Siddartha was the son of a tribal leader of the Kshatriya ,or warrior ,caste living around 2500 years ago. Like all upper class familes of that time he lived in the family compound where all his extended family lived. This form of cohabitation even continues today in many parts of India. It would have seemed palatial to the lower castes but not by todays western standards of housing. He grew up sheltered from the outside world and as he matured realized that he was living in an illusion , the world was very different outside. This was the begining of his journey. It is also wise to remember that he was part of the vedic/brahmanical religio-spiritual tradition and spoke a vernacular form of sanskrit which is an Indo European language related to english, although distantly .
        He would have followed the Brahmanical 4 stages of life for men i.e student ,housholder ,retiree,ascetic.

All of his religio.spiritual knowledge and understanding would have come through the Brahmins and the traditional way of life. He lived in what would be today the northeast of India (India only became a sovereign country in 1947 ).None of his teachings were written down during his lifetime and were passed down to us through the oral tradition until 400 or 500 years after his death they were written down. We must also remember that sages and philosophers always added their ideas onto the various sutras as was the tradition in various parts of the world.

" One of the functions of intelligence is to take into account  the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence " Lewis Mumford.

Is Buddhism too narrow of a description ?  I'm currently in the process of questioning a lot of my assumptions about life in general and spiritual or religious practice specifically . I lean towards Buddhism , and in fact am a member of a Buddhist organization and it's the word "ORGANIZATION " that bothers me.

Truth is one sages call it by various names..