Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 49.djvu/34

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79. 'He will break open for the escape of living beings that door whose bolt is desire and whose two leaves are ignorance and delusion,—with that excellent blow of the good Law which is so hard to find.

80. 'He, the king of the Law, when he has attained to supreme knowledge, will achieve the deliverance from its bonds of the world now overcome by misery, destitute of every refuge, and enveloped in its own chains of delusion.

81. 'Therefore make no sorrow for him,—that belongs rather, kind sire, to the pitiable world of human beings, who through illusion or the pleasures of desire or intoxication refuse to hear his perfect Law.

82. 'Therefore since I have fallen short of that excellence, though I have accomplished all the stages of contemplation, my life is only a failure ; since I have not heard his Law, I count even dwelling in the highest heaven a misfortune.'

83. Having heard these words, the king with his queen and his friends abandoned sorrow and rejoiced ; thinking, 'such is this son of mine,' he considered that his excellence was his own.

84. But he let his heart be influenced by the thought, 'he will travel by the noble path,'—he was not in truth averse to religion, yet still he saw alarm at the prospect of losing his child.

85. Then the sage Asita, having made known the real fate which awaited the prince to the king who was thus disturbed about his son, departed by the way of the wind as he had come, his figure watched reverentially in his flight.

86. Having taken his resolution and having seen