All Buddhist have faith in:

1. Buddha

2. his teachings called the Dharma

3. the religious community he founded called Sangha
these rules are called the Three Refuges or Three Jewels

• Buddha was born in southwestern Nepal.
• He had a rich and powerful family
• Buddha's real name is Siddhartha Gautama
• He was born around 560 B.C.
• At age 20 he married the princess Yasodhara
• When he was about 29 he had 4 visions the first vision he saw an old man.
  In the second he saw a sick man.In the third a corpse.
• In the fourth vision he met a wandering holy man. the first three visions convinced Gautama that life involves aging, sickness and death.
• The visions made him suffer and unhappy and this led to him abandon his wife and infant son and to seek happiness as a wandering monk
• After traveling through northeast india for about six years. Buddha experienced enlightenment. And he believed he had discovered why life was filled with suffering and how people could escape from the unhappiness.
• They called him Buddha because Buddha means enlightened one.