The Sermon at Benares

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Gautama Buddha was originally Prince Siddhartha Gautama, born in northern India around 563 B.C. He lived a royal life with his wife and son for ten years before leaving his palace at age 25 to seek en…

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While hunting, Prince Siddhartha encountered: 1) A sick man, 2) An aged man, 3) A funeral procession, and 4) A monk begging for alms. These sights revealed the reality of human suffering and motivated…

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Buddha sat under a peepal tree and vowed to stay until enlightenment came. After seven days, he achieved enlightenment and renamed the tree the Bodhi Tree (Tree of Wisdom). He then began teaching his …

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Buddha preached his first sermon at Benares (Varanasi), which is the most holy of the bathing places on the River Ganges. This city holds great religious significance in Hinduism and Buddhism.

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Kisa Gotami was a woman who had an only son. When her son died, she was overwhelmed with grief and carried the dead child to all her neighbors, desperately asking for medicine to bring him back to lif…

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Kisa Gotami first asked her neighbors for medicine to cure her dead son. The people said she had lost her senses because the boy was already dead, but she refused to accept this reality in her grief.

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Buddha asked for a handful of mustard seed, but with a special condition: the mustard seed must come from a house where no one had ever lost a child, husband, parent, or friend.

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Kisa Gotami discovered that there was no house where someone beloved had not died. Every family had experienced loss. People said, 'The living are few, but the dead are many. Do not remind us of our d…