But at such times he steadied himself upon the thought of Law. Could a man nobly agree with necessity which is the other name of Law, were that no peace and enlightenment? Is not Law beheld in nature? What is this incessant changing yet unchanging series of phenomena unperplexed by self-contemplation and analysis which man sees about him. What? Is it a play—a spectacle that Brahm the Universal Spirit has set in motion for Its own delight, or is it Itself expanded throughout the Universe, and if this be so is man the one thing outside Its circumference, and if he be within it, shall he only be ignorant of the Law and agonized because he does not obey it? If man is capable of conceiving the Law surely it exists and is his and him.
So he looked down the abyss and beheld nothing but persistence in change and the infinity of infinities. Was there anywhere a fixed point? Surely only in the relation of all to Law. Therefore he hungered and thirsted for Law, forgetting the emaciation of his body and its pitiable weakness, thirsting for the Way with a deathly thirst that consumed him, rendering him incapable of all other suffering.
But though he knew full well and each day perceived more clearly that the climax of wisdom is perception of this universal Law from which nothing—no, not the very soul of man is exempt—still it evaded him. Freedom from deception he attained, diamond-clear lucidity, certainty that there is a first principle and final aim of the Universe, but the Way to touch hands with it he could not find.
Thus, having caught but a glimpse of the Absolute like a star in driven clouds, he had gained the certainty of what is not, but not as yet the knowledge of what is, and there even the majesty of the Bodhisattva’s[[2]] intellect fell back baffled, and at last his mind became like a dimness in which thought itself lost its way and analysis stumbled, and the clear call became like the falling of a great water in which many sounds fuse into a confused roar in which nothing but mere noise is to be discerned, deafening the ears and confusing the senses.
[2] The Buddha-to-be.
And thus he sat for six long years, and at the end though he had discerned the perishable, the transient, the Eternal Way was far from his perception, and life rushed by him from an unknown beginning to a hopeless end, defending itself frantically for a few brief years, but in the end conquered, and the man broken in the frail edifice which is called his being.
And now he was so wasted that life hung in him by a thread worn slender as a spider’s, and the fame of his terrible austerities had spread like the sound of a great bell hung in the canopy of the skies, and if he had gained what he sought all this would have counted as nothing in his eyes, but in the long six years he had not gained, and his mind tortured him because now it seemed that it broke itself and its power dispersed like a mighty wave broken on rocks and fleeing in foam and spray. And one day when he rose to his feet, still drowned in hopeless meditation, his limbs failed beneath him, and he fell and so lay exhausted, spent, believing “This is death, and I am conquered.”
And it could not be otherwise for very terrible had been his austerities and later he told his disciple this.