The Four Sights of Siddhartha

King Suddhodana, terrified by a prophecy that his son Siddhartha would become a great sage, surrounded the prince with luxury and hid all signs of suffering, aging, and death from him. Siddhartha grew up believing the world was an endless garden of pleasure.

In his late twenties, feeling a strange restlessness, the Prince asked his charioteer, Channa, to take him outside the palace walls. The king desperately tried to clear the streets of any unpleasant sights, but the truth of life cannot be hidden forever.

On their first trip, Siddhartha saw a frail, wrinkled, toothless man struggling to walk. Shocked, he asked Channa what this creature was. Channa replied, "That is an old man, my Prince. Everyone, even you, will one day become like him." Siddhartha was deeply disturbed.

On subsequent trips, he saw a man writhing in the agony of disease, and then a lifeless corpse being carried to the cremation pyre, followed by weeping relatives. The realization that youth, health, and life were entirely fragile and temporary crashed down upon him, filling him with profound existential sorrow.

On his fourth trip, he saw an ascetic with a shaven head and a begging bowl, walking with immense peace and dignity. "Who is this?" Siddhartha asked. "A seeker, my Prince, one who has renounced the world to find freedom from suffering," Channa replied.

That very night, Prince Siddhartha left his sleeping wife and child, his palace, and his kingdom, setting forth into the forest as a wandering ascetic to discover the cure for the suffering of humanity.