And the Lord Buddha robed himself early in the morning and took his begging bowl and his disciples followed, and he went to the Street of Flowers, and Amra set sweet milk-rice and cakes before the Lord and his followers and she herself attended upon them in great humility and they ate the food they had not thought to eat, and when it was eaten, she sat lowly by his side and folding her hands, said: “Holy One, I present this house to the Order. Accept it, if it be your will.” And the Blessed One accepted the gift, seeing the heart that made it, and after inciting and gladdening her with high discourse, he rose and went his way. And in merciful deeds and right living this lady grew, and the Heart of Wisdom strengthened in her, and in this very life she became a perfected saint—a great Arhat—and entered the Nirvana—the Peace. For, as the lotus flowers do not grow on dry land but spring from black and watery mud, so even by the strength of her passion and sin and the deeps of experience she reached the heights. And she it was who made The Psalm of Old Age, and smiled in its making. “Glossy and black as the down of the bee my curls once clustered. They, with the waste of years, are liker to hemp or to bark-cloth, Such and not otherwise, runneth the rune of the Soothsayer. Lovely the lines of my ears as the delicate work of the goldsmith. They, with the waste of years, are seamed with wrinkles and pendent. Such and not otherwise runneth the rune of the Soothsayer. Full and lovely in rounding rose of old the small breasts of me. They, with the waste of the years, droop sunken as skins without water. So and not otherwise runneth the rune of the Soothsayer. Such hath this body been. Now age-weary, weak and unsightly, Home of manifold ills: old house whence the mortar is dropping So and not otherwise runneth the rune of the Soothsayer.”[4] ----- [4] Translated by C. F. Rhys Davids. ----- And inasmuch as the Sister thus discerned impermanance in all phenomena, knowing the world we see is but the creation of our senses, she, making clear her insight, attained, leaving behind her all fear and grief. For who shall measure the bounds and deeps and height and length of that wisdom that is one with Love? Hear also the story of the very wise and glad and gay Lady Visakha—that pillar of the Order, who abiding in the world as a great lady of riches yet gave her heart to wisdom and the Law of the Perfect One, for open is the way to all. She was daughter to a great man, Balamitra, and was a young maiden in her father’s house, when a Brahman commissioned by the Treasurer Migara to choose a wife for his son came that way, and when he arrived he saw Visakha and other girls going into the wood in search of amusement, and he watched them idly.