The senses are an important gateway to receiving information about the world around us. However, in Indian culture, various forms of sight such as gazing, glances, darshan were not only used to receive information but were often used to communicate with each other without saying anything. Therefore, eyesight had an important place in all major Indian religions. In Buddhism, the order of the senses is: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. (McHugh, The Senses). For Buddhists, sight is the sense that allows us to perceive objects at the greatest distance. For example, you may see a river that you cannot hear, taste, smell or touch. Thus, according to Buddhism, sight is the most important sense among all the other senses (McHugh, The Senses). Here in this excerpt from "The Life of Buddha", the suffering and pain caused by the sight of a dead body plays an important role in making Prince Siddhartha (Gautama Buddha) aware of the suffering and misery that exists in the world. This depresses his mind and forces him to think about the higher purpose of life in order to escape this samsara – cycle of rebirth and re-death. According to Buddhists, the four views - the old man, the sick man, the corpse and the ascetic were specific observations that made Prince Siddhartha aware of the suffering that existed in this world and separated him from all the pleasures of the world in order to become “the Enlightened One”. Due to the predictions that accompanied the birth of Prince Siddhartha – that he would become either a world leader or a great holy man – his father, King Shudhdhona, attempted to protect his son from the world's most distressing characteristics for 29 years. But dissatisfaction grew within Prince Siddhartha and so he asked the king ...... middle of paper ...... the e of this poem could be to make the reader understand the suffering he sees in the world and try to find a way around it by reducing it. This extract teaches us that life contains suffering and that suffering is due to earthly objects because the people who took care of the dead were attached to him and this made them suffer. The only way out of this suffering and samsara is nirvana and this can be achieved by following the eightfold path of the Buddha – right view, right intention; a good speech, a good deed, a good livelihood; good effort, good attention, good concentration (McHugh). Overall, the very sight of death and the deceased made Gautam Buddha understand that "life contains suffering" and it was only through the sense of sight that he was able to extract four noble truths taken from the Four Sites of Buddhism. Meaning therefore plays a major role in Indian religion..