The Extraordinary Life of the Buddha
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
Essay substantially revised on 17 August 2026.
The Buddha began as a prince whose father tried to protect him from every human suffering. For almost thirty years, his father succeeded. But one night, after sighting an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, the prince made his escape.
The Buddha’s dates are uncertain and range from 624 BCE (earliest birth) to 368 BCE (latest death). Whatever his dates, he is said to have lived for some eighty years. Buddhism emerged amid a broader culture of renunciation and philosophical experimentation that challenged aspects of the established religion, Vedic Brahmanism.
His followers came to revere him as more than an ordinary man and, accordingly, mythologised his life. It would be profitless to try, if that were possible, to separate the mythology from the reality. In any case, the mythology is as invaluable as the history, revealing how the Buddha came to be seen and interpreted.
Exceptional Birth
According to tradition, Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, was born in Lumbini, in what is now southern Nepal, to King Shuddhodana of the Shakya clan. His mother, Mahamaya, dreamt of a white elephant with six tusks entering her right side. Ten lunar months later, while strolling in a garden in Lumbini, she grabbed onto the drooping branch of a sal tree, and Siddhartha (‘He who has achieved his goal’) emerged fully formed from under her right arm. Siddhartha proceeded to take seven steps before announcing that this would be his last life.
Two Destinies
Seven days later, Mahamaya died. The court astrologers predicted that Siddhartha would become either a chakravartin(universal monarch) or a buddha (enlightened one). Not wishing to lose his son and heir—and, at that, a future chakravartin—to a life of renunciation, Shuddhodana confined him to a life of luxury within the precincts of the palace, where he would not be exposed to religious teaching or human suffering. At the age of sixteen, Siddhartha married the beautiful princess Yashodhara, and everything seemed on track for a life as a chakravartin.
But Shuddhodana’s attempts to shelter Siddhartha spectacularly backfired. For when the prince did finally encounter human suffering, it came to him as a revelation.
Four Sights
At the age of 29, having tired of the delights of the royal kitchen and harem, Siddhartha asked to make a chariot ride through the city. The king consented but had all the old, infirm, and otherwise poor cleared from the route. Even so, Siddhartha did, for the very first time, catch a glimpse of an old man. He asked Channa, his charioteer: ‘Am I also subject to this?’
With his curiosity piqued, Siddhartha made three more outings, seeing, in turn, a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and, finally, a meditating mendicant, whose serene smile inspired him to join the path in search of freedom from suffering.
The four encounters, known as the Four Sights, shattered Siddhartha’s illusions. The old man, the sick man, and the corpse were images of his own future—and of the future of everyone he loved. But although one could not prevent ageing, sickness, and death, perhaps one could prevent the suffering that comes with them.
The Great Departure
Siddhartha renounced his position, wealth, and family to take up the life of a wandering ascetic. As night fell and he prepared to make his escape, he was told that a son had been born to him. He went into Yashodhara’s chamber to look upon his sleeping wife and son and named the boy Rahula (‘Fetter’).
That night, in what has come to be called the Great Departure, Siddhartha escaped from the palace on his beloved horse, Kanthaka, accompanied by his faithful servant, Channa.
Having crossed the Anoma River into the forest, he sent the reluctant Channa back along with his weapons and jewels, and even his hair. He sent back Kanthaka too, who died from a broken heart.
A Beggar in the Forest
In the forest, Siddhartha adopted the life of a mendicant, or beggar. He practised successively under two meditation teachers before, with five friends, subjecting himself to extreme forms of self-mortification, progressively reducing his daily meal to a single grain of rice.
One day, he accepted a bowl of milk-rice from a woman called Sujata, who had mistaken the skeletal ascetic for a wish-granting tree spirit. With some food in the belly, he concluded that extreme asceticism would not advance him along the path to freedom from suffering, but serve only to cloud his mind.
