rushing in his head and felt as if his skull was being split, as if his belly were being cut open with a butcher’s knife, and finally as if he were thrown into a pit of burning coals.  Elsewhere[319] he gives further details of the horrible penances which he inflicted on himself.  He gradually reduced his food to a grain of rice each day.  He lived on seeds and grass, and for one period literally on dung.  He wore haircloth or other irritating clothes:  he plucked out his hair and beard:  he stood continuously:  he lay upon thorns.  He let the dust and dirt accumulate till his body looked like an old tree.  He frequented a cemetery—­that is a place where corpses were thrown to decay or be eaten by birds and beasts—­and lay among the rotting bodies.

But no enlightenment, no glimpse into the riddle of the world came of all this, so, although he was nearly at death’s door, he determined to abstain from food altogether.  But spirits appeared and dissuaded him, saying that if he attempted thus to kill himself they would nourish him by infusing a celestial elixir through his skin and he reflected that he might as well take a little food[320].  So he took a palmful or two of bean soup.  He was worn almost to a shadow, he says.  “When I touched my belly, I felt my backbone through it and when I touched my back, I felt my belly—­so near had my back and my belly come together through this fasting.  And when I rubbed my limbs to refresh them the hair fell off[321].”  Then he reflected that he had reached the limit of self-mortification and yet attained no enlightenment.  There must be another way to knowledge.  And he remembered how once in his youth he had sat in the shade of a rose apple tree and entered into the stage of contemplation known as the first rapture.  That, he now thought, must be the way to enlightenment:  why be afraid of such bliss?  But to attain it, he must have more strength and to get strength he must eat.  So he ate some rice porridge.  There were five monks living near him, hoping that when he found the Truth he would tell it to them.  But when they saw that he had begun to take food, their faith failed and they went away.

The Buddha then relates how, having taken food, he began to meditate and passed through four stages of contemplation, culminating in pure self-possession and equanimity, free alike from all feeling of pain or ease.  Such meditation was nothing miraculous but supposed to be within the power of any trained ascetic.  Then there arose before him a vision of his previous births, the hundreds of thousands of existences with all their details of name, family and caste through which he had passed.  This was succeeded by a second and wider vision in which he saw the whole universe as a system of karma and reincarnation, composed of beings noble or mean, happy or unhappy, continually “passing away according to their deeds,” leaving one form of existence and taking shape in another.  Finally, he understood the nature