Preferring the first option, Siddhartha's parents kept him inside the walls of their kingdom, sheltered from the real world. One day around the time he was 30, Siddhartha ventured beyond the walls of his family's confine and for the first time saw an old, sick dying man. Shocked by what he saw, the young man renounced all worldly goods and left home to wander in suffering in order to gain spiritual enlightenment. After sitting and mediating for many hours, suddenly enlightenment came to the young man and he became the Buddha, the Enlightened One. The main concept of Buddhism is liberation of the soul to achieve enlightenment.
Life is made of suffering because people are tortured by desire.
The aim is to overcome desire and enter nirvana, a state of complete freedom. Realizing the self-destructiveness of denying desire and the misery of always following it, Buddha realized there is a middle path. Until his death in 480 B.C. at the age of 80, Buddha taught that all life is suffering, that suffering is caused by desire and that suffering can only end when desire stops. Buddha taught that a path exists through which the end to suffering can be attained. Buddhism expanded throughout China from the third to sixth century.