The beginning
This brings us to a discussion of how the Buddha awakened from the dream of existence. He started as a Bodhisatta learning to sacrifice everything he thought he had, including his own body and mind. In one lifetime he saw a tigress trying to eat her cubs out of hunger. He sacrificed his own body to the tigress and thus saved the cubs. Another time he was born as a king and he sacrificed all his property, his palace, his children and even his wife, and went into the forest to live there. Finally he was born in the Heaven of Contentment (Tusita) as the King of that Heaven (Santuṭṭhi) waiting till the time was ready for him to become a Buddha.
When the time was ripe, he was born into a royal family as Prince Siddhatta. From the time he was born he was pampered by the attendants till one day during a ploughing ceremony he experienced the first solitude, when the attendants were busy attending to the ceremony. That was the time he entered the first ecstasy (jhāna) in this new life as a Prince. We have explained what an ecstasy was. It was standing out of the sensual world. When he reached the age of 16 his father got him married against his wishes. After his marriage he was not interested in the common sensual pleasures of married life. So he lived married for 13 years till the age of 29, till he decided to renounce the worldly (mundane) life and enter a spiritual (supra mundane) life.