BOOK VI.

Seven days had passed since first he saw the light,

Seven days of deep, ecstatic peace and joy,

Of open vision of that blissful world,

Of sweet communion with those dwelling there.

But having tasted, seen and felt the joys

Of that bright world where love is all in all,

Filling each heart, inspiring every thought,

Guiding each will and prompting every act,

He yearned to see the other, darker side

Of that bright picture, where the wars and hates,

The lust, the greed, the cruelty and crime

That fill the world with pain and want and woe

Have found their dwelling-place and final goal.

Quicker than eagles soaring toward the sun

Till but a speck against the azure vault

Swoop down upon their unsuspecting prey,

Quicker than watch-fires on the mountain-top

Send warnings to the dwellers in the plain,

Led by his guides he reached Nirvana's verge,

Whence he beheld a broad and pleasant plain,

Spread with a carpet of the richest green

And decked with flowers of every varied tint,

Whose blended odors fill the balmy air,

Where trees, pleasant to sight and good for food,

In rich abundance and spontaneous grow.

A living stream, as purest crystal clear,

With gentle murmurs wound along the plain,

Its surface bright with fairer lotus-flowers

Than mortal eye on earth had ever seen,

While on its banks were cool, umbrageous groves

Whose drooping branches spicy breezes stir,

A singing bird in every waving bough,

Whose joyful notes the soul of music shed.

A mighty multitude, beyond the power

Of men to number, moved about the plain;

Some, seeming strangers, wander through the groves

And pluck the flowers or eat the luscious fruits;

Some, seeming visitors from better worlds,

Here wait and watch as for expected guests;

While angel devas, clothed in innocence,

Whose faces beam with wisdom, glow with love,

With loving welcomes greet each coming guest,

With loving counsels aid, instruct and guide.

And as he looked, the countless, restless throng

Seemed ever changing, ever moving on,

So that this plain, comparing great to small,

Seemed like a station near some royal town,

Greater than London or old Babylon,

Where all the roads from some vast empire meet,

And many caravans or sweeping trains

Bring and remove the ever-changing throng.

This plain a valley bordered, deep and still,

The very valley of his fearful dream

Seen from the other side, whose rising mists

Were all aglow with ever-changing light,

Like passing clouds above the setting sun,

Through which as through a glass he darkly saw

Unnumbered funeral-trains, in sable clad,

To solemn music and with measured tread

Bearing their dead to countless funeral-piles,

As thick as heaps that through the livelong day

With patient toil the sturdy woodmen rear,

While clearing forests for the golden grain,

And set aflame when evening's shades descend,

Filling the glowing woods with floods of light

And ghostly shadows: So these funeral-piles

Send up their curling smoke and crackling flames.

There eager flames devour an infant's flesh;

Here loving arms that risen infant clasp;

There loud laments bewail a loved one lost;

Here joyful welcomes greet that loved one found.

And there he saw a pompous funeral-train,

Bearing a body clothed in robes of state,

To blare of trumpet, sound of shell and drum,

While many mourners bow in silent grief,

And widows, orphans raise a loud lament

As for a father, a protector lost;

And as the flames lick up the fragrant oils,

And whirl and hiss around that wasting form,

An eager watcher from a better world

Welcomes her husband to her open arms,

The cumbrous load of pomp and power cast off,

While waiting devas and the happy throng

His power protected and his bounty blessed

With joy conduct his unaccustomed steps

Onward and upward, to those blissful seats

Where all his stores of duties well performed,

Of power well used and wealth in kindness given,

Were garnered up beyond the reach of thieves,

Where moths ne'er eat and rust can ne'er corrupt.

Another train draws near a funeral-pile,

Of aloes, sandal-wood and cassia built,

And drenched with every incense-breathing oil,

And draped with silks and rich with rarest flowers,

Where grim officials clothed in robes of state

Placed one in royal purple, decked with gems,

Whose word had been a trembling nation's law,

Whose angry nod was death to high or low.

No mourners gather round this costly pile;

The people shrink in terror from the sight.

But sullen soldiers there keep watch and ward

While eager flames consume those nerveless hands

So often raised to threaten or command,

Suck out those eyes that filled the court with fear,

And only left of all this royal pomp

A little dust the winds may blow away.

But here that selfsame monarch comes in view,

For royal purple clothed in filthy rags,

And lusterless that crown of priceless gems;

Those eyes, whose bend so lately awed the world,

Blinking and bleared and blinded by the light;

Those hands, that late a royal scepter bore,

Shaking with fear and dripping all with blood.

And as he looked that some should give him place

And lead him to a seat for monarchs fit,

He only saw a group of innocents

His hands had slain, now clothed in spotless white,

From whom he fled as if by furies chased,

Fled from those groves and gardens of delight,

Fled on and down a broad and beaten road

By many trod, and toward a desert waste

With distance dim, and gloomy, grim and vast,

Where piercing thorns and leafless briars grow,

And dead sea-apples, ashes to the taste,

Where loathsome reptiles crawl and hiss and sting,

And birds of night and bat-winged dragons fly,

Where beetling cliffs seem threatening instant fall,

And opening chasms seem yawning to devour,

And sulphurous seas were swept with lurid flames

That seethe and boil from hidden fires below.

