Buddha (563?-483? B.C.) is the title given to the founder of Buddhism, one of the world's great religions. It means Enlightened or Awakened One. The Buddha was Siddhartha Gautama. Another of his titles is Shakyamuni, which means "the wise man of the Shakya clan."
At the age of 29 Siddhartha on seeing the sufferings and pains of life he renounced the world and left all the luxuries of his life in search of eternal truth and left Kapilavastu. He spent his next five years to know about the nature of existence but was unable to find out any answer. One day, Gautama came to the outskirts of a village called Gaya. He sat down to meditate under a sacred tree. He accepted food from a village girl, and decided he would stay under that tree until he had found the answer to his quest.
Gautama meditated in a lotus (cross-legged) posture throughout the night, using the methods he had been taught. He overcame various obstacles and temptations, which had obstructed his path to enlightenment. The Buddha is said to have asked Mother Earth to bear witness to his worthiness to enlightenment. In Buddhist art, Buddha is shown touching the earth with his right hand.

At the heart of this spiritual experience was an understanding of how everything changes all the time. Gautama believed that the root of all suffering caused by change is desire and ignorance. Knowing this is what it means to be enlightened.
The tree under which Gautama was sitting when this happened came to be known as the bodhi or enlightenment tree, or Bo tree. Buddhists call the place of his enlightenment Bodh Gaya. It is in Bihar, India, and has become a center of Buddhist pilgrimage since the Buddha's death. From the time of this enlightenment, Gautama came to be called The Buddha
At Sarnath,near varanasi, he preached his first sermon. Buddha spent the rest of his life teaching middle way and to control negative forces by following the noble eight fold path. Buddha left the world at the age of 80 at Kushinagar about 100 kilometers south east of lumbini.
The Buddhist priest Padmasambhava(750-800A.D.) along with two eminent scholars from Nalanda, Shantarakshita and Tamalashila is credited with introducing in Tibet the Lamaistic order that was known as Vajrayan in the Nako Monastery his foot prints on the rock are held as a sacred record of his visit. The main images which are generally installed in a monastery are that of Buddha, Padmasambhava, Avalokiteshvara, Vajrapani and Manjushree.

In 1949 the newly-established communist China invaded Tibet. A year later, His Holiness The Dalai Lama (The 14th Dalai Lama) was requested by the Regent, the Cabinet and the National Assembly to assume full political authority. For the subsequent nine years, His Holiness the Dalai Lama strove to achieve peaceful co-existence with the Chinese invaders. However, this proved impossible as the Chinese atrocities kept on mounting, creating ever more disillusionment among Tibetans. Tibetans aired their resentment to Chinese occupation by staging armed, popular uprisings, which spread to the entire nation and finally erupted in Lhasa on March 10, 1959. The Chinese responded violently to these uprisings.
When the situation became hopeless for Tibet, His Holiness was requested to flee the country in order to carry on the Tibetan struggle from the outside world. Escaping by night and in disguise, he left Lhasa on March 17, 1959, crossing safely into India on March 31, 1959 where he was warmly received and given asylum. When the Tibetan exodus began, they first went to Dalhousie but later shifted their colony to Dharamshala and this place gained popularity as "The little Lhasa" in India. It has become a prominent place of Tibetans and the site of Buddha Culture is visible throughout the town. It is the place preserving the Tibetan Culture.