thou didst behold him face to face, and it may be that, in consequence of our spiritual fellowship, I shall then share thy vision."
"Gladly, my friend."
And Vasitthi recalled the image of the Perfect One as he was about to enter into Nirvana.
"Dost thou see him, my dear one?"
"Not yet, Vasitthi."
"I must make this mind-picture plastic," thought Vasitthi.
And she looked around her in immeasurable space where the Brahma world was in process of being extinguished.
Just as when some great master-founder, who has completed the mould of the glorious image of a god and finds that he hasn't metal enough to fill the mould, looks around him in his foundry and throws all that lies about him there—tiny images of the gods, figures, vases, and bowls, all his possessions, the work of his life—gladly and heartily into the smelting furnace, in order that he may be able to make a perfect cast of this one glorious divine image, so did Vasitthi look around her in immeasurable space, and all that there was left over of the paling light and dissolving forms of this Brahma world, she drew by her spiritual force to herself, thereby depopulating the whole of space, and this whole mass of astral matter she cast into the mould of hey mind-picture and so created a colossal and luminous picture of the Perfect One, just as he was about to enter into Nirvana.
And when she saw this picture opposite to her there arose in her no longing and no sadness.
Yet even the great and holy Upagupta, when, by the magic art of Mara, the Evil One, he saw the form of the Buddha, after the latter had been long dead, even he was
