first state of holiness, for example, conies the memory of a certain number of former births, together with the capacity to foresee a corresponding number of future births;--in the next higher state the number of births remembered increases;--and in the state of Bosatsu all former births are visible to memory. But the Buddha sees not only all of his own for. mer births, but likewise all births that ever have been or can be,--and all the thoughts and acts, past, present, or future, of all past, present, or future beings. . . . Now these dreams of supernatural power merit attention because of the ethical teaching in regard to them,--the same which is woven through every Buddhist hypothesis, rational or unthinkable,--the teaching of self-abnegation. The Supernatural Powers must never be used for personal pleasure, but only for the highest beneficence,--the propagation of doctrine, the saying of men. Any exercise of them for lesser ends might result in their loss,--would certainly signify retrogression in the path.[1]

[1. Beings who have reached the state of Engaku or of Bosatsu are not supposed capable of retrogression, or of any serious error; but it is otherwise in lower spiritual states.]

To show them for the purpose of exciting admiration or wonder were to juggle wickedly with what is divine; and the Teacher himself is recorded to have once severely rebuked a needless display of them by a disciple.[1]

This giving up not only of one life, but of countless lives,--not only of one world, but of innumerable worlds,--not only of natural but also of supernatural pleasures,--not only of selfhood but of godhood,--is certainly not for the miserable privilege of ceasing to be, but for a privilege infinitely outweighing all that even paradise can give. Nirvana is no cessation, but an emancipation. It means only the passing of conditioned being into unconditioned being,--the fading of all mental and physical phantoms into the light of Formless Omnipotence and Omniscience. But the Buddhist hypothesis holds some suggestion of the persistence of that which has once been able to remember all births and states of limited being,--the persistence of the identity of the Buddhas even

[1. See a curious legend in the Vinaya texts,--Kullavagga, v. 8, 2.]