The Buddha's mother died early. Her sister Mahaprajapati, who Suddhodana then married, raised him. He married a girl named Yasodhara who bore him a son, Rahula. The core episode of this part of his life is termed the Great Renunciation which refers to the conflict between the Buddha and his family regarding the renunciate or ascetic way of life. The relatively simple account offered in the Pali Sutras (A.III.38; M.26) is greatly embellished by Asvaghosa. The young Buddha was surrounded by the sensual pleasures wealth and power can provide. His first experience with the outside world, seeing an impoverished old man, sent him back to the palace wracked with melancholy. A second and third trip introduced him to disease and then to death. Rather than contemplate these things he was advised by the king's counselor to satiate himself in erotic pleasure. These are fleeting, he replied, while true pleasure should be permanent. On further outings he was aggrieved by the sufferings of plow animals and even the slaughter of the worms rent by the blade of the plow. While contemplating the round of suffering that pervades life he spied a man of religious orders and made up his mind to follow a path of strict discipline to see if it lead to happiness. During the quiet of night he took a final look at his wife and son and took to his horse to ride from the city, accompanied by his charioteer. Shortly he dismounted, sent his charioteer back to his father with a message along with all his worldly good, then cut off his hair and exchanged clothes with a passing hunter. Though he loved his father and family, the Buddha tells us he is following a higher dharma (duty) by giving these things up to live a life of homelessness. He was 29 years old.

Thereafter he seeks out a number of teachers. The first, Arada Kalama, taught a form of mediation leading to the attainment of a state of nothingness. Gutama practiced and attained it but decided it did not lead to an ultimate Awakening and nirvana. The next teacher, Udraka Ramaputra, taught a method for achieving a higher state of consciousness: neither perception nor non-perception.

The technique was mastered but it did not lead to the goals of "disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, tranquillity, superknowledge, Awakening, and nirvana" (M.39). The Buddha moved eastward to Uruvela near Bodhgava where he settled upon a spot to try the method of austerity. He held his breath to induce trances. He fasted and became utterly wasted. He was joined by 5 other ascetics. He continued this way for six years then, deciding that asceticism did not lead to liberation, he tried to imagine another way. While he was doing this he was mistaken for a spirit by a maid who thereupon reported it to her mistress. The maid's mistress, Sujata, took food to the Buddha and he ate. His five ascetic companions immediately left in disgust. But physical pleasure of a non-erotic sort, the Buddha reasoned, is good, and a healthy body necessary to the pursuit of understanding. We gain the teaching that bodily mortification is an ineffectual way for attaining enlightenment.

There follows a particularly interesting legend of temptation by Mara, a personification of death, delusion and temptation. While the Buddha sat under the bodi tree, the tree of awakening, Mara bombarded Gutama with doubts and temptations like hunger, sensuality, fear, sloth, and the like in order to dissuade him from continuing on the path toward enlightenment. But all temptations failed. This story becomes a favorite of Buddhist artists and teachers for it teaches the four discernments necessary to spiritual striving: discernment, truth, renunciation and calm.

The Buddha then began a process of disengagement through the four stages of dhyana, stages which serve as the foundation of the six superknowledges (abhijna). His progress toward release from bondage is described in terms of three forms of cognition that coincided with the three night watches, from dusk to 10PM, from 10PM to 2AM, and from 2AM to dawn. During the first watch he acquired the knowledge of thousands of previous lives. During the second he acquired psychic vision and the entire cosmos appeared before him. He noticed that good karma leads to a happy rebirth and bad karma to a miserable one. During the third he acquired knowledge of the ending of the asravas and the realization of the principle of pratitya-samutpada, the realization of dependent co-origination. "In short, the Bodhisattva's remembering of his past lives during the first watch of the night allowed him in the second watch to see the mechanism of karma that determined the fates of all beings. By focusing on the source of karma in his own mind during the third watch, he came to see the laws underlying all karma and conditioned experience and, through his insight, attained unconditioned release." Gutama was now the Buddha. Awakened.