Buddhism was founded in India, 528 BC, by Siddhartha Gautama known as "Buddha" (the enlightened one). His devotees also call him "Bhagara" (Lord), and "Tathagata" (True-Winner).
Gautama (563-483), was a Prince born in Lumbini near Nepal, where the legend says he had 40,000 dancing girls at his disposal... But he wander around the palace and he met successfully with "an old man begging for alms, a diseased man, a dead man, and a monk"... He was so impressed that on his 29th birthday he left palace, his wife and child and started to search for the cause of suffering and to find peace and happiness, following two yoga masters, then as a begging monk with severe asceticism... Finally, at age 35, he went near Benares and for 7 weeks he meditated under a fig tree, or a pipal tree, until he found "in a flash" his way, and became Buddha, the enlightened one, under the "Bodhi tree", or "Bo tree" (wisdom tree)... And life's problems were no longer an enigma to him!.
He died of dysentery at age 80, upon eating some poisoned mush-rooms at the home of Cunda the smith... He did not blame Cunda for the mush-rooms, but rather his last command was that his companions tell Cunda that all of the meals he had eaten in his life two stood out as exceptional blessings. One was the meal under the Bo tree; the other the mush-rooms which were opening to him the final gates to Nirvana.
Most people say his body was cremated, but archaeologists have recovered a huge sandstone casket near Kapilvastu, India, and the inscription shows they are the mortal remains of Gautama Buddha (his skeleton).
Much of Buddha's life is legend, but one gets the impression to meet a great one in the history of humanity. He is a combination of a cool head and a warm heart: One of the greatest rationalists, a master in dialogue, like Socrates... And on the other hand, with a Franciscan tenderness so strong as to have caused his message to be subtitled "a religion of infinite compassion". Like St. Francis of Assisi he claimed as his friends the sun, the moon, the birds and trees...
His social and ethical teachings were much like those of Jesus Christ; the cemetery meditations of Buddha can be read in any Christian temple... All Buddhists love the Sermon on the Mountain in Matt.5-8... The central social thesis of Buddhism is love and compassion to all of nature's creation because they are sacred and deserving of life and respect.
Gautama (563-483), was a Prince born in Lumbini near Nepal, where the legend says he had 40,000 dancing girls at his disposal... But he wander around the palace and he met successfully with "an old man begging for alms, a diseased man, a dead man, and a monk"... He was so impressed that on his 29th birthday he left palace, his wife and child and started to search for the cause of suffering and to find peace and happiness, following two yoga masters, then as a begging monk with severe asceticism... Finally, at age 35, he went near Benares and for 7 weeks he meditated under a fig tree, or a pipal tree, until he found "in a flash" his way, and became Buddha, the enlightened one, under the "Bodhi tree", or "Bo tree" (wisdom tree)... And life's problems were no longer an enigma to him!.
He died of dysentery at age 80, upon eating some poisoned mush-rooms at the home of Cunda the smith... He did not blame Cunda for the mush-rooms, but rather his last command was that his companions tell Cunda that all of the meals he had eaten in his life two stood out as exceptional blessings. One was the meal under the Bo tree; the other the mush-rooms which were opening to him the final gates to Nirvana.
Most people say his body was cremated, but archaeologists have recovered a huge sandstone casket near Kapilvastu, India, and the inscription shows they are the mortal remains of Gautama Buddha (his skeleton).
Much of Buddha's life is legend, but one gets the impression to meet a great one in the history of humanity. He is a combination of a cool head and a warm heart: One of the greatest rationalists, a master in dialogue, like Socrates... And on the other hand, with a Franciscan tenderness so strong as to have caused his message to be subtitled "a religion of infinite compassion". Like St. Francis of Assisi he claimed as his friends the sun, the moon, the birds and trees...
His social and ethical teachings were much like those of Jesus Christ; the cemetery meditations of Buddha can be read in any Christian temple... All Buddhists love the Sermon on the Mountain in Matt.5-8... The central social thesis of Buddhism is love and compassion to all of nature's creation because they are sacred and deserving of life and respect.
