The truths upon which Buddhism is founded are natural. The fourth teacher in the present world-period was Gautama Buddha, who was born in a Royal family in India about 2500 years ago. He is an historical personage and his name was Siddhartha Guatama. Gautama Buddha taught that ignorance produces desire, unsatisfied desire is the cause of rebirth, and rebirth, the cause of sorrow.
Ignorance fosters the belief that rebirth is a necessary thing.
When ignorance is destroyed the worthlessness of every such rebirth, considered as an end to itself, is perceived, as well as the paramount need of adopting a course of life by which the necessity for such repeated rebirths can be abolished. Ignorance also begets the illusive and illogical idea that there is only one existence for men, and the other illusion that this one life is followed by states of unchangeable pleasure or torment. The desire to live is the cause of rebirth, when that is extinguished rebirths cease and the perfected individual attains by meditation the highest state of peace called Nirvana. The miseries of existence, 2. The means of obtaining this destruction of desire.