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Sakyamuni Buddha
 (Siddhartha Gautama)

Sakyamuni Buddha's portrait at the age of 41, painted by his follower. (The original painting is in British Museum)

Sakyamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, born in the Lumbini park near Kapilavastu, north-eastern part of India. His father was a ruler of Kapilavastu Sakya warrior class.

Upon his birth, his destiny was predicted, either to become a universal monarch or a Buddha, who would teach countless living beings to find their happiness and enlightenment.

He lived a sheltered life in the palace as his father forbade him to travel beyond the Palace court yard.

At the age of 29, he secretly sneaked out and wandered around the city. During his excursion, he witnessed a lot of citizens suffering from poverty, old age, sickness and death. Disappointed from the experience, he decided to leave his family and became a monk to search for "Enlightenment".

For the first 6 years, he adopted the "severest asceticism" method to search for the answer, which at the end lead to nowhere and suffered poor health. He realized that this method would not work and changed the approach. At the age of 35, he achieved "Enlightenment" under the Bo tree in Buddha Gaya.

Accompanied by his disciples, Buddha traveled all over India, teaching his doctrines, which were recorded by his contemporary disciples. His teachings also spread northward into Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, southward to Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. During 1900, his teaching spread to Europe, Australia and USA.

"Enlightenment" must be directly experienced by self realization and by practicing the Ways to eliminate "Ignorance and greed" that clouds ones true nature.

"Buddhism is purely Education regarding the way of living."

After the enlightenment of Buddha Sakyamuni, he taught:-

The Flower Adornment Sutra

for the first twelve years, but he realized that such teaching was too difficult for people to understand so he changed to teach the easier Sutra. Pure Land teaching is one of the easier ways for anyone who would like to cultivate in order to jump out from the Cycle of transmigration.

There are 84,000 different ways to cultivate, all of his teachings are about helping others, do good-deeds, love & respect to all sentient beings, to prefect ourselves, to understand etc.