Yes, but a man can but take what he can, and where the great saints of the Lord knew and were content, the lesser men guessed and stumbled blindly by excess of light and this was unavoidable for they were not prepared, and in future lives they have learned, will learn, and they too be content in wisdom. Therefore when men ask the disciple of the Nirvana, and say: “Is it annihilation? Is it the end of all, for so many teach?” reply thus: “It is the annihilation of ignorance and passion and all their brood. It is the annihilation of conditioned being and of all the illusion that fettered us. It is the rending of the painted veil of life that hides from us the light. It is the end of all turning of the wheel of the long pilgrimage through self-shaped dream-worlds of deception. It is the end of grief and self-deceit. It is awakening from the dream of life, from the crippling of the ego-self, into freedom. It is beyond all that we call life, and death is unknown to it. It is All and One and above right and wrong and in it are all things reconciled. “And it is us and in us and we in it for ever.” Open the eyes of understanding and see and know, as he the Awakened, has taught. And now must the story turn to the Princess Yashodara, released from grief and grown strong in wisdom. Musing night and day on these thoughts and this blessedness the Princess excelled in knowledge and in her true eyes the light shone brighter and more bright in the deep contemplation of her heart, and when in the passing of the years the wealth of the Maharaja fell into her hands she valued it nothing, placing it where most good and least harm could flow from it. And with attendant princesses she walked nearly five hundred miles, refusing all offers of assistance, that she might be near the World-Honoured, breathing the same air, sometimes attendant upon his teaching, sometimes sending dutifully to enquire after the health of the monk Rahula, her son. So, having grown old, but still eminent in the nobility of her beauty and its calm, as she sat alone one day she remembered many of her friends who through the Peace here to be attained had departed to that Other. And she thought this: “I was born on the same day as my lord, the Awakened One, and in the regular order of things I should on the same day enter the Great Peace. But this is an honour too great for me and far beyond my deserts, nor can it be. I am now seventy eight years in this world of illusion, and in two years from now, he, the Blessed One, will enter that which cannot be named. I will therefore request permission to precede him, as the lower should precede the great.” So, accompanied by her attendants, the Princess went to the Vihara, the monastery, where the Lord sat at the time with a company of disciples, and presenting herself before him humbly asked forgiveness for any faults she might have committed. And he replied: