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Siddhartha Gautama was born about 563 B.C. He wanted to be at peace after seeing a monk
who was peaceful so he became a monk. In addition, Siddhartha wanted to end suffering and find the meaning of life.
Siddhartha traveled in search of acquiring wisdom from others. However, he decided to look for answers within
himself by meditating. Siddhartha Gautama meditated under a fig tree for 49 days until he gained the wisdom he wanted.
For 49 more days, Siddhartha stayed under the tree and meditated on what he had learned. He then began teaching others.
(There are fig trees and fig plants)
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Buddha means
"Awakened One".
Both Buddhism and Hinduism teach the ideas of the cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation,
or rebirth, and karma.
About 1,750 years after the Buddha lived, another wealthy young man gave up everything to
a life of service. This man was named Francesco and he lived in Italy. Francesco saw suffering and violence as
a prisoner and soldier of war. Francesco became known as St. Francis of Assisi, and today's Fransican nuns and friars
follow in his footsteps.
There are many different images of the Buddha.
The Eightfold Path is a set of rules for the proper
way to live that the Buddha said would end suffering.
The Middle Way of Buddhism means striking a balance between
extremes, such as the luxury the prince knew as a boy and the life he first lived as a monk, when he nearly starved himself
to death.
Some tenets of the Eightfold Path, which represents a Middle Way of living, include Right View (seeing
things as they are, not as you want to see them) and Right Livelihood (i.e. having a job that does not exploit others).
There were disagreements as to whether the Buddha was a god or a man, how to live the Middle Way, and how people reached
truth and freedom from suffering so ultimately different schools of Buddhism developed.
The 3 main branches of
Buddhism are 1)Theravada, the "Way of the Elders" (very popular in Sri Lanka, Thailand), 2) Mahayana, the "Great
Vehicle" (including Zen and popular in China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea), and 3) the Tibetan Buddhism of Tibet, Bhutan,
and Nepal.
*There are an estimated 330 million Buddhists in the world today.
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