“I what was well to do have done, and what Is to my heart delectable. Therein Is my delight, and thus through happiness Has happiness been sought after and won.” Young and old they rejoiced, and the solitudes were kind to them, admitting them to fellowship. And one aged sister spoke this: “Though I be suffering and weak and all My spring of youth be gone, yet have I come Leaning upon my staff and climbed aloft On mountain peak. My cloak have I thrown off My little bowl o’er-turned; so sit I here Upon the rock. And o’er my spirit sweeps The breath of Liberty. I win, I win The Triple Lore! The Buddha’s will be done.” For now, they who had been the prisoners of man and of opinion learnt the beauty of the solitudes, and knew the silence that is in the starry sky, the sleep that is among the lonely hills, and it became theirs, and they attained to the coolness, purity and luminance of the Peace, bathing in it as in moonlit water. For they had passed through the Three Grades of Training, the Higher habit of Conduct, the Higher Consciousness, and the Higher Wisdom, and thus, knowing the world, not as it appears to be but as it is, knowing “This is Ill; this is the cause of Ill; this is the way leading to the cessation of Ill,” they were glad, and right ecstasy was theirs and joys that cannot be told, and they were free. And another said this: “Nirvana have I realized and gazed Into the mirror of the holy Norm. I, even I, am healed of all my hurt. Down is my burden laid, my task is done, My heart is wholly set at liberty.” And again: “One day bathing my feet, I sit and watch The water as it trickles down the slope. Thereby I set my heart in steadfastness, As one shall train a horse of noble breed. Then, going to my cell, I take my lamp, And seated on my couch I watch the flame. Taking the pin I pull the wick right down Into the oil. Extinguished is the fire. Lo, the Nirvana of the little lamp. Emancipation dawns. My heart is free.” For as the flame is quenched so are all lusts, desires and cravings extinguished in the clear waters of Nirvana. There is no fire so burning as the greed of passion, no luckless cast of the dice so cruel as hate, no ill so miserable as that of the ego that would claim all. Nor is there any bliss to be compared with the Nirvana. And the monks, also musing, made psalms that cannot die, for upon them also was the bliss.