Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/250

 and wicked rulers, and had added to the happiness of all created beings. How he had vanquished the water serpent Koliya, slain the bull-shaped demon Aristha, destroyed the ravaging monsters Dhenuka and Kishi, and the demon prince Naraka, had overcome and killed the villainous kings Kamsa and Paundraka, and other bloody tyrants who were the terror of helpless human beings, and had thus ameliorated in many a way the distressful fate of man.

But he, the Master, did not combat the foes that assailed men from without, but the monsters in their own hearts—greed, hate, insanity, love of self, the desire for pleasure, the thirst for the things that pass away; and he freed humanity, not from this or that evil, but from suffering.

Then the Blessed One spoke of suffering which everywhere and always follows life like its shadow. And I felt as though some one with gentle hand lifted the load of pain my love had brought me, bore it away, and cast it into the great maelstrom of suffering, where, in the general whirl, it disappeared from view. In my inmost soul, and deeply, did I feel that I had no right to enduring happiness where all suffer. I had enjoyed my happiness; it was born, had unfolded itself, and had passed, just as the Buddha taught that everything in this world comes from some source, and, after its time is fulfilled, must—sooner or later—again pass away. This very transitoriness, in which the unreality of every individual thing veiled itself, was, he told us, the final, the unavoidable source of suffering—unavoidable so long as the desire for existence was not uprooted—so long as it continued to flourish luxuriantly and for ever to give rise to something new. And as each individual is, from the very