Siddhartha Gautama was born in the sixth century BCE in what is now Nepal. His father, Suddhodana, was the ruler of the Sakya people. Siddhartha grew up living the extravagant life of a young prince. Tradition tells us that Suddhodana had feared that the prince might leave the palace to take up the life of a religious wanderer. So he arranged for his son to be sheltered from all the harsh realities of life. When the prince reached the age of sixteen, Suddhodana arranged for him to be married to his cousin, a charming princess named Yasodhara.
One day, however, Siddhartha ventured out into the world and was confronted with the inevitability of aging, illness, and death. Overcome by dismay, the young prince wondered if there might be a happiness that was not subject to change and decay. Then, seeing a forest wanderer, he decided that only by taking up the life of a spiritual seeker could he find the answer to his question. That night, at the age of twenty-nine, he left his kingdom and newborn son and entered the wilderness.
For six years, Siddhartha submitted himself to rigorous ascetic practices. First he studied with different religious teachers, but, dissatisfied with what they saw as being their highest goal, he set out to practice extreme physical austerities on his own. Yet even through such self-denial, he did not reach his goal. Then one day he remembered a state of calm mental absorption that he had experienced while sitting under a tree as a child, and realized that only through such a state of calm could liberation be found. And yet the strength of that calm could not be reached when the body was weak from practicing austerities. The path to true happiness required balance—or the middle way—rather than the extremes of self-indulgence or self-denial. So on that day he ended his severe austerities and accepted a gift of rice-milk offered to him by a young woman.
That night Siddhartha sat under the bodhi tree and meditated until dawn. In the first watch of the night he remembered his past lives; in the second watch, around midnight, he saw how beings die and are reborn through the power of their karma, which in turn was shaped by the skilfulness of their intentions; in the third watch, toward dawn, he purified his mind of all cravings, attachments, and defilements, and finally of all intentions, both skilful and not. With that, he attained awakening at the age of thirty-five, thus earning the title of Buddha, or “Awakened One.”
For the remainder of his life, the Buddha taught the dharma to others: men, women, and children; rich and poor; people from all walks of life and all levels of society—so that they, too, might attain awakening. He established a sangha, or community of monks and nuns, to maintain his teachings after his death. Then, one full-moon night in May when he had reached the age of eighty, he lay down between two trees in a forest park and gave his last teachings to the assembled followers, counseling them to be heedful in completing their practice of the dharma. With that, he entered total Nirvana .
And when the Buddha had passed away, Sakka, the chief of the deities, uttered the following:
Impermanent are all conditioned things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature.
They come into being and pass away.
Release from them is bliss supreme.