The Buddha's Story — Chris Matheson

From the moment of his birth, Siddhartha Gautama never doubted his specialness. He arrived with magnificently webbed digits and could lick his own earlobes. His karma had been that good. Thus, the question was never whether he would become a king, but rather, what type of king he would become. Pampered as a worldly cloistered prince, Siddhartha's journey took a sudden spiritual turn when he came to the first of his many realizations: things die, and before they die, they suffer, a lot, for real... his harrowing insight formed the first of the eight parts of his Four Noble Truths (not including the five other parts). His ascetic-minded mission: to free the world of pain, even if he was very glad to no longer care about anything or anyone in it. Having already experienced an incalculable number of past miserable lives, Siddhartha wondered, how could he himself escape this endless cycle of suffering? With this question came an enlightened answer that promised a possible way out: only those who live can die.