The man who came to be known as Buddha (an honorific meaning "Enlightened One" or "Awakened One") was born in the sixth century B.C., heir to a small kingdom in the Himalayan foothills of what is now Nepal. His name was Siddhartha Gotama. At the age of twenty-nine he experienced a deeply disturbing epiphany about suffering and death that led him to abandon his life of luxury and seek an ultimate answer in the forest. After six years of meditation...