"Why herewithal, my kinsmen--nay, my foes-- Why yoke me in your minds with sense desires? Know me as her who fled the life of sense, Shorn of her hair, wrapt in her yellow robe. The food from hand to mouth, glean'd here and there, The patchwork robe--these things are meet for me, The base and groundwork of the homeless life."
Some sought escape from the depression of luxury, some from the wretchedness of the poor, some from the abominations of the wanton, some from the boredom of tending an indifferent husband. One of them thus utters her complaint with frank simplicity:
"Rising betimes, I went about the house, Then, with my hands and feet well cleansed I went To bring respectful greeting to my lord, And taking comb and mirror, unguents, soap, I dressed and groomed him as a handmaid might. I boiled the rice, I washed the pots and pans; And as a mother on her only child, So did I minister to my good man. For me, who with toil infinite then worked, And rendered service with a humble mind, Rose early, ever diligent and good, For me he nothing felt, save sore dislike."
Others sought freedom of intellect, others the free development of personality; but, in the end, it was deliverance from earthly desires that all were seeking, for it is only through such deliverance that the final blessedness of total extinction can be reached. Then, as they cry, they cease to wander in the jungles of the senses, rebirth comes no more, and the peace of Nirvana is won. A poor Brahmin's daughter who had been married to a cripple, thus exults in a multiplied redemption:
"O free, indeed! O gloriously free Am I in freedom from three crooked things:-- From quern, from mortar, from my crook-back'd lord! Ay, but I'm free from rebirth and from death, And all that dragged me back is hurled away."
But more truly characteristic of the spiritual mind is the joyful advice of one who, having perfected herself in meditation, could thus commune with her soul:
"Hast thou not seen sorrow and ill in all The springs of life? Come thou not back to birth! Cast out the passionate desire again to Be. So shalt thou go thy ways calm and serene."
Thus only by the recognition of the sorrow of the world, by the conquest of all desires, and by the exercise of kindliness to all that breathe this life of misery, is that Path to be trodden of which the fourth stage enters Nirvana's peace. Thus only can we escape from this repulsive carcass--"this bag of skin with carrion filled," as one of the Sisters called it--and so be merged into the element of calm, just as the space inside a bowl is merged into the element of space when at last the bowl is broken and will never need scrubbing more.