how a certain
king once went to take his pleasure in his garden, and gladden his
eyes with the beauty of his flowers. After a while he fell asleep; and
as he slumbered, the women of his train began pulling the flowers to
pieces. When the king awoke, of all the glory of his flowers there
remained but a few torn and faded petals. Seeing this, the king said,
'The flowers pass away and die; so is it with mankind: we are born, we
grow old, we sicken and die; we are as fleeting as the lightning's
flash, as evanescent as the morning dew.' I know not whether any of
you here present ever fix your thoughts upon death; yet it is a rare
thing for a man to live for a hundred years. How piteous a thing it is
that in this short and transient life men should consume themselves in
a fire of lust! and if we think to escape from this fire, how shall we
succeed save only by the teaching of the divine Buddha?"

[Footnote 86: One of the Buddhist classics.]

"Nammiyo! nammiyo!" meekly and entreatingly.

"Since Buddha himself escaped from the burning flames of the lusts of
the flesh, his only thought has been for the salvation of mankind.
Once upon a time there was a certain heretic, called Rokutsuponji, a
reader of auguries, cunning in astrology and in the healing art. It
happened, one day, that this heretic, being in company with Buddha,
entered a forest, which was full of dead men's skulls. Buddha, taking
up one of the skulls and tapping it thus" (here the preacher tapped
the reading-desk with his fan), "said, 'What manner of man was this
bone when alive?--and, now that he is dead, in what part of the world
has he been born again?' The heretic, auguring from the sound which
the skull, when struck, gave forth, began to tell its past history,
and to prophesy the future. Then Buddha, tapping another skull, again
asked the same question. The heretic answered--

"'Verily, as to this skull, whether it belonged to a man or a woman,
whence its owner came or whither he has gone, I know not. What think
you of it?"

"'Ask me not,' answered Buddha. But the heretic pressed him, and
entreated him to answer; then Buddha said, 'Verily this is the skull
of one of my disciples, who forsook the lusts of the flesh.'

"Then the heretic wondered, and said--

"'Of a truth, this is a thing the like of which no man has yet seen.
Here am I, who know the manner of the life and of the death even of
the ants that creep. Verily, I thought that no thing could es