Buddhism revolves around the central figure of the Buddha — Sanskrit for "the awakened one." This usually refers to the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who is believed to have lived from approximately 563 BCE to 483 BCE, though some scholars place these dates somewhat later. He is distinguished from the broader category of buddhas — enlightened beings — recognised in Mahayana traditions, and from the future Buddha, Maitreya, expected to appear in coming ages.
The Historical Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama was born into the Shakya clan in what is now the Terai lowlands of southern Nepal. His father, Suddhodana, was a chieftain or king of the Shakyas. Early hagiographical accounts describe an upbringing of exceptional material comfort, followed by the transformative "four sights" — an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic — that awakened in the young prince an acute awareness of suffering and its universal reach.
At approximately twenty-nine years of age, Siddhartha renounced his household life — his family, his status, his material possessions — and set out as a wandering spiritual seeker. He trained under two distinguished meditation teachers of the Brahmanical tradition, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, mastering their methods but finding them insufficient to address the root of suffering. He then undertook a period of severe asceticism with a group of five companions, reducing himself to near starvation in pursuit of spiritual breakthrough. Eventually abandoning extreme asceticism as a dead end, he sat beneath a pipal tree near the town of Bodh Gaya — the Bodhi tree, or "tree of wisdom" — and, after a night of deep meditation, attained enlightenment.
The nature of the Buddha is interpreted differently across Buddhist traditions. For early and Theravada Buddhism, he was a supremely wise human being whose enlightenment was fully achieved through his own effort and who then taught the path he had discovered. For Mahayana Buddhism, he is understood as a transcendent being whose earthly life was a manifestation of a cosmic enlightened nature (dharmakaya), and his successors in the bodhisattva tradition represent ongoing manifestations of that same compassionate wisdom.
Core Teachings
The Buddha's first formal teaching, delivered to his five former companions in the Deer Park at Sarnath, is called the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta — the "Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion." It introduces the Four Noble Truths, which remain the cornerstone of Buddhist doctrine across all schools:
- Dukkha — the nature of suffering, unsatisfactoriness, and impermanence that characterises conditioned existence
- Samudaya — the origin of suffering in craving (tanha) and attachment
- Nirodha — the cessation of suffering through the cessation of craving
- Magga — the Noble Eightfold Path as the means to that cessation: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration
Complementing the Four Noble Truths are the three marks of conditioned existence: impermanence (anicca), suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and non-self (anatta). The doctrine of anatta — that there is no permanent, unchanging self or soul — is perhaps the most philosophically distinctive feature of Buddhist thought and sets it apart from the Brahmanical traditions of its origin.
Buddhism is essentially focused on the recognition that the ego, as an independent and permanent entity, is illusory. When this illusion is fully penetrated in meditative insight, the practitioner is no longer bound by craving and aversion, and the result — Nirvana — is liberation from the cycle of conditioned rebirth (samsara).
The Canon
Originally, the Buddha's teachings existed as an oral tradition, transmitted with remarkable precision by communities of monastics. Eventually, the tradition was composed into two main scriptural canons, corresponding to distinct linguistic and geographical lineages:
The Pali Canon (Tipitaka — the "Three Baskets") is the scripture of the Theravada school, the oldest surviving Buddhist tradition, dominant today in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. It is written in Pali, a Middle Indo-Aryan language closely related to but distinct from Sanskrit.
The Sanskrit Canon — or more properly, the Mahayana scriptural corpus — exists in Sanskrit and its Chinese and Tibetan translations, and underlies the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools that became dominant across East Asia and the Himalayas. The Mahayana canon includes texts not recognised by Theravada — the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) sutras, the Vimalakirti Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, and many others — understood by Mahayana as later revelations of the Buddha's deeper teaching.
Major Schools
Theravada ("Teaching of the Elders") preserves what it regards as the original and unaltered teaching of the historical Buddha, with an emphasis on monastic discipline and the individual path to liberation (Arhatship). Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") broadens the ideal of liberation to the bodhisattva — one who vows to attain full Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. Within Mahayana, Zen (Chan in Chinese) emphasises direct meditative insight over textual study, while Pure Land traditions centre on devotion to Amitabha Buddha. Vajrayana ("Diamond Vehicle"), dominant in Tibetan Buddhism, incorporates elaborate tantric practices under the guidance of a qualified teacher (lama).
For deeper study, the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Buddhism provides an authoritative overview. Primary texts are available at sacred-texts.com's Buddhist section. The Wikipedia article on Buddhism offers extensive cross-linked reference. For Pali text scholarship, the Pali Text Society at palitext.com is the primary academic resource.
Related traditions on this site: Hinduism provides the Brahmanical context from which Buddhism emerged. Taoism shares with Buddhism an emphasis on meditative practice and the limits of conceptual understanding.