The child’s birth was expected in April, so she decided to deliver her child in her homeland. As the valets were watching over her, she crossed the Rohini River at the border and took a rest in the woods of Lumbini. After bathing, she walked up and touched a follower on the ashoca tree and at the moment the baby was born. It was a boy, who was named Gautama Siddhartha.

However, Maya passed away on the seventh day after delivering her child. Siddhartha was brought up by his mother’s younger sister, Mahaprajapati. He received his aunt’s love. He was given three palaces from his father, the king, so that he could spend each season comfortably.

However, Siddhartha was concerned about killing people. He did not understand why gods who created the Earth in the first place allowed the royals to kill their people. Moreover, he noticed the corruption amongst the officials who were behaving arrogantly and hypocritically within Kapila Castle.

His questions to the gods and conflicted thoughts toward his own fate developed inside him. He was seized with despair and thus he came to the conclusion that he could not trust  other people’s perspectives. When he was fourteen years old, he saw the old, the sick, the dead and a monk outside of his castle. Later, he identified aging, sickness, and death as three inevitable aspects of life. His feelings moved toward becoming a monk in order to solve the mysteries of life.

However, one midnight after a party was over, Siddhartha witnessed dancers sleeping untidily. He was despondent and his disappointment in life became unbearable. He made his decision to leave Kapila Castle and left Yasodhara and Rahula, who were sound asleep, without saying goodbye.

He heard of Rajagriha, Magadha, a place where many people sought and learned about the Truth. He galloped all night and crossed the border. Kapila Castle lost its heir, and it was wrapped in deep sorrow.

Both of them required deep subconscious absorption to attain Enlightenment. Siddhartha believed that if he could reach that state, he would be able to solve his existing anguish and therefore asked for the guidance of a Brahman hermit and practiced Zenjo. He was able to relax for a while, but with the passage of time, he reverted to his original state and could not acquire the feeling of Enlightenment.

Thereupon, he decided to change his practice to asceticism with a group of five Brahmanic monks and they entered the woods in Uruvela, which was not too far from Rajagriha. He sought Enlightenment by only having a small quantities of beans and liquid, attempting to attain the realm of nothingness.

He sometimes lost consciousness from the sun’s torturous heat. He was unable to walk properly because of the muscular atrophy. Soon, the fear of death seized him.

The perfect Enlightenment is to awaken one’s eyes to foresee the truth. The only thing Siddhartha sought was the truth, so he did not care what others thought of him or how they evaluated him. After moving out of the woods, he saw a Bodhi tree and sat under it. He decided to resume his practice there by maintaining his mental and physical balance.

Namuci and the naked women were not apparitions; they were the embodiments of Siddhartha’s lust. Siddhartha was not a perfect man; he was suffering from his own desires and wavering about whether to go back to his life in the palace or not. However, he was able to annihilate all kinds of temptations through his Zen meditaion:

“Gain, praise, and honor, and wrongly obtained fame [is ninth];
[the tenth is when] one extols oneself and looks down at others.
[…] “This is your army, Namuci.”

Siddhartha still had a sense of greed for gain and fame somewhere in his mind, and the act of justifying himself distracted from his tranquility and that was caused by the evil one, Namuci itself. However, Siddhartha’s mind reached the entrance of Enlightenment, where even Namuci could not reach.

Moreover, he observed the human world with clear and open eyes and thoughts. He saw that society had adopted a caste system and that people were classified according to it. India was in a period of war, with people full of greed fighting for territorial expansion while merchants and workers were chasing after profits and fame as everything was growing at the time.

However, Siddhartha saw that those people who discriminated, invaded other lands for territorial expansion, or chased profits to win fame were all suffering. They suffered because they wanted to protect their supremacy over other people or other countries.

He realized that his own existential suffering stemmed from allowing himself to be manipulated by other people or things. His mind was manipulated by his own thoughts and emotions, which existed within him and did not come from external sources.

In a deep meditative concentration, Siddhartha perceived the Four Noble Truths and Twelve Causes, which remove any or all distress. These truths and causes reveal how one’s mind is linked to suffering through the relationship between cause-and-effect. Finally, as a result of these profound realizations, Siddhartha became the Buddha.

However, at that moment, the gods Brahman Heavenly-King and Sakra descended from heaven and told him to expound the Dharma to all mankind. They insisted that some people would understand. Upon hearing them, two hermits came to his mind, but they were already dead. Then he realized that he could explain his ideas to the five fellow monks who had left him after his abandonment of the ascetic practices. He was able to see in his mind that they resided in a place called Migadaya in Kasi. Through the Enlightenment practice, Buddha had acquired the clairvoyant ability to see through peopl’s minds.

