All the commentaries have said that Buddha renounced the world. It is not true. The world simply fell away; it ceased to have any meaning for him.
The night he moved away from his palace to the mountains, when he was crossing the boundary of his kingdom, his charioteer tried to convince him to go back to the palace....
Buddha looked back and told the old man, "I don't see any palace there but only a great fire. The palace is on fire, only flames. Simply leave me here and go back; if you see the palace, go back to the palace. I don't see any palace there, because death is coming closer every moment. And I don't see any palace there because all palaces disappear sooner or later. In this world, everything is momentary and I am in search of the eternal. Seeing the momentariness of this world, I can no longer fool myself.
These are his exact words, "I cannot fool myself anymore."
Not that he is renouncing the world! What can he do? If you see something as rubbish, if you see that the stones you have carried all this time are not real diamonds, what are you going to do with them? It will not need great courage to drop them, to throw them away. It will not need great intelligence to get rid of them - they will immediately fall from your hands. You were not clinging to those stones, but to the idea that they were diamonds. You were clinging to your fallacy, your illusion.
Buddha has not renounced the world, he has renounced his illusions about it. -Osho, Buddha: His Life and Teachings
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