org). It is said that ten months before his birth, Queen Maya had a dream where a beautiful white baby elephant descended from heaven, circled around her bed chamber, offered her a lotus flower and entered the side of her body. .
According to the laws of Karma, all beings are reborn and live different lives at different times. After achieving Nirvana, one puts a stop to this endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. A potential Buddha is called a Bodhisattva. Siddhartha Bodhisattva, too, had lived many, countless lives before he was born as Siddhartha Gautama. He was born as humans, divinities, and even animals in his previous lives and in each life he became better and wiser, accumulating good karma, while fulfilling the pre-requisites needed to become a Buddha. It is believed that he was residing in Thusitha, one of the six divine worlds just before he was born in the human world as Siddhartha, his very last birth. .
His father, King Suddhodana was overjoyed with the arrival of the prince. He had always wished to have a son, who would be raised to become a great king that would conquer all of India and be crowned as emperor. So the prince was given the name Siddhartha, which means "every wish fulfilled." When the prince was just seven days old, his mother, Queen Maya passed away and it is said that after her death, she was born in the divine world called Thusitha, where Lord Buddha visited later and preached a sermon. After Queen Maya's death, her sister, MahaPrajapathi, became his stepmother. According to the Indian traditions, King Suddhodana invited over a hundred learned Brahmins to a feast at his palace in order to predict the little prince's future. It was predicted that he will become a great and powerful ruler if he remained within cloistered palace walls, but if he sees the suffering in the world and leaves the palace life to practice asceticism, he would become a wise and sage religious figure and a spiritual teacher.
