“What is to be known I know.”
“So has it been told to me, Gotama. It is well. Let the venerable Gotama be pleased to show me the way.”
Then said the Happy One:
“Know, Vasettha, that from time to time is born into the world a fully Enlightened One happy with knowledge of the Truth, a Blessed Buddha, and he sees as it were face to face this Universe, freed from his senses in that they no longer can shape illusions to blind and deceive him, for with ordinary men their thought creates shapes about them, a false world in which they believe and are blinded. But it is not so with the Buddhas for they see things as they are. Then do they proclaim this truth of the Universe as it is, lovely in origin, lovely in progress, lovely in consummation, and this is to be known by the higher life, which is the Way to Wisdom in all its purity and perfectness.”
And the Brahman Vasettha as in a dream, fixed, unconscious of all else, said:
“Speak, Lord,—I hear.”
And the Lord said:
“There are two levels of the Way. One for the monk, one for the householder, and of the monk I speak first.
“He takes nothing that is not his own. He is content with what is given, and honesty and a pure heart are his.
“His life is pure, having put aside the habit and thought of sexual intercourse. This is for the householder only, but in all purity.