Gautama Buddha, lived between 563 and 483 BC in the area known now as the Indo-Nepalese region. He was the son of the King Sudhodana, who ruled at Kapilavastu, Nepal. According to ancient tradition, Queen Maya, his mother, painless birth to the Shidhartha Guatam in a beautiful garden of Lumbini. It says he immediately walked and spoke.
An old sage named Asita visited Sudhodhana. Instantly, the ascetic rose from his seat and recognizing in the young child the prince would eventually become a Buddha, an Enlightened One, Hearing this the king surrounded the palace with a triple enclosure and guard and proclaimed that the use of the words death and grief were forbidden. At the age of 16 Siddhartha was married with the most beautiful princess in the land, Yasodhara.
Siddhartha was kept amused and entertained for some time by this privileged life behind the palace walls until one day his divine vocation awoke in him, and he decided to visit the nearby town. In astonishment the young prince learned that decrepitude is the fate of those who live life through. Later he met an incurable invalid and then a funeral procession. Finally he met an ascetic, a beggar, who told Siddhartha that he had left the world to pass beyond suffering and joy, to attain peace at heart.
His mind made up, he awoke one night and, casting one last look at his wife and child, mounted his horse Kataka and rode off accompanied by his equerry Chandaka. At the city gates Siddhartha turned over his horse to Chandaka, then he cut off his hair, gave up his sumptuous robes, and entered a hermitage where the Brahmans accepted him as a disciple. Siddhartha had now and forever disappeared. He became the monk Gautama, or as he is still called, Sakyamuni, the ascetic of the Sakyas.
By the time he reached the age of 80, Sakyamuni began to feel old. He visited all of the monasteries he had founded and prepared to meet his end.
