Siddhartha Gautama Research Paper

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There were social influences, economic influences, and cultural influences on Siddhartha Gautama which affected his lifetime achievements. The core of Buddhism is believed to come from the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. He was the founder and leader of Sramanas, a new religious order that supported finding a high spiritual state through wandering (Violatti). Siddhartha was born in Lumbini, which is present day Nepal and he lived for around eighty years. After his death, his religious teachings transformed into a movement creating the religion, Buddhism (Violatti). He is known today as Buddha and regarded a deity among many even though he was just a man who found utmost enlightenment and wanted to share the experience with others (Buddha).…show more content…
All of the things that influenced him came in the stage before he found Nirvana (Violatti). During the time Siddhartha lived (5th-6th century BCE), India was in turmoil for religious and political reasons. Brahmanism, a sacrificial cult controlled by an elite of priests was being questioned by many new religious teaching who were looking at deeper thoughts on the meaning of life (Buddha). Gautama lived in Northern India and at that time it was composed of small and numerous independent states competing for resources. When he was born the Brahmanic orthodoxy was already facing decay by the multiple new religious views. This created the path to Siddhartha’s own teachings…show more content…
At that time, Indian society did not favor equality of men and there was a caste system in use making the majority of Indian population poor (Violatti). Siddhartha belonged to the Shakya tribe and he would have been the “sage of Shakyas” if he had stayed. Siddhartha’s family tribe was among the Kshatriya caste also known as the warrior rulers caste. Siddhartha Gautama was a very rich and powerful man who was blind to the world’s suffering in one point of his life (Buddha). Despite all the luxuries that surrounded Gautama, he soon realized “that he, like anyone else, could be subject to different forms of human suffering” (Violatti). This had driven him into a personal crisis and it is said when he left his palace at age twenty-nine he met forms of sickness, advancing age, and death that had him convinced him to strive for Nirvana and to help people end their suffering (Pearson). After Siddhartha Gautama now known as Buddha attained his nirvana went to Sarnath, a place near the city of modern day Varnasi and delivered his first religious lecture. This is where Buddhism was set in motion, he explained suffering, its origin, how to end it, and the eightfold path or the path leading to the extinction of suffering and this became the four noble truths. Traveling from town to town in India, he continued teaching his vison of these views for forty-five years until his death day

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