The passages above quoted are intelligible only when they are seen in the light of spiritual life. Buddhism may be logical, but if we fail to perceive anything further than that we sorely distort it. The logicality of Buddhist teaching is just one aspect of it and not a very important one. We may even regard this logicalness as incidental to Buddhism, and those who are entranced by it, remain quite ignorant of the true import of Buddhism. “He knows as it really is,” ti yathābhūtaṁ pajānāti,—we must come to this; for Yathābhūta-ñāṇa-dassana is the insight that destroys the Defilements (_āsavānaṁ khaya-ñāna_) and produces the consciousness of spiritual emancipation (_cetovimutti_). Without this N̄aṇa or N̄aṇa-dassana (insight or intuition), no detachment, no freedom would be possible to a Buddhist, nor would he ever be assured of his ultimate deliverance from the bondage of existence as well as of the attainment of the higher life (_brahmacarya_). The “knowing thus, seeing thus,” does not mean an intellectual comprehension of facts or truths which fall outside the pale of one’s own experience, but it is the perception of events that have actually taken place within oneself. Even an intellectual comprehension will be impossible when there is no experience that goes to support its validity. For those who have no spiritual training along the line of the Hindu dhyana exercises, the mental state culminating in the yathābhūtam contemplation of the world will be a very difficult subject to be in sympathy with. But in this light only the Buddha’s discourse on the fruits of the Sāmañña life is to be understood. The Defilements (_āsavā_), or Oozings (_lou_)[3.2] as the Chinese translators have them, are three, sometimes four, in number. They are the Defilements of Desire (_kāma_), Existence (_bhāva_), Ignorance (_avijjā_), and Intellection (_diṭṭhi_). What kind of insight is it that destroys all these Defilements? And what is it that will be left in us after such a destruction? The answers may be anticipated to be thoroughly nihilistic, because nothing but absolute void will be seemingly the result of such destruction. Especially when we read a verse like the following (_Sutta-nipāta_, vv. 949 and 1099), we may reasonably be tempted to regard the teaching of the Buddha as absolutely negativistic: “What is before thee, lay it aside; Let there be nothing behind thee; If thou wilt not grasp after what is in the middle, Thou wilt wander calm.”[f65]