Christian Evidences

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he saw an old man who was decrepit, broken-toothed, gray-haired, and bent of body, leaning on a staff, and trembling. From this, he learned the fact of old age. Shortly afterward, he saw a diseased body lying by the road, and later, a corpse. On a fourth occasion he saw a monk and he thus learned the possibility of withdrawal from the world. He said, "Life is subject to age and death. Where is the realm of life in which there is neither age nor death?" He became acutely aware of the evanescence of the things of the world. At the age of 29, he secretly left his father's kingdom to begin a search for enlightenment. He learned from two of the foremost Hindu masters of his day, and, after six years, joined a band of ascetics. This taught him the futility of asceticism, and he therefore devoted himself to a combination of rigorous thought and mystic concentration along the lines of the fourth "path" of Hinduism, raja yoga. At one point, he seated himself beneath a fig tree (Bo tree) ...

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that which was authentic and genuine. Buddha refused to talk about metaphysical questions: It is not on the view that the world is eternal, that it is finite, that body and soul are distinct, or that the Buddha exists after death that a religious life depends. Whether these views or their opposites are held, there is still rebirth, there is old age, there is death, and grief, lamentation, suffering, sorrow, and despair . . . I have not spoken to these views because they do not conduce to absence of passion, tranquility, and Nirvana.2 Buddha said to his followers that when he was gone, he would really be gone; that they should not bother to pray to him. He was there only to point out the ...

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