Again he saw, beyond that silent vale,

One frail and old, without a rich man's gate

Laid down to die beneath a peepul-tree,

And parched with thirst and pierced with sudden pain,

A root his pillow and the earth his bed;

Alone he met the King of terrors there;

Whose wasting body, cumbering now the ground,

Chandalas cast upon the passing stream

To float and fester in the fiery sun,

Till whirled by eddies, caught by roots, it lay

A prey for vultures and for fishes food.

That selfsame day a dart of deadly pain

Shot through that rich man's hard, unfeeling heart,

That laid him low, beyond the power to save,

E'en while his servants cast without his gates

That poor old man, who came to beg him spare

His roof-tree, where his fathers all had died,

His hearth, the shrine of all his inmost joys,

His little home, to every heart so dear;

And in due season tongues of hissing flames

That rich man's robes like snowflakes whirled in air,

And curled his crackling skin, consumed his flesh,

And sucked the marrow from his whitened bones.

But here these two their places seem to change.

That rich man's houses, lands, and flocks and herds,

His servants, rich apparel, stores of gold,

And all he loved and lived for left behind,

The friends that nature gave him turned to foes,

Dependents whom his greed had wronged and crushed

Shrinking away as from a deadly foe;

No generous wish, no gentle, tender, thought

To hide his nakedness, his shriveled soul

Stood stark and bare, the gaze of passers-by;

Nothing within to draw him on and up,

He slinks away, and wanders on and down,

Till in the desert, groveling in the dust,

He digs and burrows, seeking treasures there —

While that poor man, as we count poverty,

Is rich in all that makes the spirit's wealth,

His heart so pure that thoughts of guile

And evil purpose find no lodgment there;

His life so innocent that bitter words

And evil-speaking ne'er escape his lips;

The little that he had he freely shared,

And wished it more that more he might have given;

Now rich in soul — for here a crust of bread

In kindness shared, a cup of water given,

Is worth far more than all Potosi's mines,

And Araby's perfumes and India's silks,

And all the cattle on a thousand hills —

And clothed as with a robe of innocence

The devas welcome him, his troubles passed,

The conflict ended and the triumph gained.

And there two Brahmans press their funeral-pile,

And sink to dust amid the whirling flames.

Each from his lisping infancy had heard

That Brahmans were a high and holy caste,

Too high and holy for the common touch,

And each had learned the Vedas’ sacred lore.

But here they parted. One was cold and proud,

Drawing away from all the humbler castes

As made to toil, and only fit to serve.

The other found within those sacred books

That all were brothers, made of common clay,

And filled with life from one eternal source,

While Brahmans only elder brothers were,

With greater light to be his brother's guide,

With greater strength to give his brother aid;

That he alone a real Brahman was

Who had a Brahman's spirit, not his blood.

With patient toil from youth to hoary age

He taught the ignorant and helped the weak.

And now they come where all external pomp

And rank and caste and creed are nothing worth.

But when that proud and haughty Brahman saw

Poor Sudras and Chandalas clothed in white,

He swept away with proud and haughty scorn,

Swept on and down where heartless selfishness

Alone can find congenial company.

The other, full of joy, his brothers met,

And in sweet harmony they journeyed on

Where higher joys await the pure in heart.

And there he saw all ranks and grades and castes,

Chandala, Sudra, warrior, Brahman, prince,

The wise and ignorant, the strong and weak,

In all the stages of our mortal round

From lisping; infancy to palsied age,

By all the ways to human frailty known,

Enter that vale of shadows, deep and still,

Leaving behind their pomp and power and wealth,

Leaving their rags and wretchedness and want,

And cast-off bodies, dust to dust returned,

By flames consumed or moldering to decay,

While here the real character appeared,

All shows, hypocrisies and shams cast off,

So that a life of gentleness and love

Shines through the face and molds the outer form

To living beauty, blooming not to fade,

While every act of cruelty and crime

Seems like a gangrened ever-widening wound,

Wasting the very substance of the soul,

Marring its beauty, eating out its strength.

And here arrived, the good, in little groups

Together drawn by inward sympathy,

And led by devas, take the upward way

To those sweet fields his opened eyes had seen,

Those ever-widening mansions of delight;

While those poor souls — O sad and fearful sight!—

The very well-springs of the life corrupt,

Shrink from the light and shun the pure and good,

Fly from the devas, who with perfect love

Would gladly soothe their anguish, ease their pain,

Fly on and down that broad and beaten road,

Till in the distance in the darkness lost.

Lost! lost! and must it be forever lost?

The gentle Buddha's all-embracing love

Shrunk from the thought, but rather sought relief

In that most ancient faith by sages taught,

That these poor souls at length may find escape,

The grasping in the gross and greedy swine,

The cunning in the sly and prowling fox,

The cruel in some ravening beast of prey;

While those less hardened, less depraved, may gain

Rebirth in men, degraded, groveling, base.

But here in sadness let us drop the veil,

Hoping that He whose ways are not like ours,

Whose love embraces all His handiwork,

Who in beginnings sees the final end,

May find some way to save these sinful souls

Consistent with His fixed eternal law

That good from good, evil from evil flows.

