... child Siddhartha became exceptionally clever, being brilliant at everything he tried. It was when Siddhartha saw the 'Four Sights', a sick man, an old man and a corpse, and finally a holy man that he questioned the cause of suffering and decided to become a holy man as was predicted by Asita. He joined a group of ascetics for six years, almost starving himself to death. One day he went to a river and a local girl, seeing how skinny he was, offered him a bowl of milk rice. Here, he realised 'The Middle Way'. When he had lived in complete luxury, getting everything he wanted he was still unhappy. When he was an ascetic and deprived himself he could not reach enlightenment. 'The Middle Way' is now an important Buddhist teaching, telling us not to take things to the extreme. Siddhartha decided that if the now empty bowl floated upstream then he ...

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