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EMANCIPATION OF AJITA SVAMIN AND SAGARA 185
old, poor man and cakravartin. This is the true nature of worldly existence, that no one in it is permanent, like a wave in a river, like an autumn-cloud in the sky. Furthermore, my father, mother, brother, son, sister, daughter-inlaw such a relation is not real. Some come from one place and some from another, and meet in one house. So all people are like travelers at a village-inn. When each goes away by a separate road as a result of their karma, what wise man would grieve at all? Do not grieve therefore, which is a sign of delusion, best of Brahmans. Use firmness, noble sir, and entrust yourself to discernment." Then the Brahman said, "O King, I know the true nature of existence of living beings. However, today I forgot it in grief for my son. To the extent that every man has knowledge, to the extent that every man possesses firmness, to that extent he does not experience with his soul separation from his beloved. O master, people like you, their minds purified by drinking the nectar of the Arhat's teaching always, possessing firmness and discernment, are few. O discerning one, I deluded have been very well enlightened by you. This discrimination must be preserved by you for your own sake. It, disappearing, must be guarded when calamity is at hand; since surely a weapon is carried in time of danger. This death, impartial to the poor man and to the cakravartin, destroying life, sons, etc., is afraid of no one. Listen! One who has few sons, etc., of him few die. Who has many, of him many die. But the pain of the two is just the same, indeed like that of the kunthu 389 and the elephant from light and heavy blows. Henceforth, I will not grieve for the loss of one son. Like me, do not grieve at the loss of all your sons. For your sixty thousand sons, resplendent with strength of arm, have died simultaneously as a result of destiny, O King."
889 153. A small three-sensed creature. PE and PH, s.v.
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