Siddhârtha Gautama, the Buddha
[Excerpt from the forthcoming book India’s Sages Source Book: Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas, Tantrics, Sants, Sikhs and Sufis, by Timothy Conway, © Copyright 2009]
One sage did more than anyone during the early shrâmana-era of ancient India to amplify the renunciate path beyond traditional Hindu concerns for ancestors, gods, Vedas, rituals and caste, and his motivation was pure, selfless compassion for all sentient beings. I speak of Siddhattha Gotama (Pâli; Skt.: Siddhârtha Gautama), venerated as the Buddha, Awake One, or Bhagavâ, Blessed One.
All evidence points to Siddhattha as historically real (no mere legend), magnificent in his spiritual mastery and widely esteemed in his ministry. An exemplar of the highest freedom, and a wise counselor sharing exceedingly subtle psychological and spiritual truths, the Buddha also founded a large sangha or spiritual community for almsmen, almswomen and devout lay supporters—by which north Indian society and later all Asia were indelibly transformed.
Frequent passages of the Pâli scriptural canon reveal the Buddha (to the chagrin of materialists and pseudo-skeptics then and now) routinely deploying paranormal powers of ESP and PK —for instance, scanning minds to discern people’s aptitudes and past lives. Widely revered as “the enlightened teacher of gods and men (satthâdevamanussâ), his ministry unfolded not just for humans but extended into subtle interdimensional realms. He taught celestial devas stuck in the heavens, demonic asuras mad with power, haunted and haunting “hungry ghost” petas, and hapless dwellers of the hellish purgatories that their states are temporary, changeable, caused by deluded clinging to a separative self-sense with its sundry attachments and aversions.
These binding likes-dislikes (lobha-dosa) and the primordial ignorance or self-delusion (moha) are the three evil roots (hetu) underlying the samsâra-round of rebirths. Yet all beings, he affirmed, can be released from the ignorant fiction of “myself” into the final freedom of nibbâna, the “blowing out” or “extinction” of egotism’s terrible fire. Nibbâna is the irreversible realization of the Uncreated, Deathless Infinite (akata accutta ananta), the untaintable purity (visuddhi), incomparable liberation and deliverance (vimutti apavagga /mokkha), peace (santi), illumination, Transcendent beyond (pâra). Out of this unconditioned Reality arise loving-kindness, sympathetic joy, compassion and equanimity for all beings within the cosmic dream of life. (Later Mahâyâna Buddhists use the Sanskrit term nirvâna; in the Mahâbhârata and Bhagavad Gîtâ, nirvâna is a synonym for moksha.)
The profoundly Supra-personal nature of this final spiritual realization—it is not personal, and certainly not “impersonal”—is strikingly expressed: “Nibbâna is, but there is no one in nibbâna.” Intelligent Awareness abides, but “boundless” and “without surface” (anidassanam)—not fixing onto anything internal or external; no limiting identifications whatsoever. As with realization of Brahman/Âtman, Nibbâna is not just beyond normal egocentrism but also beyond the heavens and any merely personal god.
https://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/Buddha_and_Buddhism.html