And he went, and the Lord answered:
“Wise is Dhammadhina and mighty in understanding. My answer is hers.”
For the Unknown cannot be known until the way is built to it. Build then the way, and knowledge will come in time. But, without words, to the few, the very few, this knowledge has come, as has been told.
And when the nun Gotami asked him:
“Will the Exalted One teach me the very quintessence of the Law,” he answered thus:
“Whatever teaching leads to passion and not to peace, to pride and not to humility, to desire of much in place of little, to love of society and not of solitude, to idleness and not to striving, to a mind of unrest and not to a mind at peace—that, O Gotami,—note well!—that is not the way,—that is not the teaching of the Master.”
And as they sat in the calm of the sunset and discoursed, Sariputta the Great said this:
“I desire not life. I desire not death. I wait until my hour shall come like a servant that waits for his wage. I await the coming of the hour, conscious and of thoughtful mind.”
Thus steadfast in the way they continued, not cruelly mortifying the body but in the true asceticism of the heart that cannot be tempted. For the Awakened One said this:
“I teach asceticism inasmuch as I teach the burning away of all evil conditions of the heart. And the true ascetic who thus lives may fitly and rightly eat of the food that is given him in alms, of rice pleasantly prepared and such-like, and it will do him no ill.”