the air, and lighting in the garden he sat like a golden image on the stone seat. The gardener seeing him came up and asked, "Sir, whence come you?" "From the cave Nandamulaka." "Who are you?" "Friend, I am Darimukha the pacceka." "Sir, do you know our king?" "Yes, he was my friend in my layman days." "Sir, the king longs to see you, I will tell him of your coming." "Go and do so." He went and told the king that Darimukha was come and sitting on the stone-seat. The king said, "So my friend is come, I shall see him ": so he mounted his car and with a great retinue went to the garden and saluting the paccekabuddha with kindly greeting he sat on one side. The paccekabuddha said, "Brahmadatta, do you rule your kingdom with righteousness, never follow evil courses or oppress the people for money, and do good deeds with charity?" [241] and after kindly greeting, "Brahmadatta, you are old, it is time for you to renounce pleasures, and be ordained," so he preached the law and spoke the first stanza:

Pleasures of sense are but morass and mire:
The "triply-rooted terror" them I call.
Vapour and dust I have proclaimed them, Sire:
Become a Brother and forsake them all.

[242] Hearing this, the king explaining that he was bound by desires spoke the second stanza:

Infatuate, bound and deeply stained am I,
Brahmin, with pleasures: fearful they may be,
But I love life, and cannot them deny:
Good works I undertake continually.

[243] Then Darimukha though the Bodhisatta said, "I cannot be ordained," did not reject him and exhorted him yet again:

He who rejects the counsel of his friend,
Who pities him, and would avert his doom,
Thinking "this world is better," finds no end,
Foolish, of long rebirths within the womb.

That fearful place of punishment is his,
Full of all filth, held evil by the good:
The greedy their desires can ne'er dismiss,
The flesh imprisons all the carnal brood.

[244] So Darimukha the paccekabuddha showing the misery rising from conception and quickening, to show next the misery of birth spoke a stanza and a half:

Covered with blood and with gross foulness stained,
All mortal beings issue from the birth:
Whate'er they touch thereafter is ordained
To bring them pain and sorrow on the earth.

I speak what I have seen, not what I hear
From others: I remember times of old.

[245] Now the Master in his Perfect Wisdom said, "So the paccekabuddha helped the king with good words," and at the end spoke the remaining half-stanza:

Darimukha did to Sumedha's ear
Wisdom in many a stanza sweet unfold.