Hoping to give his son pleasure, King Suddhodana arranged four trips outside the city of Kapilavastu, one through each of its four gates.
At the age of thirteen, Gautama was escorted by his attendant Channa on four subsequent visits outside of the palace.
There, he came across the "four sights": an old crippled man, a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and finally an ascetic. Gautama realized then the harsh truth of life - that death, disease, age, and pain were inescapable, that the poor outnumbered the wealthy, and that even the pleasures of the rich eventually came to nothing.
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