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PRINOE MEHA
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for a moment severance from you. Enjoy the human pleasures, child, as long as we live. 'Afterwards, when we shall have passed away, you can enter the Order, being ripe of age, and careless about the family affairs."
31. Thus bidden by his parents, Prince Meha replied, “Really it is as you tell me father and mother. But, truly, father and mother, human life is unsure, undetermined, inconstant, overwhelmed by hundreds of vices and troubles, unsteady as the lightning-flash, like to a bubble of water, like to a water-drop hanging from the top of a blade of grass, like to the flush of evening sky, like to the vision of a dream, sooner or later perforce to be abandoned. Who knows, father and mother, who is to go first, who is to go last? I desire, therefore, father and mother, (down to) to enter the Order,
32. Then the parents of Prince Meha, having failed to prevail upon him by many declarations and discourses in accord with sense-enjoyments, now spoke to him in discourses against sense-enjoyments arousing fear and horror of discipline, “Child this Niggantha doctrine is true, sublime, absolute, perfect, pure ; it cuts out arrows', it is a path of success, a path of salvation, a path devoid of all pain. It is single in its view, as a snake ; single of edge, like a razor, as barley-corn of iron to chew; tasteless as a mouthful of sand ; like the great river Ganges if one would go against its current; hard to traverse
1.
e., it removes doubts and destroys sins,
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