The Great Renunciation
His decision to renounce occurred when he saw an old man, a sick man and a corpse. He became aware of the realities of life. He realized that every plant, animal, and human being that is born must grow old, fall sick and die. Everything in the world, even inanimate things, must grow old, fall sick, and die. Attachment to them is the cause of all suffering. Normal human beings, though aware of this fact, still keep seeking these evanescent things and suffer. When he saw a renounced person, he thought: “Here is one man who does the opposite. That is the right thing to do. I will do the same.” So he gave up his princely life, his loving father and his loving aunt who mothered him, his beautiful wife, his newly born child, and even his future as a king or emperor, and withdrew into the forest, to live an ascetic life, learning meditation from well-known meditation masters of the time. Before he left the family, however, he did produce a child, because he didn’t want to leave the wife alone and unhappy.
His main purpose in life was to conquer the blind emotions and solve the problem of existence, which is death or mortality itself. We are caught up in a trap, where blind emotions are carrying us unconsciously towards an inevitable, unpredictable death that is hanging over our head, like the sword of Damocles, liable to fall and crush us into pieces at any time. It is this same problem that all religions (monotheistic, polytheistic or humanistic) are attempting to solve in their own way. Most religions appear to be escapes from reality into a fantasy, but Prince Siddhatta gave up the theistic approach and took up a humanistic approach to solve the problem, using human intelligence. He saw that the obstacle that prevented him from using the human intelligence was human emotions. So he removed all emotional disturbances from his system by learning to practice tranquillity by letting go. This helped him to change his thinking.