Origin of Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE, gradually spread from India throughout Asia to Central Asia, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Southeast Asia, as well as to East Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Japan.
As with any history so old, there are many different stories of how the Buddha came to be. One legend and the most commonly accepted by historians have it that he was born around 566 BCE. His birthplace is said to be Lumbini in the Shakya state, one of a small group of old oligarchic republics in what is now Nepal. His father was the Shakya king Suddhodana, and Siddhartha lived in luxury, being spared all hardship.
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 beginningless time. He decided to abandon his worldly life, leaving behind his wife, child and rank, etc. 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.
Later on 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...............
