The story of the founder of Buddhism is one of the world's great archetypal
tales of spiritual awakening. He was born Siddhartha Gautama in the sixth
century BCE, the son of a prince who ruled a small kingdom in what is now Nepal.
Siddhartha led a sheltered existence until the age of twenty-nine, when he left
his life of ease and set out to find a solution to the problem of suffering. For
years he wandered as a homeless ascetic, practicing severe austerities that
brought him to the brink of death but no nearer to his goal. He then abandoned
asceticism for a middle way. Sitting down under a tree, he vowed to remain there
until he realized the truth. After a night of deep meditation, his Enlightenment
came at dawn, and he was thereafter known as the Buddha, the Awakened One.