Scholars place the final nibbana, the passing of the Buddha at around 400BCE plus or minus twenty years on either side. So the Buddha was probably born in the 480s BCE, a contemporary of Socrates. The place of his birth is marked with a column in Nepal at the Lumbini garden where queen Maya decamped. She had planned on visiting her parents to have her child with them, but after the birth turned back. Siddharta as he was called was born under a tree - a Shorea, Sal tree. He was born and generally lived above 23 degrees north of the equator (north of the Tropic of Cancer), so the Buddha was born into a subtropical climate that was quite cool in winter.

Queen Maya died seven days after his birth and young Siddharta was raised by his aunt, Pajapati Gotami the great.

He describes having three palaces for himself when young according to season. He had female attendants with no men. He ate rice and meat which was rich food for the time and wore the finest cloths. He learned fast under Visvamitra. At the age of 16 he was married to Yasodhara his cousin.

It took him a long time to have his first child at the age of 29 when he encountered four sights of an old man, a sick man, a dead man and finally a mendicant. He abandoned his palace and embarked on the "great renunciation" on his horse Kanthaka, crossing a branch of the Ganges, after sending his attendant back to his family (the horse died of a broken heart). He cut off his hair and beard, gave up his jewels and princely robes and became a mendicant in search of release from old age, sickness and death.

King Bimbisara met him and called him - the King saw he was fine looking and asked after him. The King offered him his kingdom but Siddharata refused. Bimbisara made the Buddha to be (Bhodisatta) promise to come and teach him if he found the truth.

It is wrong to pretend that the Buddha did not learn anything from fellow seekers he visited. He learned meditation under Alara Kalama and Uddhaka Rama Putta (Uddhaka son of Rama) and successively attained the sphere of no-thingness and the sphere of neither perception nor non perception. Alara Kalama perceived the Bodhisatta had got to the sphere of no-thing and thus was his equal. He invited the Bhodisatta to teach alongside himself. The Bodhisatta refused. Uddaka Rama Putta however had not achieved the sphere of neither perception nor non perception though his father had. Perceiving that the Bodhisatva knew what his father knew, but

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