Book
4. A Turning Point
The king, concerned about the possibility of losing his heir, took every precaution to shelter his son from pain and suffering, surrounding him with every conceivable luxury, including three palaces and forty thousand dancing girls. At sixteen, after proving his skill in a contest of arms, Prince Siddhartha married his beautiful cousin Yasodhara. He soon grew pensive and preoccupied, but the turning point of his life did not occur until the age of twenty-nine, when he set out on four journeys, which presented in turn the four passing sights.
First, he encountered a very old man, gray and decrepit, leaning on a staff; second, a pitiful one racked with disease, lying in the road; third, a corpse; and fourth, a yellow-robed monk with shaved head and a begging bowl. Much moved with compassion by the first three sights, he realized that life was subject to old age, disease and death. The fourth sight signified to him the possibility of overcoming these conditions and inspired him to leave the world he knew in order to find a solution for suffering.