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More than 500 years before Jesus was born--and at about the same time that Confucius was teaching the Chinese how to lead the good life--a Hindu prince named Siddhartha Gautama (or Gotama) became famed in India for his holiness and love for all creatures. He was called the Buddha, meaning "the Enlightened One." Many persons believed in his teachings while he lived. After his death, temples were built in his honor, and his religion spread through a great part of Asia. Today some 350 million people profess the Buddhist faith.
The Buddha was born to a noble family of the ruling class in Lumbini in what is now southwestern Nepal. He was raised in luxury by an adoring father who sought to protect him from the sight and knowledge of evil. He married early and had a son while he was still a youth. One day, according to legend, he rode forth from the palace in his chariot. By the roadside he saw an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse on a litter. Shocked by his first experience with old age, sickness, and death, the prince lost all joy in living.
Soon after that he renounced the world, and through all sorts of penances, even to the point of almost starving to death, he sought to gain insight into life's meanings. As he meditated in solitude under the Bo tree, which Buddhists call the tree of wisdom, he experienced a spiritual awakening, known as "the enlightenment." Once Siddhartha Gautama was awakened to the truth about life, he became the Buddha and devoted his life to sharing his teachings with others. Preaching at first to only five followers, he soon founded an order of monks. For 45 years he gave public teachings and private counseling for his disciples. He died in about 483 BC at the age of 80.
Buddha did not claim to be of divine origin nor did he claim revelation from above. He meditated, but he prayed to no Higher Being. In Buddhism there is no beginning and no end, no Creation, and no Heaven. Buddha accepted many of the beliefs of Hinduism, the religion of his time.