(4) Let me not despair that the Enlightenment will come to me; for the Blessed One, the speaker of truth, has revealed this truth, that they who by force of striving have gained hard-won supreme Enlightenment have been erstwhile gnats, gadflies, flies, and worms. Now I am a man by birth, able to know good and evil: why shall I not win the Enlightenment by following the rule of the All-knowing? If I am afraid when I think that I must give my hand or foot, it is because in my heedlessness I confound things of great and of small weight. I may be cleft, pierced, burnt, split open many and many a time for countless millions of aeons, and never win the Enlightenment. But this pain that wins me the Enlightenment is of brief term; it is like the pain of cutting out a buried arrow to heal its smart. All physicians restore health by painful courses; then to undo much suffering let us bear a little. But even this fitting course the Great Physician has not enjoined upon us; he heals them that are grievously sick by tender treatment. At first our Lord ordains gifts only of herbs and the like, and then in due course brings men at last to surrender even their own flesh. When there comes to man the spirit that looks upon his flesh as no more than herbs, what hardship is it for him to surrender his flesh and bone? He is not hurt, for he has cast off sin, nor sad, for knowledge is his; for distress comes in the mind from false imaginations, and in the body from sin. The body is made happy by righteous works, the spirit by knowledge; what can vex the compassionate one who remains in embodied life only for the welfare of others? Annulling his former sins, amassing oceans of righteousness, by the power of his Thought of Enlightenment he travels more swiftly than the Disciples. Having thus in the Thought of Enlightenment a chariot that removes all vexation and weariness, travelling from happiness to happiness, who that is wise will despair?

(278) 'All created things are grief and pain,' he who knows and sees this becomes passive in pain; this is the way that leads to purity.

(1) “By this wisdom shall enlightened disciples be enabled to bring into subjection every inordinate desire! Every species of life, whether hatched in the egg, formed in the womb, evolved from spawn, produced by metamorphosis, with or without form or intelligence, possessing or devoid of natural instinct—from these changeful conditions of being, I command you to seek deliverance, in the transcendental concept of Nirvana. Thus, you shall be delivered from an immeasurable, innumerable, and illimitable world of sentient life; but, in reality, there is no world of sentient life from which to seek deliverance. And why? Because, in the minds of enlightened disciples there have ceased to exist such arbitrary concepts of phenomena as an entity, a being, a living being, or a personality.”

(10) 'But he who thus knows the five fires is not defiled by sin even though he associates with them. He who knows this, is pure, clean, and obtains the world of the blessed, yea, he obtains the world of the blessed.'

ALL this equipment the Sage has ordained for the sake of wisdom; so he that seeks to still sorrow must get him wisdom. We deem that there are two verities, the Veiled Truth and the Transcendent Reality. The Reality is beyond the range of the understanding; the understanding is called Veiled Truth.... Thus there is never either cessation or existence; the universe neither comes to be nor halts in being. Life's courses, if thou considerest them, are like dreams and as the plantain's branches; in reality there is no distinction between those that are at rest and those that are not at rest. Since then the forms of being are empty, what can be gained, and what lost? who can be honoured or despised, and by whom? Whence should come joy or sorrow? What is sweet, what bitter? What is desire, and where shall this desire in verity be sought? If thou considerest the world of living things, who shall die therein? who shall be born, who is born? who is a kinsman and who a friend, and to whom? Would that my fellow-creatures should understand that all is as the void! They are angered and delighted by their matters of strife and rejoicing; with grief and labour, with despair, with rending and stabbing one another, they wearily pass their days in sin as they seek their own pleasure; they die and fall into hells of long and bitter anguish; they return again and again to happy births after births and grow wonted to joy.... In life are oceans of sorrow, fierce and boundless beyond compare, a scant measure of power, a brief term of years; our years are spent in vain strivings for existence and health, in hunger, faintness, and labour, in sleep, in vexation, in fruitless commerce with fools, and discernment is hard to win; how shall we come to restrain the spirit from its wont of wandering? There, too, the Spirit of Desire is labouring to cast us into deep hells; there evil paths abound, and unbelief can scarce be overcome; it is hard to win j, a brief return, exceeding hard for the Enlightened « to arise to us; the torrent of passion can scarce be stayed. Alas, how sorrow follows on sorrow! Alas, how lamentable is the estate of them that are borne down in the floods of affliction, and in their sore distress see not how sad their plight is, like one who should again and again come forth from the waters of his bath and cast himself into fire, and so in their sore trouble deem themselves to be in happy estate! As thus they live in sport that knows not of age and dissolution, dire afflictions will come upon them, with Death in their forefront. Then when will the day come when I may bring peace to them that are tortured in the fire of sorrow by my ministrations of sweetness born from the rain-clouds of my righteousness, and when I may reverently declare to the souls who imagine a real world that all is void, and righteousness is gathered by looking beyond the Veiled Truth?

