I had a patient, a young fresh-faced lad, called Johnathen who had given up a good job in journalism to become a Buddhist monk.

He had surrendered everything that you and I might consider important to devote himself to a life of holiness. He sat down at my desk one evening surgery in his saffron robes looking an icon of peace and serenity.

He was my last patient so I had time to ask him about his life-style and what prompted him to forsake all to pursue his search for 'the pearl of great price'.

He told me the story of Sidhartha Buddha, who was a prince of the Sakya clan in Nepal two and a half thousand years ago. He had a beautiful wife and son, riches and power.

However, he was forbidden by the laws of the state (mostly for his own protection) to put a foot outside the city walls.

But one day, chafing against this prohibition, he eluded the palace guards and headed with his horse outside the East Gate of the city.

Here, he met an old man bent with age walking with his staff by the roadside. It was a common enough sight but it struck Sidhartha like a revelation that he could never expect to keep his youth forever.

On another day, he escaped the surveillance of his guards again and rode out of the South Gate of the city. Here, he saw a man slumped up against the city wall, dying of poverty and wretchedness, again not an uncommon sight, but he knew with a new awareness that he could not guarantee his health all his life.

On yet another day, he went through the West Gate. A corpse lay on the roadside. He knew that life was not his own and that death, even for the rich and powerful, was a near neighbour.

Finally, he rode through the North Gate and met a monk in his saffron robe carrying a rice bowl. The monk bowed low and smiled a gracious smile and walked on with great dignity as though his bare feet ravished the earth on which he trod.

That night, Sidhartha rose and left his wife and son, his riches and his palace forever to seek the unknown God who had so beguiled his heart.

Buddhists from all over the world have trod and still tread in his gentle footsteps.

At this stage in his story, I asked Johnathen what he was allowed to own. He said: "My robe, my rice bowl and my razor." He looked as though he possessed the earth.

You will often have heard it claimed, especially after September 11, the Afghanistan war and the murderous activities of the hijackers and suicide bombers (with their contempt for life including their own) that the root of all the bloodshed and horror in this broken world is religion.

The truth is that none of the great world religions advocate violence. In spite of this, the message that has come over to the west is that Islam (the name means "surrender to the will of Allah") is a religion of hatred and violence and revenge. It has led in some to "Islamophobia".

Johnathen, who was well versed in comparative religion, especially the three great religions 'of the Book' (i.e. the Bible) informed me that "Jihad" which both in the East and West is perceived as a "Holy War" is unequivocally condemned in the Koran to be distinctly unholy if it means violence against the person for appropriation of his land or property.

Perhaps the savagery that so dishonours our world has less to do with religion than with its deliberate corruption and may with greater justice be attributed to the avarice of man and his unquenchable lust for power.

As Johnathen got up to go, he drew his robe about him and said: "I hope I have not kept you, doctor. But I will leave you with a thought from the Holy One - 'Noise is not in the market place nor quiet in the hills but in the ever-changing heart of man'."

I wished him well on his pilgrimage.

Updated: 11:44 Thursday, February 14, 2002