Buddha is perhaps one of the few sages for whom we have mention of his rather impressive physical characteristics. He was at least six feet tall. A kshatriya by birth, he had a military training in his upbringing, and by Sakyan tradition was required to pass tests to demonstrate his worthiness as a warrior in order to marry. He had a strong enough body to be noticed by one of the kings and was asked to join his army as a general. He is also believed by Buddhists to have "the 32 Signs of the Great Man".

Although the Buddha was not represented in human form until around the 1st century CE (see Buddhist art), his physical characteristics are described in one of the central texts of the traditional Pali canon, the Digha Nikaya. They help define the global aspect of the historical Buddha, his physical appearance is described by Yasodhara to his son Rahula upon Buddha's return in the scripture of the "Lion of Men".

Having been born a Kshatriya, he was probably of Indo-Aryan ethnic heritage and had the physical characteristics most common to the Aryan warrior castes of south-central Asia, typically found among the Vedic Aryans, Scythians and Persians. This stands in contrast to the depictions of him as East Asian looking, which are generally created by Buddhists in those areas, similar to the way Northern Europeans often portray Jesus as blonde and blue-eyed.

"The original teachings of the historical Buddha are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover or reconstruct." While there is disagreement amongst various Buddhist sects over more esoteric aspects of Buddha's teachings and over disciplinary rules for monks, there is generally agreement over these points, among many others:

* The Four Noble Truths: that suffering is an inherent part of existence; that the origin of suffering is ignorance and the main symptoms of that ignorance are attachment and craving; that attachment and craving can be ceased; and that following the Noble Eightfold Path will lead to the cessation of attachment and craving and therefore suffering.
* The Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
* The concept of dependent origination: that any phenomenon 'exists' only because of the ‘existence’ of other phenomena in a complex web of cause and effect covering time past, present and future. Because all things are thus conditioned and transient (anicca), they have no real independent identity (anatta).
* Rejection of the infallibility of accepted scripture: Teachings should not be accepted unless they are borne out by our experience and are praised by the wise. See the Kalama Sutta for details.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org