Buddhism began with the awakening of Siddhartha Gautama in northern India around 500 BCE and spread across Asia to become one of the world's great civilizations, expressing itself in the Theravada of Southeast Asia, the Mahayana of East Asia, and the Vajrayana of Tibet and the Himalayas. Its central insight is that suffering arises from craving and ignorance, and that liberation is possible through clear seeing, ethical action, and the cultivation of the mind. Buddhism is unique among the great traditions in centering not on a creator God but on the nature of mind itself — and in insisting that the truth it points to is available to anyone willing to look.
Rumi