Siddhartha Gautama: The Path of Becoming Buddha

Siddhartha Gautama or Gautama Buddha was born in the 6th century BCE and was the next air to the thrown in India. His parents believed their son (Siddhartha Gautama) was going to be something extraordinary and they both decided to ask an astrologer to consult the stars about the future and the astrologer said he would either be very powerful ruler like his father or he will become a holy man and your family will lose all power in the kingdom but that could be avoided if he was kept away from sickness, ageing, poverty and death then everything would be alright. His parents decided to protect the prince from all those experiences by keeping him in the palace and was destined to live his whole life in the palace and never know what happens in the outside world.

Siddhartha grows up in the palace and gets married and have kids without ever meeting ordinary people outside the palace but one day Siddhartha drives his cart outside the palace area there he witnessed how ordinary people live. He sees an old man, a sick man, a beggar monk in the street and also drives by a dead man. Siddhartha was so confused when he realised that people can get sick and that people are poor and can die. Siddhartha then came to the conclusion that life is just endless suffering. Siddhartha doesn’t want anyone to suffer and he doesn’t want anyone else to do so either and it must be solved.

Siddhartha then leaves his wife and child and leaves the palace to never return back to the palace and become a normal person living a normal life and asks a lot of wise men for advice on how to live but doesn’t get any good answers. So Siddhartha decides to try not eating he will try and starve himself like a beggar monk an ascetic. Soon Siddhartha became very thin and he realised that not eating doesn’t work and it will not make him happier.

Siddhartha stopped starving himself and then finds a tree called the Bodhi Tree and sits down beneath the Bodhi tree to meditate and he will stay beneath the tree until he has found the solution to why people are always suffering and nothing will make him move away from his spot under the tree. Then an evil demon called Mara appeared to try and tempt him to stop mediating. Mara offers him lots of great things but Siddhartha just stays put and refuses to move. After a long forty-nine days, Siddhartha finally realises what’s wrong. He came to the conclusion that humans are never satisfied no matter what and will always want more in life and this wanting to have more will never end no matter what and also the suffering will never end either.

Siddhartha has now realised how it is and he has now become enlightened and that is what the word Buddha means. Now he is no longer Siddhartha Gautama he is now Buddha. Buddha wants more people to realise this some of his people start to listen to him and follow him they become his disciples. Buddha preaches to them and to other people.

In conclusion, everyone in India is Hindu and Hindu believes in rebirth and reincarnation and that you are born to live and the born to live then die and so on. It is an endless cycle. Buddha preaches the importance of getting free from samsara getting reborn makes it impossible to avoid suffering. Buddha has tried being rich and starving and he said that it is two exaggerated ways of living and neither are good. Buddha believes it to be better to choose a middle way. Someone then asked Buddha if you are not born again where do you end up after a death. Buddha then replied you don’t get to a place but you get to a condition where you don’t want anything called Nirvana. Nirvana means blown out. All of your desires are blown out and you have reached a kind of peace.