This embodies the soul of Buddhism, its elemental principle,—­to escape from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal and transient.

The prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit, and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw around him on every hand.  So he clandestinely and secretly escapes from his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments; dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of Brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures.  Finding a patient trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the Brahmans, and repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation.  This was the form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the guidance of the Brahmans; for Siddartha as yet is not the “enlightened,”—­he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of disease and death.

Siddartha’s rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of saving truth.  His body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near unto death.  The conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of the Brahmans are fundamentally wrong.  He discovers that no amount of austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation.  In consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which is the turning-point of his history.  He resolves to quit his self-inflicted torments as of no avail.  He meets a shepherd’s daughter, who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable condition.  The rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his strength.  He renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial to his changed views and condition.

Siddartha’s full enlightenment, however, has not yet come.  Under the shade of the Bodhi tree he devotes himself again to religious contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies.  He remains a while in peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely flowers seem to pay tribute to him.  He passes through successive stages of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of his previous births in different forms; of the causes of re-birth,—­ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living, not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies.  He is emancipated from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach.