Question Who did Buddha say he was and why did he believe this?
Answer Hello Sherry,
According to tradition, after becoming fully enlightened under the bodhi tree in Bodhgaya at the age of 35, the Buddha searched for his five fellow ascetics in the Deer Park in Sarnath and told them that he was no longer "friend Gautama" but the Tathagata, roughly "the thus-perfected one". There he delivered to them his first sermon ever, expounding his doctrine of the Middle Way and the Four Noble Truths, including the Noble Eightfold Path. There are many moving accounts in Buddhist literature of this seminal moment in India twenty-five centuries ago.
