When he this refuge shall have sought and found,
Entire release is his from every pain.)

But the Master did not end his teaching to them at this point; for he went on to say:--"Disciples, meditation on the thought of the Buddha, meditation on the thought of the Truth, meditation on the thought of the Brotherhood, this it is that gives Entry to and Fruition of the First, the Second, the Third, and the Fourth Paths to Bliss ." And when he had preached the Truth to them in these and other ways, he said, "In forsaking such a refuge as this, you have gone astray."

(And here the gift of the several Paths to those who meditate on the thought of the Buddha and so forth, should be made clear by such scriptures as the following:--"One thing there is, Brethren, which, if practised and developed, conduces to utter loathing of the world's vanities, to the cessation of passion, to the end of being, to peace, to insight, to enlightenment, to Nirvana. What is this one thing?--The meditation on the thought of the Buddha.")

When he had thus exhorted the disciples, the Blessed One said,--"So too in times past, disciples, the men who jumped to the fatuous conclusion that what was no refuge was a real refuge, fell a prey to goblins in a demon-haunted wilderness and were utterly destroyed; whilst the men who clave to the absolute and indisputable truth, prospered in the selfsame wilderness." And when he had said this, he became silent.

Then, rising up from his seat and saluting the Blessed One, the layman Anatha-pindika burst into praises, and with clasped hands raised in reverence to his forehead, spoke thus:--"It is clear to us, Sir, that in these present days these disciples were led by error into forsaking the supreme refuge. But the bygone destruction of those opinionated ones in the demon-haunted wilderness, and the prospering of the men who clave to the truth, are hidden from us and known only to you. [98] May it please the Blessed One, as though causing the full moon to rise in the sky, to make this thing clear to us."

Then said the Blessed One:--"It was solely to brush away the world's difficulties that by the display of the Ten Perfections through myriad aeons I won omniscience. Give ear and hearken, as closely as if you were filling a tube of gold with lion's marrow."

Having thus excited the Treasurer's attention, he made clear the thing that re-birth had concealed from them, as though he were releasing the full moon from the upper air, the birthplace of the snows.

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