(2) This brief estate, which once gotten is a means to all the aims of mankind, is exceeding hard to win; if one use it not for wholesome reflection, how shall it ever come again to his lot? As in the night, amidst the gross darkness of the clouds, the lightning shews for an instant its radiance, so by the grace of the Enlightened it may hap that the mind of man turn for an instant to holy works. Thus righteousness is feeble, and the power of evil is constant, mighty, and dire; by what righteousness could it be overcome, if there were not the Thought of Enlightenment? Pondering through many aeons, the Supreme Saints have found this blessing, whereby a swelling joy sweeps in sweetness down the boundless waters of mankind. They who would escape the hundreds of life's sorrows, who would end the anguish of living creatures, and who would taste hundreds of deep delights, must never surrender the Thought of Enlightenment. The wretch held in thrall by Life's minions is declared a son of the Blessed Ones straightway when the Thought of Enlightenment arises in him, and he becomes worshipful to the worlds of men and gods. This foul form that he has taken he makes into the priceless jewel of a Conqueror's form; oh, grasp firmly the Thought of Enlightenment, that exceedingly potent elixir! Ho, ye who are exiles in the marts of bodied being, grasp firmly the precious jewel of the Thought of Enlightenment, which the immeasurably wise sole Guides of the world's caravan have well assayed! Like the plantain- tree, all other righteousness fades away after its fruit is cast; but the tree of the Thought of Enlightenment bears everlasting fruit and fades not, but is ever fecund. Though he have wrought most grievous sins, a man by taking refuge therein escapes them straightway; as ignorant beings under the guardianship of a mighty man escape sore terrors, why seek they not their refuge in this?,..

(18) O nobly-born, if one recognize not one's own thought-forms, however learned one may be in the Scriptures — both Sutras and Tantras — although practicing religion for a kalpa, one obtaineth not Buddhahood. If one recognize one's own thought-forms, by one important art and by one word, Buddhahood is obtained.

(3) “Subhuti, the Lord Buddha by his prescience, is perfectly cognisant of all such potential disciples, and for these also there is reserved an immeasurable merit. And why? Because, the minds of these disciples will not revert to such arbitrary concepts of phenomena as an entity, a being, a living being, a personality, qualities or ideas coincident with Law, or existing apart from the idea of Law. And why? Because, assuming the permanency and reality of phenomena, the minds of these disciples would be involved in such distinctive ideas as an entity, a being, a living being, and a personality. Affirming the permanency and reality of qualities or ideas coincident with Law, their minds would inevitably be involved in resolving these same definitions. Postulating the inviolate nature of qualities or ideas which have an existence apart from the Law, there yet remain to be explained these abstruse distinctions—an entity, a being, a living being, and a personality. Therefore, enlightened disciples ought not to affirm the permanency or reality of qualities or ideas coincident with Law, nor postulate as being of an inviolate nature, qualities or ideas having an existence apart from the concept of Law.”

(25) O nobly-born, listen unto me undistractedly. By merely recognizing the Four Kayas, thou art certain to obtain perfect Emancipation in any of Them. Be not distracted. The line of demarcation between Buddhas and sentient beings lieth herein. This moment is one of great importance; if thou shouldst be distracted now, it will require innumerable aeons of time for thee to come out of the Quagmire of Misery.

(2) 'There is this verse, "He who sees this, does not see death, nor illness, nor pain; he who sees this, sees everything, and obtains everything everywhere. '"He is one (before creation), he becomes three (fire, water, earth), he becomes five, he becomes seven, he becomes nine; then again he is called the eleventh, and hundred and ten and one thousand and twenty ." 'When the intellectual aliment has been purified, the whole nature becomes purified. When the whole nature has been purified, the memory becomes firm. And when the memory (of the Highest Self) remains firm, then all the ties (which bind us to a belief in anything but the Self) are loosened. 'The venerable Sanatkumâra showed to Nârada, after his faults had been rubbed out, the other side of darkness. They call Sanatkumâra Skanda, yea, Skanda they call him.'

(46) He who knows that this body is like froth, and has learnt that it is as unsubstantial as a mirage, will break the flower-pointed arrow of Mâra, and never see the king of death.

(289) A wise and good man who knows the meaning of this, should quickly clear the way that leads to Nirvâna.

(277) 'All created things perish,' he who knows and sees this becomes passive in pain; this is the way to purity.

(9) These will come to shine against thy heart simultaneously. O nobly-born, all those are the radiances of thine own intellectual faculties come to shine. They have not come from any other place. Be not attracted towards them; be not weak; be not terrified; but abide in the mood of non-thought-formation. In that state all the forms and radiances will merge into thyself, and Buddhahood will be obtained.