Buddha's self mortification practice

In his quest for enlightenment, Buddha once tried the self-mortification technique, very popular the time. Eating only 1 grain of rice a day or eating nothing at all for days. Practising sitting meditation for hours and hours together.

However, Buddha found that this technique is an extreme and cannot lead to enlightenment. That's when he came up with the idea of the middle path, a concept that is one of the central ideas of his teaching.