69. Myths and the truth.

He remembered leaving Kapilavastu, having just begun his quest. A god had walked behind him on that day, one of several gods who had been there all along to make sure he found his way out of the soft prison of his father's love, from a sleeping palace where sickness, old age, and death were hidden from him. Leaving, that night, he had looked one final time upon his sleeping wife, and son, and departed out into the cool night.

Of course there had been no gods. These were part of a myth that had grown to surround him. But the myth was true in the way all myths are true, in that they are created out of a yearning for the deeper truth of things.

A god was following him now, he thought, in myths that might be written of him in this form, some time in the future. He could feel the god's presence, even though this time, as before, there was no god with him.