"I have learnt to know mine own self, O Master. As one rolls up the phyllodium of a pisang trunk and finds beneath it no sound wood from which anything firm can be made, so I have learned to know myself, a body of changing forms in which there is nothing eternal, nothing that offers permanence. And I give up this self of mine. 'That is not I, that does not belong to me' is the judgment I now pass upon myself."
"Right so, my daughter. Thou dost now cling firmly to the doctrine alone?"
"The doctrine, O Master, has brought me to my goal. As one, crossing a stream by means of a raft, neither clings to the raft when he has reached the farther side, nor drags it along with him, so I no longer cling to the doctrine but let it go."
"Right so, my daughter! Thus, clinging to nothing, attached to nothing, thou wilt rise again beside me in the Place of Peace."
"'That we shall rise again,' thou hast said is not true of that place, and 'That we shall not rise again' is also not true. And even the doctrine that neither is it true to say that we shall rise again nor yet to say that we shall not rise again—even this is itself not true. Nothing is true any longer, and, least of all, is nothingness true. So I understand at last."
Then the Buddha likeness smiled an illuminating smile.
"Now I am able to see the face," said Kamanita. "Like a reflection in flowing water I recognise it vaguely. Oh, hold it fast, steady it, Vasitthi."
Vasitthi looked around her in space.
Space was empty.
Then Vasitthi flung her own corporal substance into the astral mass of the vision.
