Around 2500 hundred years ago a son was born to a wealthy ruler in India. His mother died shortly after the delivery thereby fulfilling a prophecy that this child was destined to become either one of the greatest kings in the world or a great spiritual figure.

The King named his son Siddhartha Gautama and kept him distracted from spiritual matters by keeping him isolated from the negative aspects of life. He carefully exposed his son to all the pleasures that his wealth could provide. He surrounded him with only young and beautiful people and kept him from seeing poverty, misery, disease or death.

The King even protected his heir from feeling the extremes of temperature by sending him to the southern kingdom during the cold of winter and to the northern kingdom to escape the heat of summer. Thus Siddhartha grew to be a strong and happy man without a care in the world.

One day, while traveling between kingdoms he saw an old man walking down the road. Siddhartha did not understand what he was seeing and when he questioned the man he discovered what his father had been doing for him.

Shortly thereafter Siddhartha left his grieving father in order to seek to understand the meaning of life and perhaps with this knowledge attempt to alleviate some of the suffering in the world.

After spending most of his life with various religious persons and practicing the many different religious systems of the time without getting any closer to the results he was expecting he suddenly stopped.

He sat under a tree and vowed he would not leave this spot until he understood the meaning of life. After 7 days and nights of fasting and meditating he became 'enlightened'. He then became known as 'Buddha' which means 'enlightened one' and proceeded to teach others that 'enlightenment' can only be experienced within oneself.

Some time passed and as Buddha was walking with his brother/scribe Ananda they were approached by a man who asked Buddha 'Does God Exist?' Buddha immediately replied 'No He does not!'

A little while later another man asked Buddha a similar question and Buddha answered 'Yes He does, always has and always will.'

That same evening while Buddha and Ananda were meditating a man approached Buddha and asked 'Is God real?' This time Buddha motioned the man to sit and join them in meditation. After some time the man got up, thanked Buddha for the answer and went on his way.

Ananda was understandably puzzled by all of this and asked his brother why he had given two opposite answers to the same question and why the third person had thanked him for an answer he did not hear.

Buddha replied: 'The first man believed God exists and so I had to say 'No He does not'. The second man did not believe in God so I had to answer 'Yes God does exist'. The last person did not have an opinion either way so I simply invited him to 'experience' the truth of the matter for himself.

After the recording of this story a saying arose: 'If you should be on the Way and you should meet the Buddha, you should kill him!'

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'The greatest subject we can teach our children is self-reliance.'