and profane, pandering to nouveau riche greed and proudly caring of traditional values... the oddities are as endless as they are real. It derives from the teachings of The Buddha, the 'Enlightened One', the title of a historical person who lived more than 2,500 years ago. Named Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha was born around 560 BC near present-day Lumbini, southern Nepal. He was the son of a king and grew up in his father's palace amid ease and luxury, all the time shielded from contact with the harsh realities of the world at large. One day, curiosity led him outside the palace, where he was shocked to see examples of disease, old age and death.

Siddhartha was then 29 years old. His unexpected exposure to human misery made him determined to find a way to save mankind from suffering. He accordingly left his wife and child, renounced the riches of his birth and became an ascetic. After six year's wandering he abandoned the extreme form asceticism he had been following, electing instead a 'Middle Way' of moderation and meditation. It was while meditating, reputedly seated beneath a bo tree in the vicinity of Bodhgaya, northern India, he attained enlightenment, supreme understanding of man's predicament.

The Buddha's insight into ultimate reality was embodied in the 'Four Noble Truths' -- dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, usually translated as suffering), samudaya (the cause of suffering which is desire), nirodha (the cessation of suffering through the extinction of desire) and magga (the way to the cessation of suffering, ie the Noble Eightfold Path, namely: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration).

Implicit in this understanding is a belief in the earlier Indian concept of reincarnation. Thus the ultimate aim of Buddhism is the release from the endless cycle of rebirth and suffering by extinguishing desire, which is to achieve the state of nirvana.

The Buddha spent his long life -- he died in his 80th year -- teaching around the central region of the Ganges plain, gathering a large number of followers. Disciples were encouraged to take full responsibility for their thoughts and actions on a path to spiritual growth that was in essence a way of life rather than an organized religion. Some of the Buddha's followers did nonetheless become ordained and formed the monkhood (sangha) in which they lived disciplined lives and sought wisdom. Monasticism later evolved as the core of the religion, its ultimate practice. This is recognized in the Triratna, 'three-fold jewel' of the faith which offers refuge in the Buddha, the Teaching and the sangha.

The early form of Buddhism, known as Theravada or the 'teaching of the elders', was later challenged by a new school which aimed to have a more popular appeal. It called itself Mahayana, or 'Great Vehicle' as it offered salvation to a greater number of people than Theravada Buddhism, which it derisively termed Hinayana, or 'Small Vehicle'.More