Siddhartha Gautama

Siddhartha Gautama: There have been many buddhas awakened ones over eons of time. The most recent is Siddhartha Gautama, the historical person who was born in what is now Nepal, about 2,580 years ago. Born into wealth, trained to be a leader, as a young man he began to wonder why there was so much suffering in the world. To his fathers great dismay, he renounced his wealth and went out into the world with his spiritual teachers, seeking an end to suffering for all beings. After seven years of spiritual training, he made a breakthrough that has resonated through the millennia to this day. He called it the Middle Way, a path that was neither ascetic e.g. Indian swamis, street people in Victoria nor indulgent e.g. his previous lifestyle, or the mainstream lifestyle in Victoria . He lived and taught this practice for 42 more years, leaving a rich heritage of practice and an oral tradition that survives in written form to this day, according to Times Colonist. Victoria was the home of the first Buddhist temple in Canada, the Tam Kung Temple, set up in a rented wooden hut in 1876 and On May 26, help celebrate Buddhas birthday. Who is the the Buddha, you ask? Today, Bhuddists number somewhere between 500 million and one billion worldwide. Greater Victorias population of Buddhists could be about 10,000, mainly people of Asian extraction. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.