So they paused in the principal street of the town and there waited in the shade, with banners and flowers making gay the blue air about them.
Then at long last moving through the streets, followed by two others, the Maharaja and his nobles saw a young monk clad in the yellow robe, with one shoulder bared, who in his hands carried an alms-bowl, and at each house door stopped and silently tendered the bowl, receiving with majesty what was given, and passing on with patience when it was refused. And it was his son.
Then shame and love and anger contended in the heart of the Maharaja and tore him like a whirlwind among the leaves of a tree, and he clenched his robe across his breast and cried out aloud to Siddhartha:
“I am put to shame—to horrible shame. My son a beggar! Our race is beaten to the earth with shame.”
And standing calmly before the angry Maharaja the Blessed One after due salutation lifted his eyes and replied:
“Maharaj, this is the custom of our race.”
“This horrible thing is not so. Not one of our ancestors has ever begged his bread.”
“Maharaj, you and your high race claim descent from kings,—but my descent is far otherwise. It is from the Buddhas of ancient days, and as they have done, begging their food from the charitable, so do I, nor can I otherwise.”
But seeing his father still in pain from anger and sorrow, the Perfected One spoke thus:
“Do I not know that the King’s heart bleeds with love and memory, and that for his son’s sake he adds grief to grief? But now let these earthly bonds of love be instantly unloosened and utterly destroyed, for there are greater and higher. Ceasing from thought of such love, let the King’s mind receive from me such spiritual food as no son has yet offered to father, a gift most beautiful and wonderful.”