“Though I be suffering and weak and all
My spring of youth be gone, yet have I come
Leaning upon my staff and climbed aloft
On mountain peak. My cloak have I thrown off
My little bowl o’er-turned; so sit I here
Upon the rock. And o’er my spirit sweeps
The breath of Liberty. I win, I win
The Triple Lore! The Buddha’s will be done.”
For now, they who had been the prisoners of man and of opinion learnt the beauty of the solitudes, and knew the silence that is in the starry sky, the sleep that is among the lonely hills, and it became theirs, and they attained to the coolness, purity and luminance of the Peace, bathing in it as in moonlit water. For they had passed through the Three Grades of Training, the Higher habit of Conduct, the Higher Consciousness, and the Higher Wisdom, and thus, knowing the world, not as it appears to be but as it is, knowing “This is Ill; this is the cause of Ill; this is the way leading to the cessation of Ill,” they were glad, and right ecstasy was theirs and joys that cannot be told, and they were free.
And another said this: