He was married, and when he was thirty years old there was born to him a son named Rahlu.
No one knows how well his family did for him in picking out a wife, but it is of record that he left wife and son and home shortly after the boy was born.
He just left home one day, and when next heard from was at Rajagriha and was leading the life of an ascetic.
Buddha never did things by halves. He was out seeking the way of salvation in rigorous and excessive asceticism, and he went at it with such intense earnestness that he nearly lost his life—he overworked it, and was all played out when he came to the conclusion that he was on the wrong track.
Abandoning asceticism, he gave himself up to a life of thought and meditation, and as a result he gradually evolved his religious and philosophic theory of the general existence of evil, its origin, and its eradication.
He was sitting under a pipal tree in a little village named Buddh-gaya, southeast of Benares, when light dawned upon his soul. As the result of his emancipation of spirit he became a poet.
He became thoroughly convinced that the great end and aim of existence was to attain non-existence: and that the cause of all evil was wanting things. We were here through no fault of our own; that we would continue to be born over and over; and that the next state into which we were born would depend upon how we used our present life.
To illustrate the idea: A tramp or hobo, if he tried to be as good a tramp or hobo as he could, would be born next time to be a roustabout, deck hand, or day laborer.
Continuing to be as good as possible in those callings, the next birth would be a step up, to, say, a bookkeeper, clerk, or possibly a commercial traveler.
The next birth, continuing meritorious in these last named capacities, would be a more desirable existence, and on up, passing the stage of a successful politician with a pull, to still higher and higher existence, until finally, getting out of the trouble and vexation of being any of them, one's individuality would be lost entirely in the great spirit of Nirvana—rest—peace—out of it—finished.