Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.114

c8.114

A later age desired to see illustrated in concrete occurrences, how for the first time and with impressive power the thoughts of old age, disease, and death crept over the young man, healthy and in the freshness of life, and how he was directed by some significant example to that path which leads away beyond the power of all suffering. Thus was invented, or rather transferred to the youth of Gotama, a legend which was narrated of one of the legendary Buddhas of bygone ages—the familiar history of the four drives of the youth to the garden outside the town, during which the pictures of the impermanence of everything earthly presented themselves to him one after the other, in the form of a helpless old man, a sick person, and a dead body; and at last a religious mendicant with shaven head and wearing yellow garments meets him, a picture of peace and of deliverance from all pain of impermanence. In that way later tradition concocted this narrative preparatory to the flight of Gotama from his home. Of all this the early ages knew nothing.