“Now I desire to ask somewhat from thee; the world has many teachers of religion, those who know the law as I am myself; but I hear that Buddha has attained a way which is the end of all complete emancipation.  O that you would, on my account, briefly explain your method, moisten my empty, thirsty soul! not with a view to controversy or from a desire to gain the mastery, but with sincerity I ask you so to do.”

Then Buddha, for the Brahmakarin’s sake, in brief recounted the eight “right ways”—­on hearing which, his empty soul accepted it, as one deceived accepts direction in the right road.  Perceiving now, he knew that what he had before perceived was not the final way of salvation, but now he felt he had attained what he had not before attained, and so he gave up and forsook his books of heresy.  Moreover, now he rejected the gloomy hindrances of doubt, reflecting how by his former practices, mixed up with anger, hate, and ignorance, he had long cherished no real joy.  For if, he argued, the ways of lust and hate and ignorance are able to produce a virtuous karman, then “hearing much” and “persevering wisdom,” these, too, are born from lust, which cannot be.  But if a man is able to cut down hate and ignorance, then also he puts off all consequences of works, and these being finally destroyed, this is complete emancipation.  Those thus freed from works are likewise freed from subtle questionings, such as what the world says “that all things, everywhere, possess a self-nature.”  But if this be the case and therefore lust, hate, and ignorance, possess a self-implanted nature, then this nature must inhere in them; what then means the word “deliverance”?  For even if we rightly cause the overthrow of hate and ignorance, yet if lust remains, then there is a return of birth; even as water, cold in its nature, may by fire be heated, but when the fire goes out then it becomes cold again, because this is its constant nature; so we may ever know that the nature which lust has is permanent, and neither hearing wisdom nor perseverance can alter it.  Neither capable of increase or diminution, how can there be deliverance?  I held aforetime that birth and death resulted thus, from their own innate nature; but now I see that such a belief excludes deliverance; for what is born by nature must endure so, what end can such things have?  Just as a burning lamp cannot but give its light; the way of Buddha is the only true one, that lust, as the root-cause, brings forth the things that live; destroy this lust then there is Nirvana; the cause destroyed then the fruit is not produced.  I formerly maintained that “I” was a distinct entity, not seeing that it has no maker.  But now I hear the right doctrine preached by Buddha, there is no “self” in all the world, for all things are produced by cause, and therefore there is no creator.  If then sorrow is produced by cause, the cause may likewise be destroyed; for if the world is cause-produced, then is the view correct, that by destruction of the cause, there is an end.  The cause destroyed, the world brought to an end, there is no room for such a thought as permanence, and therefore all my former views are “done away,” and so he deeply “saw” the true doctrine taught by Buddha.