Renunciation In The Life Of Siddhartha Gautama

Renunciation is to give up or reject something. In religions such as Christianity, the idea of renunciation is displayed, or exemplified, through penance. This is a form of “self-punishment” in order to redeem oneself for engaging in sinful behavior. In Buddhism, renunciation is a positive experience meant to liberate one from lustful feelings. In other words, it is the “letting go” of things that cause ignorance and suffering. In the bodhisattva’s final life as Siddhartha Gautama, his renunciation served as the foundation to his eventual awakening and his final attainment of Buddhahood.
Siddhartha Gautama was born in the city of Kapilavastu as the son of the Shakya king. He lived the privileged, luxurious life of a prince in a palace, where

By recognizing this, he “saw rightly the evils of the world” and “pride of self in an instant departed from him.” For the first time, the prince had an understanding that the life he had grown up knowing showed him nothing of the world’s miseries. These encounters caused him to realize that all living things, without exception, are going to experience the sufferings of aging, sickness, and

It provided him with clarity and level-headedness because he was free from the distractions of his previous life’s luxuries. Although his departure from the palace was necessary for him to pursue enlightenment, the way in which it was executed was selfish and disrespected his father’s wishes. In his Great Departure, Siddhartha was “firm in his resolve and unwavering, leaving his loving father and young son, his devout subjects and highest fortune.” He abandoned his family without warning, causing them great sadness and suffering in his absence, which strongly contradicts his reasons for wanting to leave in the first place. He is more concerned with the suffering of strangers than that of his own family, but this stems from Siddhartha’s knowledge that only a fully enlightened Buddha would be capable of helping all living beings escape their suffering. In order to achieve this, he had to leave the palace and engage in meditation until he attained