There lived once a man Who craftily and skillfully Felled the trunks of trees, But left the roots untouched, That after due time They might once more be growing; ’Tis even so with the Bodhisattva: With the upâya that is excellent, Desires and passions down he fells, But leaves their seed unscathed By reason of his all-embracing love, And thereby ever and anon comes he on earth.[a18] --- THE BODHISATTVA’S HOMELESS LIFE.[a19] The homeless Bodhisat regards the home life [or the world at large] As a hurricane that abates not awhile, Or as the moon’s illusive image in water cast, Which the imagination takes deliberately for the real. The water in itself contains no lunar image [real]; The real moon, dependent on water clear, a shadow casts; So are all beings unreal; only conditionally they exist; Yet ’tis imagined by the vulgar that an Atman they have. The Atman is the product of conditions, and real it is not; But for a reality the imagination it takes. Have the two prejudices[a20] removed, And we perceive Intelligence most high and peerless. {396} Our confused imagination is like unto a black storm, Blowing over the woods of birth and death, stirs up the leaves of consciousness: By the four winds of fallacy ’tis haunted all the time, And five damnation-causes it produces, Entwining are indeed the roots of evil, which are three, Through birth and death doth transmigration ever onward move. Who to the Sutras listen and in them devoutly believe, The right view they acquire, removing all the thoughts which are fallacious, And every instant growing are Seeds of Intelligence, And the Samâdhi of knowledge great and of spirituality is awakened. When well disciplined in speculation deep and subtle, In the dark no more we grope, nor do we reap the crop of pain; Perceiving Suchness in the ultimate nature of things, Subject and object both gone, and vanished are all sins. Female and male, they’re attributes, and they are void essentially: The ignorant imagine and create the two which only relatively exist. The Buddha has destroyed permanently the cause of ignorance, And in the ultimate reality nothing particular sees he, male or female. The excellent fruit of wisdom, if ever attained, remains the same for aye; The vulgar nathless imagine wrongly and see therein a thing concrete and definite. The Buddha’s features thirty-two are after all no-features; Who sees no-features in the features, the feature true he understands. {397} To wander homeless, and immaculate deeds to practise, Over the heart to watch, in solitude quietly to sit: This is the rightful way the Bodhisattva cleanses his heart; Erelong will he attain the fruit of enlightenment. --- THE BUDDHIST.[a21]