Some Jyotish on the Four Sights of Buddhism

 A student and I were discussing the charts of birth, renunciation, and enlightenment for the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. These charts are amazing and worthy of many blog posts, a goal for another time. They are sourced from Buddhist Astrology, a really excellent book.

Perhaps I can just say for now that witnessing a Great One's chart is like They are right there, in front of you.

What I want to focus on here is the Jyotish of the Four Sights. I can not do the topic justice, but I would like to add a bit to the discourse.

The basic idea is that Shrii Gautama saw as a young man four sights, "four holy messengers", that led to his enlightenment: 1. an elderly man, 2. a sick man, 3. a dead man, and 4. a saddhu (holy man/monk), in that order.

Some say he saw them all at once, a day before renunciation. Others say that he saw them at different times. Based on the birth chart of the Buddha, I am inclined to think that the sights happened at different times and also not right before the renunciation chart took place. The order of the sights also makes sense from the birth chart.

Rather than showing you about that, I want to show you here the more important themes raised by the sights themselves. Let's begin by seeing where the themes of one through four are in anyone's chart:

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