These four sights demonstrated to him that all was not well in the world after all. He resolved to find the root of such suffering, and so he cut his long royal hair like a renunciate, and then secretly crept away from the palace to live as a śramaṇa. According to Buddhist tradition, he was 29 years old at that time. This was about the same age as Mahāvīra (30) when he became a renunciate