their melodious song blending with the soft rustling of the tree-tops. He floated over flower-strewn valleys where graceful antelopes disported themselves without fearing him in the least, and finally let himself down on the gentle slope of a hill. Between the trunks of trees and flowering shrubs he saw the corner of a pond where the water sparkled round large lotus blossoms, several of whose flower-thrones bore blissful figures, while several others, even of the perfectly opened ones, were empty.
It was plainly a moment of general enjoyment. As on a warm summer evening the fire-flies circle hither and thither under the trees and round about the shrubbery, in noiseless, luminous movement, so here these blest forms swayed singly and in pairs, in large groups or chains, through the groves and around the rocks. At the same time it was possible to see from their glances and gestures that they were conversing animatedly with one another, and one divined the invisible threads of the discourse which was being carried on between the noiseless passers-by.
In a state of sweet and dreamy shyness, Kamanita enjoyed this charming spectacle till, gradually, there grew up in him a desire to converse with these happy ones.
Immediately he was surrounded by a whole company who greeted him kindly as the newly-arrived, the just-awakened one.
Kamanita wondered much, and inquired how it was that the news of his coming had already been spread abroad all over Sukhavati.
"Oh! when a lotus opens itself, all the other lotus flowers in the ponds of Paradise are moved, and every being is conscious that another has somewhere among us awakened to bliss."
