and its repetition is ‘accumulation’; destroy this sorrow and there is joy, the way is in the calm and quiet place.  The restless busy nature of the world, this I declare is at the root of pain.  Stop then the end by choking up the source.  Desire not either life or its opposite; the raging fire of birth, old age, and death burns up the world on every side.  Seeing the constant toil of birth and death we ought to strive to attain a passive state:  the final goal of Sammata, the place of immortality and rest.  All is empty! neither ‘self,’ nor place for ‘self,’ but all the world is like a phantasy; this is the way to regard ourselves, as but a heap of composite qualities.”

The nobleman, hearing the spoken law, forthwith attained the first degree of holiness:  he emptied as it were, the sea of birth and death, one drop alone remaining.  By practising, apart from men, the banishment of all desire, he soon attained the one impersonal condition, not as common folk do now-a-day who speculate upon the mode of true deliverance; for he who does not banish sorrow-causing samskaras does but involve himself in every kind of question; and though he reaches to the highest form of being, yet grasps not the one and only truth.  Erroneous thoughts as to the joy of heaven are still entwined by the fast cords of lust.  The nobleman attending to the spoken law the cloud of darkness opened before the shining splendor.  Thus he attained true sight, erroneous views forever dissipated; even as the furious winds of autumn sway to and fro and scatter all the heaped-up clouds.  He argued not that Isvara was cause, nor did he advocate some cause heretical, nor yet again did he affirm there was no cause for the beginning of the world.  “If the world was made by Isvara deva, there should be neither young nor old, first nor after, nor the five ways of birth; and when once born there should be no destruction.  Nor should there be such thing as sorrow or calamity, nor doing wrong nor doing right; for all, both pure and impure deeds, these must come from Isvara deva.  Again, if Isvara deva made the world there should be never doubt about the fact, even as a son born of his father ever confesses him and pays him reverence.  Men when pressed by sore calamity ought not to rebel against him, but rather reverence him completely, as the self-existent.  Nor ought they to adore more gods than one.  Again, if Isvara be the maker he should not be called the self-existent, because in that he is the maker now he always should have been the maker; but if ever making, then ever self-remembering, and therefore not the self-existent one—­and if he made without a purpose then is he like the sucking child; but if he made having an ever prompting purpose, then is he not, with such a purpose, self-existent?  Sorrow and joy spring up in all that lives, these at least are not the works of Isvara; for if he causes grief and joy, he must himself have love and hate; but if he loves unduly, or has hatred, he cannot properly