Siddhartha Gautama was born around the year 580 BCE in the village of Lumbini in Nepal. He was born into a royal family, and his privileged life insulated him from the sufferings of life; sufferings such as sickness, age and death.
One day, after growing up, marrying and having a child, Siddhartha went outside the royal enclosure where he lived. When he went outside he saw, each for the first time, an old man, a sick man, and a corpse.
This greatly disturbed him, and he learned that sickness, age, and death were the inevitable fate of human beings - a fate no-one could avoid.
Siddhartha had also seen a monk, and he decided this was a sign that he should leave his protected royal life and live as a homeless holy man.
Siddhartha's travels showed him much more of the suffering of the world. He searched for a way to escape the inevitability of death, old age and pain first by studying with religious men. This didn't provide him with an answer.
Siddhartha encountered an Indian ascetic who encouraged him to follow a life of extreme self-denial and discipline.
The Buddha also practiced meditation but concluded that in themselves, the highest meditative states were not enough.
Siddhartha followed this life of extreme asceticism for six years, but this did not satisfy him either; he still had not escaped from the world of suffering.
He abandoned the strict lifestyle of self-denial and ascetism, but did not return to the pampered luxury of his early life.
One day, seated beneath the Bodhi tree (the tree of awakening) Siddhartha became deeply absorbed in meditation, and reflected on his experience of life, determined to penetrate its truth.
He finally achieved Enlightenment, he realized the Nature of Existence, and became the Buddha.
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