Good is all...."


Again the Vulture of Temptation soared to the highest heaven of his
contemplation, bringing his soul down, down, reeling and fluttering,
back to the World of Illusion. Again the memory made dizzy his thought,
like the perfume of some venomous flower. Yet he had seen the bayadere
for an instant only, when passing through Kasí upon his way to
China,--to the vast empire of souls that thirsted after the refreshment
of Buddha's law, as sun-parched fields thirst for the life-giving rain.
When she called him, and dropped her little gift into his mendicant's
bowl, he had indeed lifted his fan before his face, yet not quickly
enough; and the penally of that fault had followed him a thousand
leagues,--pursued after him even into the strange land to which he had
come to hear the words of the Universal Teacher. Accursed beauty! surely
framed by the Tempter of tempters, by Mara himself, for the perdition of
the just! Wisely had Bhagavat warned his disciples: "O ye Çramanas,
women are not to be looked upon! And if ye chance to meet women, ye must
not suffer your eyes to dwell upon them; but, maintaining holy reserve,
speak not to them at all. Then fail not to whisper unto your own
hearts, 'Lo, we are Çramanas, whose duty it is to remain uncontaminated
by the corruptions of this world, even as the Lotos, which suffereth no
vileness to cling unto its leaves, though it blossom amid the refuse of
the wayside ditch.'" Then also came to his memory, but with a new and
terrible meaning, the words of the Twentieth-and-Third of the
Admonitions:--

"Of all attachments unto objects of desire, the strongest indeed is the
attachment to form. Happily, this passion is unique; for were there any
other like unto it, then to enter the Perfect Way were impossible."