ALARA AND UDDAKA

When prince siddhartha left his palace and a life of luxury, five of his friends who heard this, left their homes to become monks like him.One of them was Kondanna, the young wise man. In fact he was the cleverest of the lot. The other wise men were Bhaddiya, Mahanama and Assaji. They, too, were wearing orange coloured robes and went from place to place begging for food. At that time in India there were many religious teachers. The best and well known one was Alara Kalama. Ascetic Gotama went with his five friends to study under him. He stayed and learnt all that Alara could teach him very faithfully and obediently. He was the most hard working pupil and his master liked him very much as he was very clever too. Finally he could not teach him any more and he said: "You are the same as i am now. There is no difference between us. Stay here and take my place and teach my pupils with me." Ascetic Gotama was surprised and asked, "You cannot teach me more? Can you teach me the way to stop death, sickness and old age?" "No," said Alara. "I cannot, I donot know that myself. So how can i teach you that. There is none in the world who knows this." Ascetic Gotama left him with his band of five friends. They wandered all over the country practising what they had learnt. At last they heard of another great teacher who was famous for his cleverness. He was called Uddaka. They went and learnt from him for sometime. Here too Ascetic Gotama learnt very obediently and became his best pupil.Uddaka too, could not teach him how to stop suffering, old age and death and he too, had never heard of anyone who could solve these problems. Once again Ascetic Gotama was very disappointed and left Uddaka with his five friends and made up his mind to struggle by himself very hard until he found the cause of all the sufferings of life.