This thought which finds expression in the four propositions concerning suffering and the Nibbāna teaching, sums up the significance of Buddhism for morality and religion, and its amplification, therefore, belongs to the successor to this volume. Here it is only interesting to us from the epistemological point of view, _i.e._ in so far as _it makes ignorance as to oneself the antecedent condition of all life_. For-- I sustain my own existence through the perpetually renewed up-welling of volitional activities. It is possible for these to spring up again and again only so long as an object for my willing is present, _i.e._ so long as the delusion of identity is not put an end to. The moment any being arrives at the insight that there are in truth no identities--that there are nothing but flickering, flaring processes of combustion, which are one thing when I crave for them, another when I stretch forth my hand to seize them, and yet again another when I have seized them and hold them fast, he stops short, begins to reflect; and in reflection the blind impulse to live is sapped and weakened. The knowledge is borne in upon him: “It is not worth the seizing.” So long as I take a glittering object in the grass for a diamond, I will clutch at it, scuffle for it--mayhap enter on a life-and-death struggle to obtain it. But the moment I perceive, “It is a dewdrop in which a sunbeam is reflected,” I trouble myself no more about it. I know “A shake, a gust of wind--and all is over!” So is it with the genuine thinker in face of the world and its values, whether they be called wife or child, money or possessions, fame or honour, family or home. One clear, piercing, scrutinizing glance is more than they will bear. To the penetrating mind, the wretchedness of transiency is everywhere manifest--he turns away--it is not worth while! To Sakka, the king of the gods, the Buddha imparts the following instruction:-- “Then, chief of the gods, a monk hears: ‘All that is, when clung to, falls short.’ And when, chief of the gods, a monk has heard: ‘All that is, when clung to, falls short,’ he closely observes each and every thing. In the close observation of each and every thing he sees into each and every thing. And seeing into each and every thing, whatsoever sensation he experiences, whether pleasurable or unpleasurable, or neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable, in all these sensations he abides in the insight that they are transient, so that he cares naught for them, ceases from them, renounces them. And abiding as respects these sensations in such insight, he clings to nothing whatsoever in all the world. Clinging to nothing in the world, he is free from fear. Free from fear he attains to his own extinction of delusion.”[11] This insight that ignorance as to one’s own self is the antecedent condition of all existence, is formulated by the Buddha in the so-called “Causal Chain.”[12]