Musing night and day on these thoughts and this blessedness the Princess excelled in knowledge and in her true eyes the light shone brighter and more bright in the deep contemplation of her heart, and when in the passing of the years the wealth of the Maharaja fell into her hands she valued it nothing, placing it where most good and least harm could flow from it. And with attendant princesses she walked nearly five hundred miles, refusing all offers of assistance, that she might be near the World-Honoured, breathing the same air, sometimes attendant upon his teaching, sometimes sending dutifully to enquire after the health of the monk Rahula, her son.
So, having grown old, but still eminent in the nobility of her beauty and its calm, as she sat alone one day she remembered many of her friends who through the Peace here to be attained had departed to that Other. And she thought this:
“I was born on the same day as my lord, the Awakened One, and in the regular order of things I should on the same day enter the Great Peace. But this is an honour too great for me and far beyond my deserts, nor can it be. I am now seventy eight years in this world of illusion, and in two years from now, he, the Blessed One, will enter that which cannot be named. I will therefore request permission to precede him, as the lower should precede the great.”
So, accompanied by her attendants, the Princess went to the Vihara, the monastery, where the Lord sat at the time with a company of disciples, and presenting herself before him humbly asked forgiveness for any faults she might have committed. And he replied:
“You are the most virtuous of women. But from the time you received the Light, you have done no marvels, so that many have not known the power that is in you, doubting whether you were indeed an Arhat. There is a company assembled about us, who know not the Powers. Show them.”
But the Princess, doubting in her humility that this should be, doubting whether a woman should display the beauty of her person to onlookers, was not assured that this was well. Yet, with the insight to which time is nothing, she spoke, rehearsing the mystery and marvel of all her former lives, for now having vanquished rebirth she was as the traveller who nearing the mountain top and the eternal purities sees the way by which he has come, rejoicing in perils escaped and rest unending. And all sat entranced, listening to the music of her voice and the marvels she—to whom time was no more than a child’s toy cast aside—unfolded before them. And suddenly, as she ended, the air upbore her light feet and a marvel was done before them, for in the air she prostrated herself before Him who has thus Attained, attributing to him the knowledge that had guided her into bliss. And those who saw hid their faces.
And when all was concluded she retired to her own dwelling and there, that same night, rising from contemplation to contemplation, she beheld the Peace, being delivered for ever from all illusion, and so passed into That which is to come.
And of her son—the monk Rahula—this also must be told:
At one time the Lord, with robe and bowl, went to Savatthi in search of alms, and his son Rahula followed step for step, and the Blessed One, turning, said this:
“Whatever form one bears, monk, is to be viewed with perfect wisdom and the understanding—‘This is not mine; it is not I. This is not my true self.’ ”