Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) Tee

Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–483 BCE), known as the Buddha ("the Awakened One"), was an Indian philosopher, spiritual teacher, and the founder of Buddhism. Born a prince of the Shakya clan in what is now Nepal, he was raised in luxury and shielded from the suffering of the outside world. According to tradition, encounters with an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic prompted him to renounce his privileged life at age 29 to seek the cause of and solution to human suffering. After years of ascetic practice and meditation, he attained enlightenment while sitting under a Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India. He spent the remaining 45 years of his life teaching the Dharma—the path to liberation from suffering. His core teachings include the Four Noble Truths (the existence of suffering, its origin in craving, the possibility of its cessation, and the Eightfold Path leading to that cessation) and the doctrine of dependent origination, which holds that all phenomena arise through interconnected causes and conditions. He rejected the rigid caste system and emphasized that the path to awakening was open to all. Buddhism spread across Asia and eventually the world, profoundly shaping the spiritual, philosophical, and cultural landscape of human civilization.