[60] When this tale had been told, the Master added, "Thus you see, Brethren, how even animals fall into their enemies' hands by leaving their proper place; but when they keep to it, they conquer their enemies. Therefore do you take care not to leave your own place and intrude upon another's. O Brethren, when people leave their own station Mara finds a door, Mara gets a foothold. What is foreign ground, Brethren, and what is the wrong place for a Brother? I mean the Five Pleasures of Sense. What are these five? The Lust of the Eye... [and so on]. This, Brethren, is the wrong place for a Brother." Then growing perfectly enlightened he repeated the first stanza:--

"A Quail was in his feeding ground, when, swooping from on high.
A Falcon came; but so it fell he came to death thereby."

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When he had thus perished, out came the Quail, exclaiming, "I have seen the back of my enemy!" and perching upon his enemy's breast, he gave voice to his exultation in the words of the second stanza:--

"Now I rejoice at my success: a clever plan I found
To rid me of my enemy by keeping my own ground."

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This discourse at an end, the Master declared the Truths and identified the Birth:--At the conclusion of the Truths many Brethren were established in the Paths or their Fruition:---"Devadatta was the Falcon of those days, and the Quail was I myself."

Footnotes

^40:2 I have not been able to trace this Sakunovada-sutta. Perhaps it refers to a speech of the Buddha as a bird; cp. Kukkurovado i. p. 178 (Pali).

^41:1 Mara is Death, and is used by Buddha for the Evil One.

^41:2 The passage is corrupt. We must read 'cakkhu-adi-vinneya.'

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