anter; but
a drop of wine added to the water in the decanter imparts its
flavor to the whole, whereas it would be lost in the river. The
Supreme Soul, therefore, is beyond accident; but the human soul is
afflicted by sense and passion. Happiness is only obtained in
reunion with the Supreme Soul, when the dispersed individualities
combine again with it, as the drops of water with the parent
stream. Hence the slave should remember that he is separated from
God by the body alone, and exclaim, perpetually, 'Blessed be the
moment when I shall lift the veil from off that face! the veil of
the face of my Beloved is the dust of my body.'"12 "A pious man
was once born on earth, who, in his various transmigrations, had
met eight hundred and twenty five thousand Buddhas. He remembered
his former states, but could not enumerate how many times he had
been a king, a beggar, a beast, an occupant of hell. He uttered
these words: 'A hundred thousand years of the highest happiness on
earth are not equal to the happiness of one day in the dewa lokas;
and a hundred thousand years of the deepest misery on earth are
not equal to the misery of one day in hell; but the misery of hell
is reckoned by millions of centuries. Oh, how shall I escape, and
obtain eternal bliss?'" 13

9 Eastern Monachism, p. 247.

10 Vishnu Purana, p. 568.

11 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 454.

12 Asiatic Researches, vol. xvii. p. 298.

13 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iv. p. 114.

The literary products of the Eastern mind wonderfully abound with
painful descriptions of the compromises, uncleannesses, and
afflictions inseparably connected with existence. Volumes would be
required to furnish an adequate representation of the vivid and
inexhaustible amplification with which they set forth the direful
disgusts and loathsome terrors associated with the series of ideas
expressed by the words conception, birth, life, death, hell, and
regeneration. The fifth chapter in the sixth book of the Vishnu
Purana affords a good specimen of these details; but, to
appreciate them fully, one must peruse dispersed passages in a
hundred miscellaneous works:

"As long as man lives, he is immersed in afflictions, like the
seed of the cotton amidst the down. . . . Where could man,
scorched by the fires of the sun of this world, look for felicity,
were it not for the shade afforded by the tree of emancipation? .
. . Travelling the path of the world for many thous