The Five Who Had Walked Out On Him

The first people he went to find were the five who had walked out on him.

Before any of it, Siddhartha had spent years starving himself. That was the method, you subdued the body until it gave up its hold, and he did it more thoroughly than anybody. The accounts say he got down to a grain of rice a day and could feel his spine through his stomach.

Five other ascetics attached themselves to him, because they could see he was the most serious man any of them had met.

And then he stopped. He worked out that he was going to die without understanding anything, and that a body too weak to think with was no use to him, and he took a bowl of milk-rice from a village woman and ate it.

And the five walked away in disgust. He had gone soft. He had given up.

He sat down under a tree alone.

Afterwards

And when it was over, and he had understood what he had been trying to understand, he had a problem that nobody talks about much.