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CHAPTER VI.
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Now, the venerable Ananda, rising from his seat, uncovering one shoulder, and resting on his right knee placed on the ground, saluted the Lord with joined hands, and thus addressed him: "Verily, Lord, the Tathagata was most wonderful to all creation So was verily Bodhisattva fully endowed with the religion. The question then is, Why should be again acquire the sequenceless perfect knowledge ? On this subject, Lord, I seek the asylum of the Lord Buddha four times, five times, fifty times, nay, many hundreds of thousands of times."
Thus beseeched, the. Lord addressed the venerable Ananda, saying "there will be born in future times, Ananda, many Bhikshus, of wreckless body, of thoughtless mind, devoid of good conduct, devoid of understanding, childish, ignorant, arrogant, haughty, puffed up, of evil propensity, of bewildered mind, full of gross desires, full of errors, impure, led by the cars, and dependant on their hearing, who will have no faith in this kind of purity of the Bodhisattva's descent from the womb. These, sitting aside, will thus speak to each other: Look ye, how inconsistent it is, that such should have been the glory of the Bodhisattva dwelling in the womb of a mother, amidst a mass of excrement and urine, that issuing from the right side of his mother's womb he was not besnicared with the filth of the womb! How can this be consistent!' These deluded persons will not be able to understand that the body of men of noble deeds is not produced in a mass of excrement and urine; that of such beings the descent from the womb is perfectly pure. It is from his mercy to created beings that the Bodhisattva, abiding in the womb, takes his birth on the region of the mortals. Remaining as a Deva he cannot set the wheel of religion in motion.". "Why so ?"
"Not to let men, Ananda, be in evil condition. The lord is Tathagata, Arbat, and the perfect knower; we are mere mortals; we cannot supply his place, and hence comes the evil condition. But to these deluded childish persons, devoid of religion, this will not be intelligible. That person is inconesiv
