Search for Enlightenment: Buddhist Nirvana
             Buddhism is a branch off of Hinduism, the oldest religion in the world. Buddhism was started be a man by the name of Siddhartha Gautama. He was born into a wealthy family and was raised with anything he ever needed accessible to him. He was born in 563 B.C. in an area now known as Nepal. As a young man, he began to question the spiritual worth of the luxurious life he was born into. He then decided to give up all of his possessions and emotional attachments because he wanted to understand the true nature of life. He saw these attachments as distractions in his ability to keep Hindu thought.
             Siddhartha then became what is known as a shramana, a wandering, homeless ascetic dedicated to mediation. He hoped to find his enlightenment by completely detaching himself from the world and swing to the opposite polar of his earlier life. Eventually he had removed himself so much from the real world the he began to starve, and he still had not achieved enlightenment. He decided that what he had to do was take the middle road, the one between luxury and poverty. According to legend, Siddhartha achieved enlightenment soon after he started down this path. As he meditated under a tree, he saw all of his past lives, and then the past lives of others. He eventually gained a perfect, omniscient knowledge of this world and the world beyond it. This state is known as nirvana. He became known as the Buddha.
             The dictionary definition of Buddhist nirvana is the ineffable ultimate in which one has attained disinterested wisdom and compassion. The achievement of nirvana is not as easy as it sounds. There are four life points that one must follow to be successful in this search:
             2. This suffering is caused by ignorance of the true nature of the universe.
             3. You can only end suffering by overcoming ignorance and attachment to earthly things.
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