After the Lord Buddha had ended his discourse, the pilgrim Kamanita remained sitting for a long time, silent and motionless, a prey to conflicting and sceptical thoughts. Finally he said: "Thou hast told me much of how the monk should in his lifetime make an end of suffering, but nothing whatever of what becomes of him when his body sinks in death and returns to its elements, except that from that time on neither men nor gods, nor even Nature herself sees him again. But of an eternal life of supreme happiness and heavenly bliss—of that I have heard nothing. Has the Master revealed nothing concerning it?"
"Even so, my brother, it is even so. The Master has revealed nothing concerning it."
"That is as much as to say that the Lord Buddha knows no more of this most important of all questions than I myself," replied Kamanita discontentedly.
"Dost thou think it to be so? Listen then, pilgrim. In that Sinsapa wood in the neighbourhood of Kosambi, where ye did swear—thou and thy Vasitthi—eternal fidelity and pledged yourselves to meet again in the Paradise of the West, the Lord Buddha at one time took up his abode. And the Lord Buddha came out of the wood, a bundle of Sinsapa leaves in his hand, and said to his disciples: "What think ye, O ye disciples, which are more numerous, these Sinsapa leaves which I have
131
