210 Part III: South Asia
tury B.C.E.^1 was the son of a chief of the Shakya tribe in the foothills of the Hima-
layas. His name was Siddhartha Gautama, a prince born into wealth and
privilege. In the midst of this plenty, his beautiful wife, Yashodhara, gave birth to
a son. It seemed he had everything good that life could offer. Yet, one time while
traveling outside his palace he encountered four facts of human life that stunned
him with the unavoidable suffering of the human condition. A feeble old man
brought home the inevitability of old age; a burning corpse exposed him to death;
and a hideously deformed leper revealed the horror of disease. Depressed by
these inescapable truths, the sight of a wandering ascetic offered a radical alterna-
tive to passive acceptance of old age, suffering, and death and planted in his mind
the fourth fact: hope of an escape. Telling no one, he shaved his head, donned the
simple robe of an ascetic, and left his home in search of spiritual liberation.
He traveled south toward the small kingdoms growing up along the Gan-
ges in search of a spiritual teacher, a guru. His first teacher taught a form of
meditation that led to a kind of trance state, or “state of nothingness.” Siddhar-
tha soon surpassed his teacher but found such a state was no escape from old
age, sickness, and death. He joined a group of ascetics who practiced severe
physical punishment that endangered their lives. After several years and grow-
ing expertise in these methods, Siddhartha realized that physical torture was
no more spiritually liberating than physical pleasure. Again he had to leave.These Tibetan Buddhists in Lhasa, Tibet, are worshipping the Buddha at Jokhang Temple with
prayers and prostrations. Many have traveled hundreds of miles to reach this most sacred temple.