When the door to join the Sangha was opened to the public, including the royal families, the commoners, the lower class, and women, the number of followers rose to approximately 1300. Gradually, the religious precepts the rules of the Sangha, were established.

Learning to the teachings of Buddha called Mompo and Zen meditation was considered as the two core axes of Sangha practice to eradicate suffering. His disciples travelled to various places, sat in caves or under trees to practice Zen meditation while preaching Buddha’s doctrine to the people. Within the Sangha, Arhat, who naturally possessed spiritual powers and later became a high priest, was nurtured.

Kings started to compete with each other to establish monasteries in their countries. They declared that people in their kingdom should listen to Buddha’s teachings. People from different hierarchical classes, from the royals to the slaves, and even from different religious groups, such as Brahmins, all started to follow Buddhism.

Kings and royal families, especially, took care not to incur the wrath of the gods for the nations’ sake. Kings used to invite the scholars who studied the holy writings of the Vedas or the priests of Brahmanism to their palaces to learn the righteousness in kingship and ethics. However, the bonds of Buddha, the Sangha, kings and the royal families, were strengthened after the emergence of the great Buddha.

Buddha was a man who had abandoned the throne. Therefore, it was not his intention to obtain political power, but he needed to edify the royal families in order to achieve world peace. Buddha preached to the kings about how futile it was to start a war and offered them the wisdom to protect their countries from being invaded.

In order to eliminate suffering, Buddha emphasized the importance of self-effort and not the power of gods. As this teaching spread among the people, the fanatics of Brahmanism stood up to take action. They killed prostitutes and buried their corpses near the monastery or spread rumors that Buddha had gotten a woman pregnant. They tried everything they could to persecute and destroy the reputation of Buddha and the Sangha.

In addition, deception occurred within the Sangha. Devadatta, who was Buddha’s cousin, rebelled against Buddha and divided the Sangha. He asked Prince Ajatashatru  of Magadha to join him and held the prince’s father, King Bimbisara, in a sevenfold prison where he remained until he died.

Devadatta tried to kill Buddha many times. He tried to impersonate Buddha and dominate the Sangha so that he could receive protection from the new king, Ajatashatru. However, all of his conspiracies failed. Buddha’s mental state was as solid as a rock, as a result of his Zen meditation. Buddha predicted that Devadatta would fall from power at his own hand.

She became the Queen of Kosala, the wife of King Prasenajit. Soon they had a baby boy, Prince Virudhaka. When the Prince was sixteen years old, he went to study in Sakya. A terrible incident occurred there. The prince did not realize that the place where he was resting was a new teaching-hall being built for Buddha. He was scolded intensely by an official of Kapilavastu, who saw him lying there. The official disdainfully reprimanded him by divulging that he was born of a low-class slave woman.

It was new to Prince Virudhaka’s ears, and he was astounded. He was devastated and returned to his country. He confessed everything to his father, King Prasenajit. The king threw the queen in jail. Several years later, the prince raised a rebellion, dethroned his father and became the new king. He decided to attack Kapila Castle in Sakya. Buddha had convinced him to abstain from attacking the country several times, but the prince’s rage was greater than he had expected. He could not stop him from attacking Kapila Castle, and the Sakya clan was annihilated.

“Whosoever shall live as an island unto oneself” refers to the fact that one should not allow the island (oneself) to be swollen by surging waves (negative feelings). Therefore, the Dharma is necessary to make oneself strong. Others are others. Humans are easily deluded if they rely on others.

At the monastery of Vaishali in Vrji, Buddha foretold that his death would approach in three months but continued his work as a missionary. However, right after Buddha had a meal at the Cunda’s house while he visited his mango grove in the Pava village of Malla, a severe pain ran through his stomach. Concerned that the Cunda might be blamed by the Sangha, he pretended as if nothing had happened and set out on the journey. However, the pain grew worse, so he decided to lay down in the grove of Sal trees in Kushinagar.

After Buddha passed away, Buddhists wanted to honor his death by conducting a ceremony with decorations of flowers, burning incense, and chanting sutra to a stupa and a statue of Buddha. However, the only thing Buddha wished to see was for his disciples to acquire his teachings as if they were part of their body. He acquired Enlightenment by risking his life. Then, Buddha exhorted his last words:

“Now, monks, I declare to you: all conditioned things are of a nature to decay—strive on untiringly.”

The people in Kushinagar Castle heard that Buddha was near his end, and they all hastily came to see him. After Buddha passed away, his remains were cremated, and his ashes were divided into eight portions and enshrined in eight stupas in different regions. Thus, Buddha closed his tempestuous life of eighty years.