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Religion, Practice and Science of Non-Violence
saying the mendicant disappeared.
The words of the mendicant made Gautama resolve to renounce his worldly life and become a mendicant himself and to seek the truth that would deliver the world of its suffering.
Silently, one night, he walked out of the palace, mounted his faithful horse Kanthaka, and finding the gates of the palace open, he went out into the silent night. He was accompanied by Chhandaka, his charioteer. Gautama was twenty-nine then.
On his way he cut off his beautiful princely hair with his sword and exchanged his royal robe for a plain cloth of ochre-colour which the mendicants wear. He bade the charioteer go back with the chariot and tell king Suddhodana that the prince had renounced the world.
After passing through several villages he reached the city of Vaishali, on the outskirts of which lived Arada Kalama, a rigorous and renowned teacher. Gautama became his disciple and through pious concentration attained the seventh stage of meditation (akinchanyatana=sphere of desirelessness). Not being satisfied with what he could attain here, he left the place and went to Rajagriha and became a disciple of another teacher Rudraka Ramaputra. Here again he found that his teacher could not help him attain the final Truth.
Gautama moved from place to place listening to the teachings of revered teachers. These teachings differed and even contradicted each other, hence they could not satisfy him. He abhored the rituals that involved sacrifice of animals. For six long years, Gautama meditated, fasted and bore all the rigours of an ascetic life. In the process, his body was reduced to a skeleton. The fame of his asceticism spread far and wide, but he himself was nowhere near attaining his goal. He felt that extreme penance was not the right path. From then on he resolved to strengthen his body by food and drink so as to make it fit for further struggle until the goal was achieved.
One day, after bathing and taking some food, Gautama sat under the shade of the Bodhi tree on the bank of the Nairaniana river in Bodh-Gaya, in deep meditation. At this time, it is said, Maro Papima, the lord of the five desires and of death, and the greatest enemy of Truth, came out with his three daughters and a host of evil spirits, to tempt him. But Gautama remained calm, poised and determined. He exclaimed his resolve by saying,
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