Going forth
Going forth, leaving the household for the homeless life, was a recognised path in the Buddha's world. In the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta, the Buddha describes his own decision simply: while still young, with black hair, and though his mother and father wept, he shaved off his hair and beard, put on the ochre robe and went forth.
He later told a questioner, in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, that he was twenty-nine when he left home.
The Great Departure
Later biographies turned this into one of the most dramatic scenes in Buddhist art. On the night his son Rāhula was born, the prince looked at the sleeping women of the palace, saw the emptiness of pleasure, and rode away at midnight on his horse Kanthaka with his charioteer Channa. At the edge of the kingdom he cut off his hair and sent the horse home.
His wife, known in later tradition as Yasodharā, is called in the early texts simply 'the mother of Rāhula'.
Meeting a king
An early poem, the Pabbajjā Sutta, tells how the young wanderer came to Rājagaha, the capital of Magadha, where King Bimbisāra noticed him and offered him wealth and a command. He refused, saying he was seeking something else.
Why it matters
His dissatisfaction with both luxury and extreme self-denial eventually leads toward what Buddhist tradition calls the Middle Way.
History and tradition
What historians can say
That Gotama left home as a young man to become a wandering ascetic is consistent across the early sources and fits the religious life of his time. The details of his leaving cannot be checked, and the earliest account suggests his parents knew and grieved rather than being deceived.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
The midnight escape, the sleeping household, the horse Kanthaka and the gods muffling its hooves come from later biographies, which tell the story as the decisive turning point of his life.