with the removal of these wrong appetences the wrong perception begotten by them will be wiped out. When the wrong understanding of the world is wiped out, the egoistic errors peculiar to individualization will cease, and with the cessation of these the illusions of the six fields will disappear. If the illusions of the six fields disappear, sense experience will no longer produce misconception. When no misconceptions arise in the mind, all grasping desires will cease, and with the disappearance of these will arise freedom from morbid cleaving and indulgence. When morbid cleaving and indulgence do not exist, the selfishness of selfhood disppears. When this selfishness is annihilated, there will be Nirvana, the complete escape from all sorrow arising from birth, disease, old age, and death and ignorance and evil desires.

It is therefore clear that the fate of each one of us rests in his own hands. If life is associated with suffering, no being has a right to blame another, much less Dharmakāya. It is not Dharmakaya that permits beings to suffer innocently for conditions which they did not create themselves. Life's suffering is life's own doing. He who knows the nature of life must not be afraid of suffering; he must bear its ills nobly. If he avails himself of the light of Dharmakāya, the essence of Buddhahood, and follows the Noble Eightfold Path, he can escape the suffering that is associated with life, and arrive at the blissful haven of Nirvana.

He who has attained Nirvana cannot live a life of selfhood, confined to the attainment of individual satisfaction. As the Bodhicharyāvatāra says, it is with the desire to make all beings happy that one desires to attain bodhi. Not only does the white-souled tranquil Arahat shrink from sin, but he is always devoted to the doing of good. Not only does he "exhale the most excellent and unequalled scented savour of the righteousness of life," but his heart is full of affectionate, soft and tender love. He may have no desires for himself, but he works for the good of all beings. His moral consciousness is wholly objectified, and is free from all subjective taints. He identifies himself with all that is good and noble. He extends his kindness to all beings. His sympathies are universal. His compassion is so far-reaching that it excludes none, not even those

who hate and despise him. Just as a mother, at the risk of her own life, protects her only child, so does he who has attained Nirvana cultivate good will beyond measure among all beings, toward the whole world, unstinted and unmixed with any feeling of making distinctions or showing preferences. The removal of the infinite pain of the world is his highest felicity. He remains steadfastly in this state of mind, "the best in the world," as the Metta Sutta says, all the while he is awake, whether he be standing, waking, sitting, or lying down. He is always in

"That state of peace wherein the roots

Of ever fresh rebirths are all destroyed, and greed
And hatred and delusion all have ceased;
That state from lust for future life set free

That changeth not, can ne'er be led to change."

This is the Sukhavati, where dwell boundless light (Amitabha) and infinite life (Amitāyus). When the Arahat dies, the skandhas which constitute his individuality dissolve, but he still lives. In the Nirvana of life he may not be free from the ills naturally concomitant to a bodily life, but in parinirvana, the Nirvana of death, he has gone to a realm free from such ills. He has attained to a state which is unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, and unformed, a state where there is neither earth nor water, nor heat nor air, neither infinity of space nor infinity of consciousness, nor nothingness, nor perception nor non-perception, neither this world nor another world." He has become one with those eternal verities of which he was an embodiment in life. Le Bouddha "vide de natur proper" est eternite, amour et misericorde. We may not look for him in any material form, or seek him in any audible sound. But whosoever sees the Dharma sees the Buddha. He is ever in the Dharmakāya, the womb of all Tathāgatas, that divine spirit of universal compassion and wisdom which carries humanity in its onward and upward march to truth and moral loveliness.

"All mankind is his shrine.

Seek him henceforward in the good and wise,
In happy thoughts and blissful emotions,

In kind words and sublime serenity,
And in the rapture of the loving deed,

There seek him if you would not seek in vain,
There in the struggle for justice and right,
In the sacrifice of self for the all,

In the joy and calm repose of the heart,
Yea and for ever in the human mind

Made better and more beauteous by his word."

Printed by Srinivasa Varadachari & Co., Mount Road, Madras,