A long time ago a prince was born called Siddhartha Gautama, who would change India forever. As a child, Siddhartha was "imprisoned" within the palace gates in order to protect him from the troubles of the world. This worked for a while, but then Siddhartha grew up and became curious of what was on the other side of those gates. At this time Siddhartha began taking little day trips outside of the palace gates. On each of these visits Siddhartha saw a little piece of life, or suffering. The first of these sights was an elderly or feeble man passing by. This confused Siddhartha because he had never seen the decay of an aging person. On his second visit, he witnessed disease, which conflicted him tremendously because he had never known sickness or disease. He did not realize how people could be so afflicted. The third sight was that of death with a corpse placed on a bier. On Siddhartha's last visit to the outside world he stumbled across an ascetic monk. Siddhartha was so struck by the ascetic's serenity that he renounced everything that his parents had given him to live in the woods. Here he deprived himself of all desire and want for approximately six years when he realized, after awakening from a mild coma, that this was not the way to enlightenment. He left the woods and renounced his renunciation in what is now known as the Great Renunciation. At this time he sat .
under a Bohda tree and remained there until he reached an enlightened state when he became know as the Buddha. .
At his time of enlightenment, Siddhartha became aware of the main problem of the world. He believed this was suffering. To explain this idea more, Siddhartha formed the Four Noble Truths, which are listed below. .
1. The noble truth that life involves suffering.
2. The noble truth that suffering arises from desire.
3. The noble truth that suffering ends with the removal of desire.
4. The noble truth that there is a way to the end of suffering.
