The following is an excerpt from the chapter:

The divine justice of karma is very appealing. The idea that you will be rewarded for leading a virtuous life and that anyone who has unjustly wronged you will pay the price in their next incarnation leaves nothing to the interpretation of ancient text or the trial by judge and jury of legal systems. But is that really the essence of what Siddhartha discovered? Having decided to forsake his princely existence for that of an ascetic he’d given up more than most of his believers would accumulate in a lifetime, including his family, denying himself all pleasures of the flesh, shelter and food to the point where he thought he might die before attaining enlightenment. Only then did he resolve to sit under a tree with a little food and found what he was looking for during the night of the full moon – less really was more. Or perhaps like the scientist Isaac Newton (who is also often depicted in contemplation under a tree with a little food), the defining moment came not so much as a result of enduring effort as the sudden realization of the nature of the universe.