The Buddha

The Buddha, born Siddhartha Gautama about 563 BC at Lumbini in present-day Nepal, was a prince of the Shakya clan of Kapilavastu, and is therefore also called Shakyamuni, 'sage of the Shakyas'. He grew up in the palace, married and had a son, but at twenty-nine, struck by the sight of old age, sickness and death, he renounced his home to seek release from suffering. After six years of austerities he sat in meditation beneath the bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya and attained awakening. For forty-five years he wandered the Ganges plain teaching, and at eighty he passed into final nirvana at Kushinagar. The religion he founded spread across Asia and deeply shaped the civilisations of India, China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia and Tibet.