As with any history so old, there are many different stories of how Siddhartha Gautama made his way to enlightenment. Until recently, he was said to have lived in northern India between 563 and 483 BCE. However, new scholarship since the 1990s suggests the Buddha's lifetime was more likely to have been approximately 480 BCE-400 BCE. This revision affects the dating of many other events in early India that depend on the Buddha's date.

The Theravada tradition says Siddhartha was born around 566 BCE. His father was the Shakya clan leader,  Śuddhodana. Siddhartha came to be known as Shakyamunī (chief of the Shakyas).  His birth was an auspicious one. His mother dreamt one night that an elephant with six tusks and a head the color of rubies came down from the highest heaven and entered her womb on the right side. Eight Brahmins told her husband the child would be holy and achieve perfect wisdom. Later she entered the garden of Lumbini with her attendants, and walked beneath the Sala tree, which bent down. The queen took hold of the branch and looked up to the heavens. At that moment Siddhartha was born out of her side. He immediately took seven steps towards each quarter of heaven, and at each step a lotus flower sprung up. He then declared he would have no more births, that this was his last body and he would pluck out by the roots sorrow caused by birth and death.

Most traditions believe that the Buddha's mother passed away at his birth or a few days later. The legend says that a seer predicted shortly after his birth that Siddhartha would become either a great king or a great holy man.   The king, not wanting to lose his son to the spiritual life,  tried to make sure that Siddhartha never had any cause for dissatisfaction with his life, as that might drive him toward a spiritual path. Nevertheless, at the age of 29, he came across what has become known as the Four Passing Sights: an old crippled man, a sick man, a decaying corpse, and finally a wandering holy man. These four sights led him to the realization that birth, old age, sickness and death come to everyone, not only once but repeated for life after life in succession since time without beginning.. He decided to abandon his worldly life, leaving behind his privilege, rank, caste, and his wife and child, to take up the life of a wandering holy man in search of the answer to the problem of birth, old age, sickness, and death.

Indian holy men, in those days just as today, often engaged in a variety of ascetic practices designed to "mortify" the flesh. It was thought that by enduring pain and suffering, the soul became free from the cycle of rebirth with its pain and sorrow. Siddhartha proved adept at these practices, and was able to surpass his teachers. However, he found no solution to end all suffering and so, leaving behind his teachers, he and a small group of companions set out to take their austerities even further. After six years of ascetism, and nearly starving himself to death with no success, Siddhartha began to reconsider his path. Then he remembered a moment in childhood in which he had been watching his father start the season's plowing, and he had fallen into a naturally concentrated and focused state in which time seemed to stand still, and which was blissful and refreshing.

Taking a little buttermilk from a passing goatherd, he found a large Bodhi tree and set to meditating. He developed a new way of meditating, which began to bear fruit. His mind became concentrated and pure, and then, after six years since he began his quest in search of a solution to an end of suffering, he attained enlightenment, and became a Buddha. This place is in the state of Bihar in India.

According to one of the stories, immediately after his Enlightenment the Buddha was wondering whether or not he should teach the Dharma. He was concerned that, as human beings were overpowered by greed, hatred and delusion, they wouldn't be able to see the true Dharma, which was subtle, deep and hard to understand. Two gods, Brahma Sahampati and Indra, interceded, and asked that the Buddha teach the Dharma to the world, saying, "There will be those who will understand the Dharma". With his great compassion, the Buddha agreed to become a teacher. At the Deer Park near Varanasi in northern India he set in motion the Wheel of Dharma by delivering his first sermon to the group of five companions with whom he sought for enlightenment before. They, together with Buddha, formed the first sangha, the company of Buddhist monks.

Who is a Buddha?

The term "Buddha" is derived from the verbal root "budh", meaning "to awake up" or "to comprehend" and, literally means "the one who is awake". The word "Buddha" denotes not just the historical Buddha Shakyamuni or Siddhartha Gautama who lived some 2,500 years ago, but also a type of person, of which there have been many throughout the course of time. The historical Buddha is one member of the spiritual lineage of Buddhas, which is thought to extend beyond history into the past and into the indefinite future.

Major sects

Buddhism is usually divided into two main branches: Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. The followers of Theravada Buddhism take a more narrow set of scripture as the basis of their faith.  Mahayana Buddhists add some of the more apocryphal texts.   The adherents of Mahayana accept both the suttas and the Mahayana sutras as authentic and valid teachings of the Buddha, aimed at different types of person and different levels of spiritual penetration. For the Theravadins, the Mahayana sutras are deviant works of poetic fiction, not issuing from the Buddha himself; for the Mahayanists, those scriptures do indeed contain basic, foundational (or provisional) and therefore very precious teachings of the Buddha, while for those same Mahayanists the Mahayana sutras articulate the Buddha's higher, advanced and deeper doctrines, reserved for those who follow the Bodhisattva-Path, which includes the desire and the effort to achieve not only personal liberation, but to attain buddhahood in order to benefit all living beings

An alternative categorization of Buddhism follows the major languages of the Buddhist canon, which exists in Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese collections. (Some texts exist in original Sanskrit.) This would serve to divide East Asian Mahayana Buddhism from the Vajrayana form of Mahayana found in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, Korea, Japan (Tendai), Northern India (Sikkim & Ladakh/Leh), and Mongolia. In many works Zen is set out as a distinct school; this is due to the fact that Zen is a heavily Chinese form of Mahayana Buddhism, having developed and evolved for many centuries within China then traveling to Korea before being passed on to Japan. Still some others consider Zen to be a unique product of Japan and its island culture: fusion of Bushi ideas, Daoist philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism.

Principles of Buddhism

According to the Buddhist tradition, all phenomena (dharmas) are marked by three characteristics, sometimes referred to as the Dharma seals, that is anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and Anatta (no self).

The Four Noble Truths

The Buddha taught that life was dissatisfactory because of craving, but that this condition was curable by following the Noble Eightfold Path.  This teaching is called the Four Noble Truths. It is believed by many that this was the first teaching of the Buddha, which he gave under a bodhi tree. They are:

Buddhism teaches that suffering is caused by desire and want. The central theory of Buddhist philosophy that explains the cause of suffering is the chain of causation, and further that everything in the world, including the soul, is only relative and momentary. According to the theory of karma, no action is independent but depends upon its cause. The soul, which is not considered an everlasting reality, goes through an eternal cycle of births and deaths, broken only when one attains Nirvana.

The Noble Eightfold Path

In order to fully understand the noble truths and investigate whether they were in fact true, Buddha recommended that a certain lifestyle or path be followed which consists of:

• Right View - acknowledging the Four Noble Truths
• Right Intentions - committing to the dharma and reaching nirvana
• Right Speech - avoiding gossip, lies, and other harmful words
• Right Conduct - living a moral life, not harming others
• Right Livelihood - working at a job that is honest and does not take advantage of others
• Right Effort - ending evil thoughts and replacing them with positive ones
• Right Mindfulness - becoming aware of all mental and physical states during daily activity and meditation
• Right Concentration - reaching the deepest states of meditation that lead to nirvana

The Eightfold Path essentially consists of meditation, following the precepts, and cultivating the positive converse of the precepts (e.g. benefiting living beings is the converse of the first precept of harmlessness). The Path may also be thought of as a way of developing mental and moral discipline.