Buddhacha Sandesh - Thoughts of Buddha The Buddha (Gautama Siddhartha) "Buddha" means "the awakened one"--that is, someone who has woken up from the dream of being a separate ego in a material universe. Gautama Siddhartha, whom we affectionately, [mistakenly], call the Buddha, taught for forty-five years. In all those years, and in the hundreds of thousands of teaching words that he uttered, his message was simply this: "You are all Buddhas. There is nothing you need to achieve. Just open your eyes." Stephen Mitchell