When Gautama Siddhartha attained liberation and became Buddha, he began to travel and teach, wishing to give others the possibility of the same experience. Naturally, many people came to him with questions. One morning, as he walked, accompanied by a group of students, a man was waiting by the path, and asked him a question.

The man was a devotee of the Hindu god Rama, and he had spent his whole life chanting, “Ram, Ram, Ram…” But he was growing old, and he had started to question what all his repetitions amounted to, and whether he had really been following the right path. So, as the Buddha passed, the man asked, “World honoured one, is there a God?”

The students all heard the question, and leaned forward eagerly to hear the Buddha’s response. The Buddha replied with a single word: “No.”

The students looked at each other meaningfully, and for the rest of the day they were busy with their own thoughts, assimilating the Teacher’s denial of the existence of God. For some it was a confirmation they had hoped for, for others it was an earth-shaking challenge.

Then in the evening, as the Buddha returned along the same path, another person was waiting for him, also hoping to ask a question. This was a Charvaka, a follower of a philosophy that declared that reality was limited to what we experience through our senses. This man was a master of the arguments that prove that all is material, and yet he was restless and not content. Therefore this man also asked, “World-honoured one, is there a God?”

The students all glanced at each other, sure of the answer that was coming. And then, to their astonishment they heard the Buddha say, “Yes.”

Later, when one of the monks humbly asked the Buddha to explain the contradiction, he said, “If a thorn wounds the foot, it must be removed before the foot can be healed. In the same way, if a belief holds one prisoner, then it must be discarded before one can know freedom.”