."
[16]
In writing her biography of Buddha,
Karen Armstrong noted, "It is obviously difficult, therefore, to write a biography of the Buddha that will meet modern criteria, because we have very little information that can be considered historically sound... [but] we can be reasonably confident Siddhatta Gotama did indeed exist and that his disciples preserved the memory of his l