The prince who had rejected luxury now rejected its opposite. Neither indulgence nor self-mortification offered the answer. Between the two lay what he would call the Middle Way.
Enlightenment
On the full moon of May, six years after having left the palace, the 35-year-old Siddhartha sat in meditation under a peepul tree. The demon Mara tried to disrupt him, including by sending his daughters to seduce him.
When Mara challenged his right to occupy the ground on which he sat, Siddhartha touched the earth with his right hand, and the goddess of the earth confirmed with a tremor that he had earned this right—on account of a great gift that he had made in his previous life as Prince Vessantara.
Through the night, Siddhartha had visions of his many, innumerable past lives. At dawn, he attained enlightenment. The prince who had escaped the palace had become the Buddha, ‘the Awakened One’.
The peepul tree, Ficus religiosa, is now better known as the Bodhi tree, and the place where the Buddha sat in meditation as Bodh Gaya (‘Place of Enlightenment’). Representations of the Buddha often include his earth-touching gesture, known as the bhumisparsha mudra.
First Sermons
The Buddha remained in the vicinity of the Bodhi tree to savour his enlightenment. When a seven-day storm blew up, the serpent king Mucalinda encircled him seven times with his coils and sheltered him with his seven-headed hood.
At first, he hesitated to teach. What he had discovered seemed too subtle to communicate to people lost in desire and attachment. But the god Brahma Sahampati implored him to share his secrets.
After seven weeks by the Bodhi tree (note the preponderance of the number seven), the Buddha got up to teach. He delivered his first sermon in the deer park at Sarnath, on the outskirts of Kashi (modern-day Varanasi), preaching the Middle Way between luxury and austerity, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path.
In his second sermon, he presented his doctrine of anatman (no-self). So eloquently did he speak that, upon hearing him, his five ascetic friends rose up into arhats (those who have gained such insight as to escape the cycle of rebirth). They became the first members of the Buddhist monastic order known as the sangha.
Life on the Road
For the next 45 years, the Buddha spread his teachings across northeast India, followed by wandering ascetics and laypersons who supported the ascetics. Although many of his followers imitated him in renouncing the life of the householder, most were not so ambitious.
Over the years, many of the renouncers settled into monasteries funded by prominent members of the laity. The Buddha delivered many of his discourses in the monastery of Jetavana in Shravasti, the capital of Kosala, which had been donated to him by the banker Anathapindada.
When Mahamaya’s sister Mahapajapati, who had raised Siddhartha after his mother’s death and became his stepmother, asked to be ordained, the Buddha refused her, perhaps owing to fears about the safety of nuns. But when pressed, he relented, and Mahapajapati became the first bhikkhuni (Buddhist nun). In time, Yashodhara, too, became a bhikkhuni. When Rahula asked for his patrimony, his father ordained him a monk.
However, the Buddha refused to appoint his radically austere cousin Devadatta as his successor. Bitterly aggrieved, Devadatta tried three times to kill him by means of assassins, a boulder, and an elephant, which arrested its charge to bow at his feet. The schism was repaired when the earth sucked Devadatta down into Naraka, or Hell.
Death
In Kushinagara, the Buddha, now around 80 years old, ate a meal containing sukara-maddava, an obscure term that has variously been interpreted as pork, mushrooms, or some other delicacy. He became gravely ill and prepared for death.
His chief disciple, Mahakashyapa, ignited the funeral pyre, after which his relics were distributed and enshrined in large mound-like structures called stupas.
According to Buddhist tradition, in the third century BCE, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka gathered the relics from seven of the eight stupas and erected 84,000 stupas to distribute them across India. Some of Ashoka’s stupas, such as the Great Stupa at Sanchi and the Dhamek Stupa at Sarnath, remain important pilgrimage sites.
Enlightenment had not exempted the Buddha from growing old, falling ill, and dying. What had changed was his relationship to those things. You can read about his most important teachings—the Middle Way, Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path—in my article, The Buddha’s Solution to Desire and Suffering.
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