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VI, 15.
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
positions, for attaining to the bliss of Nirvâna, for appeasing the fears that arise from birth, old age, decay and death, grief, pain, lamentation, woe, and despair, for being protected in the possession of the advantages of renunciation, for warding off discontent and evil thoughts, for instruction in all the good involved in the life of those who have renounced the world, for nourishment therein, for explaining to men quietude and insight, and the path and the fruits thereof and Nirvâna, for bestowing upon men a costly ornament high in the praise and admiration of the world, for closing the doors of all evil states, for mounting up to the peaks of the mountain heights of renunciation, for distinguishing crooked and cunning and evil intentions in others, for the proper recitation of those qualities which ought to be practised and those which ought not, for warding off as one's enemies all evil dispositions, for dissipating the darkness of ignorance, for allaying the fever arising from the scorching of the threefold fire, for the accomplishment of the attainment of the Condition of Peace-so gentle and so subtle,-for the protection of the virtues of the life of a recluse, for the production of the precious jewels of the sevenfold wisdomself-possession, investigation of the truth, energy, joy, calm contemplation, and serenity,-for the adornment of the recluses, for the prevention of any transgression against that blameless, abstruse, delicate bliss [357] that comes of peace, for dominion over all the qualities that recluses and Arahats affect. Thus, O king, is it that keeping the vows is one and the same thing as attaining to all these qualities. And the advantage thereof, O king, cannot be weighed, neither measured; it has no equal, no rival, no
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