he prince took on him their garments, and went to them to learn from
all that which they had learnt. He went to all the wisest hermits of the
land, to those renowned for their wisdom and holiness; and this is what
they taught him, this is all the light they gave to him who came to them
for light. 'There is,' they said, 'the soul and the body of man, and
they are enemies; therefore, to punish the soul, you must destroy and
punish the body. All that the body holds good is evil to the soul.' So
they purified their souls by ceremonies and forms, by torture and
starvation, by nakedness and contempt of decency, by nameless
abominations. And the young prince studied all their teaching, and
essayed to follow their example, and he found it was all of no use. Here
he could find no way to happiness, no raising of the soul to higher
planes, but, rather, a degradation towards the beasts. For
self-punishment is just as much a submission to the flesh as luxury and
self-indulgence. How can you forget the body, and turn the soul to
better thoughts, if you are for ever torturing that body, and thereby
keeping it in memory? You can keep your lusts just as easily before your
eyes by useless punishment as by indulgence. And how can you turn your
mind to meditation and thought if your body is in suffering? So the
prince soon saw that here was not the way he wanted. His soul revolted
from them and their austerities, and he left them. As he fathomed the
emptiness of his counsellors of the palace, so he fathomed the emptiness
of the teachers of the cave and monastery. If the powerful and wealthy
were ignorant, wisdom was not to be found among the poor and feeble, and
he was as far from it as when he left the palace. Yet he did not
despair. Truth was somewhere, he was sure; it must be found if only it
be looked for with patience and sincerity, and he would find it. Surely
there was a greater wisdom than mere contempt of wealth and comfort,
surely a greater happiness than could be found in self-torture and
hysteria. And so, as he could find no one to teach him, he went out into
the forest to look for truth there. In the great forest where no one
comes, where the deer feed and the tiger creeps, he would seek what man
could not give him. They would know, those great trees that had seen a
thousand rains, and outlived thirty generations of men; they would know,
those streams that flashed from the far snow summits; surely the forest
and the hills, the d