Endless Buddhas have come thus far in this infinite continuity of time. Out of them, the historical Buddha, who is estimated to have been born around 2500 years ago, is the Sakyamuni Buddha, who was born into a royal family of the Sakya clan. He was given the name Gautama.
He grew up with all sorts of royal pleasures. He studied all the mundane skills that earned him respect and recognition and trained him to be a worthy king at that time. He even got married to the beautiful queen Yasodhara and had a son named Rahula. But in his twenties, when he roamed out of the palace for the first time, he saw an old person, a sick person, a dead person, grieving relatives of the dead person, and a renunciate who he was told was inquiring for life beyond suffering.
Gautama was tormented by the suffering he saw. He had never before contemplated the possibility that all his pleasures would also come to an end. He was so taken aback by this dreaded reality of life that he left all the royal pleasures and embarked on a quest to find a way beyond all this suffering. For six long years, he learned meditative and ascetic practices from many teachers. He even stayed hungry for years as a part of his practice.
Then one day, he sat down upon a Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya and resolved not to move until he determined the nature of reality and discovered the medicine to suffering. On the full moon of Baisakh, the same lunar day when he was born, he had a breakthrough. He understood what is now called the principle of dependent origination. He saw the empty nature of phenomena.
After this insight that exhausted all his karmas and took him beyond any suffering, he taught his insights for many years to human beings, deities, yakshas, nagas, manoharas, and all sorts of beings. He passed away in Kushinagar at the age of 80.
Because of his legacy, even today, many beings are still able to liberate themselves from the endless cycle of birth and death and all the misery that comes along with it.
oṃ muni muni mahāmuni mahāmunaye svāhā!!!