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..

Practice for Self and Others--seems a simple enough idea and very compassionate . It is of course a prerequisite for Nichiren buddhists. But what does it really mean. Separateley it's simple enough to comprehend. If you are practicing for other people then you must accept that those people are different ,or separate , from you , or your self, But doesn't Buddhism teach the oneness of all things ,beings , etc ?.So ,if you are practicing for your self doesn't that include everything else in the universe ?

The truth ,or reality , cannot be perceived through the medium of language. It must be comprehended through direct experience. Language is species specific . Instructions of how to gain enlightenment cannot be given in a spoken or written language and that's why we chant "nam myo ho renge kyo " .

मध्यमक 

	Whatever is dependent arising We declared that to be emptiness. That is dependent designation, And is itself the middle way.	”
—Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24:18 all things arise in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions.

All religions ,and most of the people practicing those religions , seem to believe that they are the sole owners of the truth and that everybody else is simply wrong. I believe this to be  a very dangerous way of behaving . Even worse is that people interpret holy writings in their own subjective way . Reading through a translation of , say"the Lotus Sutra ", we are left scratching our heads as to the meaning of various obscure descriptions and having someone tell us that they know exactly what those passages mean ,even though they don't speak ,read or write the language the book was written in , or come from that particular culture ,doesn't help in understanding what was meant.
  Take for example  when the Buddha says that Kashyapa will become a Buddha named Bright Light in a  kalpa called Great Adornment in a land called Light Virtue. How can we possibly know what that means, what significance ' or connotation , it has in the context of attaining buddhahood. In the original language of the Buddha these terms must have had some specific meaning. How do we find out what that is ? The Indian culture is still there in north eastern India although it is a Hindu culture , except for Bangladesh and a lot of Assam .