
To understand the transformation of Siddhartha Gautama is to trace a path of deliberate renunciation.
When the second urbanization of ancient India took root between 600 BCE and 345 BCE, it shattered the old pastoral rhythms of the subcontinent, raising India’s first large cities since the fall of the Indus Valley…
To conquer is not to subdue others, but to defeat the passions within.

Before the dust of Alexander the Great’s aborted Indian campaign had even settled, a new empire began to coalesce in the fertile basin of the Ganges Valley.