Bailey The Buddhist

Buddhism is an Eastern religion which revolves primarily around suffering. Its founder is named Siddhartha Gautama (later called the ‘Buddha’ – where we get Buddhism from). He was born nearly 600 years before Christ. At some point in his young life he decided to travel the country, and when he did he became troubled by all the suffering of the common people. He desperately wanted to do something about all the pain he saw, so he studied the Hindu scriptures under their priests, but decided that was not the way to help. Eventually, he stopped praying to the Hindu ‘gods’ and decided to become a homeless person and survive essentially by begging. During the years that followed, he dove completely into self-denial and meditation and decided that this practice would lead to peace and help with suffering. He also believed that through self-denial and meditation, a person could eventually achieve a god-like state of ‘Nirvana’. He then decided that his mission in life was to spread his message wherever he went, at which point he became known as the ‘enlightened one’ or the ‘Buddha’. There are an estimated 613 million Buddhists worldwide; and 1 million in the United States.