Then, going to my cell, I take my lamp,
And seated on my couch I watch the flame.
Taking the pin I pull the wick right down
Into the oil. Extinguished is the fire.
Lo, the Nirvana of the little lamp.
Emancipation dawns. My heart is free.”
For as the flame is quenched so are all lusts, desires and cravings extinguished in the clear waters of Nirvana. There is no fire so burning as the greed of passion, no luckless cast of the dice so cruel as hate, no ill so miserable as that of the ego that would claim all. Nor is there any bliss to be compared with the Nirvana.
And the monks, also musing, made psalms that cannot die, for upon them also was the bliss.
“When in the lowering sky thunders the storm-cloud’s drum,
And all the pathways of the birds are thick with rain,