Siddhartha's Practice

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After the prince left home, he set out for the metropolis of Rajagriha, in the newly emerging southern kingdom of Magadha, where Brahmanism had already taken root and was thriving.

Meanwhile, King Shuddhodana, who had been opposed to his son’s decision to embark on a spiritual quest, sent Ajnata Kaundinya and four other men to find the prince and urge him to return to the palace. However, because Siddhartha’s resolve to leave the secular world behind remained firm, the king had the five men accompany Siddhartha, both as servants and as fellow seekers of the way.

The prince began his training by apprenticing with each of two ascetics who were renowned masters of meditation. While under their tutelage, Siddhartha studied several schools of thought and mastered the mysteries of meditation. He nevertheless rejected these teachers after coming to the conclusion that human suffering cannot be eliminated through the practice of meditation.

Thereafter, Prince Siddhartha secluded himself in a forest on the west bank of the Nairanjana River, where he spent several years practicing breath control and austerities that included reduced food rations and fasting. But once again, Siddhartha came to the conclusion that far from resolving the fundamental causes for suffering, such austerities only drain the mind and body to the extreme. He therefore abandoned his practice of austerities and cleansed himself in the Nairanjana River. A farm girl named Sujata from a nearby village fed Siddhartha rice porridge cooked in milk, which helped him regain his physical and mental strength.

When the five men who had accompanied Siddhartha all this while saw him reject his practice of austerities, they mistakenly believed that he had given up his search for enlightenment altogether. They therefore left Siddhartha in disgust and headed for Deer Park in Varanasi to search for other religious training. Attaining the Way

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