to please sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.  These five desires are ever pursuing or, rather, driving us.  We must not spend our whole lives in pursuit of those mirage-like objects which gratify our sensual desires.  When we gratify one desire, we are silly enough to fancy that we have realized true happiness.  But one desire gratified begets another stronger and more insatiable.  Thirst allayed with salt water becomes more intense than ever.

[FN#209] Compare Gaku-do-yo-jin-shu, chap. i., and Zen-kwan-saku shin.

Shakya Muni compared an Epicurean with a dog chewing a dry bone, mistaking the blood out of a wound in his mouth for that of the bone.  The author of Mahaparinirvana-sutra[FN#210] has a parable to the following effect:  ’Once upon a time a hunter skilled in catching monkeys alive went into the wood.  He put something very sticky on the ground, and hid himself among the bushes.  By-and-by a monkey came out to see what it was, and supposing it to be something eatable, tried to feed on it.  It stuck to the poor creature’s snout so firmly that he could not shake it off.  Then he attempted to tear it off with both his paws, which also stuck to it.  Thereupon he strove to kick it off with both his hind-legs, which were caught too.  Then the hunter came out, and thrusting his stick through between the paws and hind-legs of the victim, and thus carrying it on his shoulder, went home.’  In like manner an Epicurean (the monkey), allured by the objects of sense (something sticky), sticks to the five desires (the snout and the four limbs), and being caught by Temptation (the hunter), loses his life of Wisdom.

[FN#210] The sutra translated by Hwui Yen and Hwui Kwan, A.D. 424-453.

We are no more than a species of monkeys, as evolutionists hold.  Not a few testify to this truth by their being caught by means of ‘something eatable.’  We abolished slavery and call ourselves civilized nations.  Have we not, nevertheless, hundreds of life-long slaves to cigars among us?  Have we not thousands of life-long slaves to spirits among us?  Have we not hundreds of thousands of life-long slaves to gold among us?  Have we not myriads of lifelong slaves to vanity among us?  These slaves are incredibly loyal to, and incessantly work for, their masters, who in turn bestow on them incurable diseases, poverty, chagrin, and disappointment.

A poor puppy with an empty can tied to his tail, Thomas Carlyle wittily observes, ran and ran on, frightened by the noise of the can.  The more rapidly he ran, the more loudly it rang, and at last he fell exhausted of running.  Was it not typical of a so-called great man of the world?  Vanity tied an empty can of fame to his tail, the hollow noise of which drives him through life until he falls to rise no more.  Miserable!