The Buddha sometimes called his teachings a handful of leaves compared to the forest of his knowledge and refused to teach anything that would not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation and the stilling of all that leads to dissatisfaction and suffering, to direct knowledge, and to self-awakening.

The various traditions that sprang from the fountain of the Buddha’s words explored the personal, societal, and universal significance of his appearance in the world. Yet much that the sutras have to say about the Buddha as a person – his world, the early monastic and lay communities, and the reasons behind his rather pragmatic approach – remain largely unexplored.

However, modern historical, philological, and archaeological studies allow us to reach back in time to try to encounter the Buddha in his own circumstances and environment. During our journey we will look at the oldest of the sutras still to be found in the Tibetan and Pali canon. We will meet the Buddha and his disciples and consider the challenges they faced, explore how it must have felt to live amongst them and hear them speak, often quite intimately and disarmingly, about their personal experiences.

We will meet kings, brahmins and barbers and examine the social, political, and economic changes, that were the backdrop to the success of the teachings of a path to freedom by a band of disheveled ascetics. Teachings that later spread first across Asia, then across the globe and finally into our own lives.