[Hindu] The founder and father of the Buddhist religion, Buddha was said to have been an Avatar of the great god Vishnu. Gautama Siddartha, who became the Buddha, urged his followers to isolate themselves from worldly life. In order to attain Nirvana, the highest possible and most desirable state in the religion, adherents of Buddha were required to completely extinguish their ego, free themselves from aversion and desire. Before he was incarnated as Gautama Siddartha, the Buddha resided in heaven, and told his followers that he had been Indra thirty-six times, and many hundred times ruler of the world. As the time approached for his birth, earthquakes and miracles occurred on the Earth. In Kapilavastu, on the Indo-Nepalese border, his earthly mother, Queen Maya, experienced a vision in which she beheld the Buddha come down into her womb as a white elephant. This was interpreted as the birth of a world savior, and when the time came for Maya to give birth, she went to a grove, where t...
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