________________
II, 2, 2.
ASSURANCE OF SALVATION.
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* It is like milk, [41] which when once taken from the cow, turns, after a lapse of time, first to curds, and then from curds to butter, and then from butter to ghee. Now would it be right to say that the milk was the same thing as the curds, or the butter, or the ghee?'
Certainly not; but they are produced out of it.'
Just so, O king, is the continuity of a person or thing maintained. One comes into being, another passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus neither as the same nor as another does a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness.'
Well put, Nagasena !'
21. The king said: 'Is a man, Nagasena, who will not be reborn, aware of the fact ?'
Yes, O king' And how does he know it?' * By the cessation of all that is cause, proximate or remote?, of rebirth.'
Give me an illustration.' 'Suppose a farmer, great king, had ploughed and sown and filled his granary; and then for a period should neither plough nor sow, but live on the
on the whole body. And this fits the simile, in which the lamp is the body, and the flame the changing self-consciousness; whereas it is impossible to make the simile fit the conclusion as rendered by Hardy.
On the phrase a pubbam akariyam see Dr. Morris's note at p. 101 of the Pâli Text Society's Journal, 1887, and the passages he there quotes.
Omitted in Hardy. The correlative question is discussed below, III, 5, 8, p. 112. • That is to say, Tanha and Upadana.
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