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THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV, 6, 53.
“Whene'er a good man, with believing heart,
Presents what he hath earned in righteousness To th' unrighteous,-in full confidence On the great fruit to follow the good actSuch gift is, by the giver, sanctified.”'
Most wonderful, Nagasena, and most strange! We asked you a mere ordinary question, and you, expounding it with reasons and with similes, have filled, as it were, the hearer with the sweet taste of the nectar (of Nirvana ). Just as a cook, or a cook's apprentice, taking a piece of ordinary nutmeg, will, treating it with various ingredients, prepare a dish for a king—so, Nagasena, when we asked you an ordinary question, have you, expounding it with reasons and similes, filled the hearer with the sweet taste of the nectar of Nirvana.'
[Here ends the dilemma as to the guilty recluse.]
1 Amata-madhuram sa van a pagam a kâ si. Hinafi-kumburê (p. 365) understands this differently, and has apparently read amatam madhuram. For he translates 'filled the hearer with the taste of Nirvana, and adorned the least of the people with the ear-ring of Arahatship.' It is difficult to see where he finds the least of the people, and there is no authority for rendering sa van apa gam by 'ear-ring. Amata as an epithet of the state of mind called by Western writers Nirvana (which is only one of many names applied in the Buddhist books themselves to Arahatship) has nothing to do with immortality. As this wrong notion of the use of the word has led to much confusion, I have considered in an appendix all the passages in which the epithet occurs.
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