But of how Attachment began to be in the beginning of things the Lord would not answer. The Way out, he taught; the way in concerns not at all the man who is fleeing for his life to peace and safety from attachment to the Transient and its illusion. And again: “But what follows after death? What follows after the extinction of illusion?” the seeker asked of the learned nun Dhammadhina. And she replied: “Abandon the question, brother. I cannot grasp the meaning of the question. If you will, go to the Enlightened One and ask him.” And he went, and the Lord answered: “Wise is Dhammadhina and mighty in understanding. My answer is hers.” For the Unknown cannot be known until the way is built to it. Build then the way, and knowledge will come in time. But, without words, to the few, the very few, this knowledge has come, as has been told. And when the nun Gotami asked him: “Will the Exalted One teach me the very quintessence of the Law,” he answered thus: “Whatever teaching leads to passion and not to peace, to pride and not to humility, to desire of much in place of little, to love of society and not of solitude, to idleness and not to striving, to a mind of unrest and not to a mind at peace—that, O Gotami,—note well!—that is not the way,—that is not the teaching of the Master.” And as they sat in the calm of the sunset and discoursed, Sariputta the Great said this: “I desire not life. I desire not death. I wait until my hour shall come like a servant that waits for his wage. I await the coming of the hour, conscious and of thoughtful mind.” Thus steadfast in the way they continued, not cruelly mortifying the body but in the true asceticism of the heart that cannot be tempted. For the Awakened One said this: “I teach asceticism inasmuch as I teach the burning away of all evil conditions of the heart. And the true ascetic who thus lives may fitly and rightly eat of the food that is given him in alms, of rice pleasantly prepared and such-like, and it will do him no ill.” So quietly and in radiance life went on as a summer day which from dewy dawn passes through every gradation of light until the night comes, taking the world in her net of stars and laying all to rest. And still the Exalted One journeyed and taught, now being very aged, and the seeds of his doctrine were carried as if by far-flying birds into the outer lands which had never felt in this life the tread of his blessed feet nor seen the calm of his face nor the majesty that attended him. And taking root these seeds shot up later into mighty trees of glorious growth. And still he journeyed to and fro, and the people said to the monks: “Let not the World-Honoured overweary himself, for in what are we worthy that our well-being should cost the world its Light?” And they answered: “All he does is well. This also is well and could not be otherwise.”