Once on a time, ninety-one aeons ago, the Bodhisatta set himself to examine into the false asceticism. So he became a recluse, according to the Naked Ascetics (Ajivikas),--unclothed and covered with dust, solitary and lonely, fleeing like a deer from the face of men; his food was small

fish, cowdung, and other refuse; and in order that his vigil might not be disturbed, he took up his abode in a dread thicket in the jungle. In the snows of winter, he came forth by night from the sheltering thicket to the open air, returning with the sun-rise to his thicket again; and, as he was wet with the driving snows by night, so in the day time he was drenched by the drizzle from the branches of the thicket. Thus day and night alike he endured the extremity of cold. In summer, he abode by day in the open air, and by night in the forest--scorched by the blazing sun by day, and fanned by no cooling breezes by night, so that the sweat streamed from him. And there presented itself to his mind this stanza, which was new and never uttered before:--

Now scorched, now frore, lone in the lonesome woods,
Beside no fire, but all afire within,
Naked, the hermit wrestles for the Truth.

[391] But when after a life spent in the rigours of this asceticism, the vision of hell rose before the Bodhisatta as he lay dying, he realised the worthlessness of all his austerities, and in that supreme moment broke away from his delusions, laid hold of the real truth, and was re-born in the Heaven of Devas.

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His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "I was the naked ascetic of those days."

[Note. For the 'story of the past'? cf. Cariya Pitaka, p. 102. For the introductory story see Sutta No. 12 of the Majjhima Nikaya.]

Footnotes

^229:1 See Hardy's Manual of Budhism, p. 330.

^229:2 This is a quotation from the Majjhima Nikaya I. 68.

^229:3 i.e. as a learner, householder, religieux, and recluse.

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