The man who was to be come the Buddha was born Siddhattha Gotama around 2,600 years ago as a prince of a small territory near what is now the Indian-Nepalese border. Though he was raised in splendid comfort, enjoying aristocratic status, no amount of material wealth and sensual pleasure could conceal life's imperfection from the unusually inquisitive young man. So at the age of 29 he left wealth and family behind for the remote forests and mountains of Northeast India to search for a lasting answer to life's problems. He studied under the wisest religious teachers and philosophers of his time, learning all they had to impart, but they could not provide the answers he was seeking. He then struggled on the path of self-mortification, taking that practice to the extremes of asceticism, but still to no avail.
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