Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 1677

PT. I. SECT. II. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-SZE.
197
on another to do as it does 1. My waiting,-is it for the scales of a snake, or the wings of a cicada?? How should I know why I do one thing, or do not do another 3 ?
'Formerly, I, Kwang Kâu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, a butterfly flying about, feeling that it was enjoying itself. I did not know that it was Kâu, Suddenly I awoke, and was myself again, the veritable Kâu. I did not know whether it had formerly been Kâu dreaming that he was a butterfly, or it was now a butterfly dreaming that it was Kâu. But between Kâu and a butterfly there must be a difference 4. This is a case of what is called the Transformation of Things 4.'
1 The mind cannot rest in second causes, and the first cause, if there be one, is inscrutable.
2 Even these must wait for the will of the creature; but the case of the shadow is still more remarkable.
s I have put this interrogatively, as being more graphic, and because of the particle , which is generally, though not necessarily, interrogative.
• Hsuan Ying, in his remarks on these two sentences, brings out the force of the story very successfully :- Looking at them in their ordinary appearance, there was necessarily a difference between them, but in the delusion of the dream each of them appeared the other, and they could not distinguish themselves! Kâu could be a butterfly, and the butterfly could be Kâu ;-we may see that in the world all traces of that and this may pass away, as they come under the influence of transformations. For the phrase, the transformation of things,' see in Book XI, par. 5, et al. But the Taoism here can hardly be distinguished from the Buddhism that holds that all human experience is merely so much mâya or illusion.
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