"Brood on desires within the heart--content will ne'er arise.
Who turns from these, and the true cure descries,
He is content, whom wisdom satisfies.

"Best to be full of wisdom: these no lust can set afire;
Never the man with wisdom filled is slave unto desire.

"Crush your desires, and little want, not greedy all to win:
He that is like the sea is not burnt by desire within,
But like a cobbler, cuts the shoe according to the skin.

[173]"For each desire that is let go a happiness is won:
He that all happiness would have, must with all lust have done."

[174] But as the Bodhisatta was repeating these stanzas, his mind being concentrated on the king's white sunshade, there arose in him the mystic rapture attained through white light . The king on his part became whole and well; he arose in joy from his seat, and addressed him thus: "When all those physicians could not heal me, a wise youth has made me whole by the medicine of his wisdom!" And he then repeated the tenth stanza:

[175]"Eight verses have you uttered, worth a thousand pieces each:
Take, O great brahmin! take the sum, for sweet is this your speech."

At which the Great Being repeated the eleventh:

"For thousands, hundreds, million times a million , nought care I:
As the last verse I uttered, in my heart desire did die."

More and yet more delighted, the king recited the last stanza in praise of the Great Being:

"Wise and good is indeed this youth, all the lore of all worlds knowing:
All desire in very truth is mother of misery by his showing."

"Great king!"said the Bodhisatta, "be circumspect, and walk in righteousness." Thus admonishing the king, he passed through the air to Himalaya, and living the life of a recluse, while life lasted, cultivated the Excellences, and became destined for the world of Brahma.

This discourse ended, the Master said, "Thus, Brethren, in former days as now, I made this brahmin whole:" so saying, he identified the Birth: "At that time this brahmin was the king, and I was the wise young man."

Footnotes

^104:1 See No. 228 (ii. p. 149 of this translation).

^104:2 I.e. his capacity in the spiritual life.

^104:3 Refer to the following passage in Vedantaparibhasha: "yatha tadagodakam kulyatmana kedaran pravicya tadvadeva catuskonadyakaram bhavati." (For this note I am indebted to Prof. Cowell.) See also Sleeman, Rambles &c. ii. 178.

^104:4 There was a great yearly ceremony of this kind, at which the King held the plough; see Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, p. 150.

^105:1 Kamasuttam: in Sutta-Nipata, IV. i. (p. 146). See first stanza below.

^106:1 The quotation of the youth's words begins at tini.

^108:1 Sutta-Nipata, IV. 1 (p. 146), verse 766.