Here Buddha saw the mystery of life

At last unfolded to its hidden depths.

He saw that selfishness was sorrow's root,

And ignorance its dense and deadly shade;

He saw that selfishness bred lust and hate,

Deformed the features, and defiled the soul

And closed its windows to those waves of love

That flow perennial from Nirvana's Sun.

He saw that groveling lusts and base desires

Like noxious weeds unchecked luxurious grow,

Making a tangled jungle of the soul,

Where no good seed can find a place to root,

Where noble purposes and pure desires

And gentle thoughts wither and fade and die

Like flowers beneath the deadly upas-tree.

He saw that selfishness bred grasping greed,

And made the miser, made the prowling thief,

And bred hypocrisy, pretense, deceit,

And made the bigot, made the faithless priest,

Bred anger, cruelty, and thirst for blood,

And made the tyrant, stained the murderer's knife,

And filled the world with war and want and woe,

And filled the dismal regions of the lost

With fiery flames of passions never quenched,

With sounds of discord, sounds of clanking chains,

With cries of anguish, howls of bitter hate,

Yet saw that man was free — not bound and chained

Helpless and hopeless to a whirling wheel,

Rolled on resistless by some cruel power,

Regardless of their cries and prayers and tears —

Free to resist those gross and groveling lusts,

Free to obey Nirvana's law of love,

The law of order — primal, highest law —

Which guides the great Artificer himself,

Who weaves the garments of the joyful spring,

Who paints the glories of the passing clouds,

Who tunes the music of the rolling spheres,

Guided by love in all His mighty works,

Filling with love the humblest willing heart.

He saw that love softens and sweetens life,

And stills the passions, soothes the troubled breast,

Fills homes with joy and gives the nations peace,

A sovereign balm for all the spirit's wounds,

The living fountain of Nirvana's bliss;

For here before his eyes were countless souls,

Born to the sorrows of a sinful world,

With burdens bowed, by cares and griefs oppressed,

Who felt for others’ sorrows as their own,

Who lent a helping hand to those in need,

Returning good for evil, love for hate,

Whose garments now were white as spotless wool,

Whose faces beamed with gentleness and love,

As onward, upward, devas guide their steps,

Nirvana's happy mansions full in view.

He saw the noble eightfold path that mounts

From life's low levels to Nirvana's heights.

Not by steep grades the strong alone can climb,

But by such steps as feeblest limbs may take.

He saw that day by day and step by step,

By lusts resisted and by evil shunned,

By acts of love and daily duties done,

Soothing some heartache, helping those in need,

Smoothing life's journey for a brother's feet,

Guarding the lips from harsh and bitter words,

Guarding the heart from gross and selfish thoughts,

Guarding the hands from every evil act,

Brahman or Sudra, high or low, may rise

Till heaven's bright mansions open to the view,

And heaven's warm sunshine brightens all the way;

While neither hecatombs of victims slain,

Nor clouds of incense wafted to the skies,

Nor chanted hymns, nor prayers to all the gods,

Can raise a soul that clings to groveling lusts.

He saw the cause of sorrow, and its cure.

He saw that waves of love surround the soul

As waves of sunlight fill the outer world,

While selfishness, the subtle alchemist

Concealed within, changes that love to hate,

Forges the links of karma's fatal chain,

Of passions, envies, lusts to bind the soul,

And weaves his webs of falsehood and deceit

To close its windows to the living light,

Changing its mansion to its prison-house,

Where it must lay self-chained and self-condemned;

While DHARMA, TRUTH, the LAW, the LIVING WORD,

Brushes away those deftly woven webs,

Opens its windows to the living light,

Reveals the architect of all its ills,

Scatters the timbers of its prison-house,

And snaps in twain those bitter, galling chains

So that the soul once more may stand erect,

Victor of self, no more to be enslaved,

And live in charity and gentle peace,

Bearing all meekly, loving those who hate;

And when at last the fated stream is reached,

With lightened boat to reach the other shore.

And here he found the light he long had sought,

Gilding at once Nirvana's blissful heights

And lighting life's sequestered, lowly vales —

A light whose inner life is perfect love,

A love whose outer form is living light,

Nirvana's Sun, the Light of all the worlds,

Heart of the universe, whose mighty pulse

Gives heaven, the worlds and even hell their life,

Maker and Father of all living things

Matreya'sself, the Lover, Saviour, Guide,

The last, the greatest Buddha, who must rule

As Lord of all before the kalpa's end.

The way of life — the noble eightfold path,

The way of truth, the Dharma-pada — found,

With joy he bade his loving guides farewell,

With joy he turned from all those blissful scenes.

And when the rosy dawn next tinged the east,

And morning's burst of song had waked the day,

With staff and bowl he left the sacred tree —

Where pilgrims, passing pathless mountain-heights,

And desert sands, and ocean's stormy waves,

From every nation, speaking every tongue,

Should come in after-times to breathe their vows —

Beginning on that day his pilgrimage

Of five and forty years from place to place,

Breaking the cruel chains of caste and creed,

Teaching the law of love, the way of life.