sat beneath the Sattapanni tree, and the present! Then he was yet a seeker—one struggling for salvation. Terrible spiritual contests lay before him—year-long, self-inflicted mortifications, inhuman agonies, frightful as fruitless, the mere recital of which made the flesh of even the stoutest-hearted of his hearers creep; till at length, risen triumphant above all such self-torturing asceticism, through fervent meditation, he reached the light, and went forth from the conflict, consecrated to the salvation of all created beings, filled with a divine pity, a supreme and perfect Buddha. Those were the years in which his life resembled a changeful morning in the rainy season—dazzling sunshine alternating with deepest gloom, the while the monsoon piles cloud above cloud in towering masses, and the death-laden: thunderstorm comes growling nearer. But now his life was filled with the same calm, sunny peace that lay upon the evening landscape, a peace that seemed to grow ever deeper and clearer as the sun's disc dipped towards the horizon.
For him, too, sunset, the close of life's long day, was at hand. He had finished his work. The kingdom of truth had been established on sure foundations, and the doctrine of salvation proclaimed to all mankind; while many monks and nuns of blameless life and approved knowledge, and lay followers of both sexes, were now well fitted to guard his kingdom and to uphold and spread its doctrines.
And even as he stands there, there abides in his heart, as a result of the meditations of this day spent in solitary journeying, the inalienable knowledge: "For thee, the time cometh, and that soon, when thou shalt go hence and leave this world, from which thou hast redeemed thyself and all who come after thee, and shalt enter into the rest of Nirvana."
