The city guards seized him. "I have a mother to support," said he--"let me go!" thus he made them let him go free, and after staying in a certain place, he passed out by the chief gate and made his way to the Himalayas, where he lived as a recluse; and caused the Supernatural Faculties and the Attainments to spring up within him, as he dwelt in the rapture of meditation. As he dwelt there, he exulted, saying--"The bond of wife and child, the bond of passion, so hard to break, is broken!" and he uttered these lines:--

"Not iron fetters--so the wise have told--
Not ropes, or bars of wood, so fast can hold
As passion, and the love of child or wife,
Of precious gems and earrings of fine gold.

"These heavy fetters--who is there can find
Release from such?--these are the ties that bind:
These if the wise can burst, then they are free,
Leaving all love and all desire behind!"

[141] And the Bodhisatta, after uttering this aspiration, without breaking the charm of his ecstasy attained to Brahma's world.

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When the Master had ended this discourse, he declared the Truths:--at the conclusion of the Truths, some entered the First Path, some the Second, some the Third, and some the Fourth:--"In the story, Mahamaya was the mother, King Suddhodana was the father, Rahula s mother was the wife, Rahula himself the son, and I was the man who left his family and became an anchorite."

[j202]